Merry Christmas!

What an incredible season to celebrate the birth of our Jesus!

"I bring you good news of GREAT JOY that will be for ALL people.  Today in the town of David, a SAVIOR has been born to you: HE IS CHRIST THE LORD!"

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

We are heading out to be with family over the next few weeks so we will see you when we get back! 

We can't wait to catch up with you in the New Year...♥

creating: Grandpa Pierce's English Toffee

This week we tackled our annual holiday treat: English Toffee!  This is our third year making it and we have so much  fun doing it together!

We started the tradition in 2010: Ryder's first Christmas!

 The final product!

We are looking forward to this tradition for MANY years to come!

We will be delivering them to our neighbors tonight!

Oh, Holy Night

I recently found this free printable through Pinterest and it's the first time that I have ever had one printed up.  I LOVE this one, so I wanted to share the link with you.

Go here to download yours at {aka} designs

(They do some really cool stuff...)

We put ours on our magnetic board in the center of our christmas card display.

It makes me so happy to look at it.  I find myself humming it throughout the day...

I hope you have a wonderful day my friends!

worship

Our church just came out with a new worship cd.  It's amazing!  It's pretty much been on non stop since we got it!  If you are looking for some incredible music, check it out.

(It's live so every time there is clapping, Ryder claps too.  When he first hears it, he looks at me and says "Church sing?"

Yep, singing to Jesus! 
The album is available on iTunes. 

Go here for more information.

Have a great day my friends!

Annual Family Christmas Weekend

This weekend we had our annual family Christmas time with my Mom's side of the family. The Weekend started off with my cousin Melissa's water breaking around 530a and delivering miss Ava Joy at 1219p. Welcome baby Ava!  We love you so much!

The weekend was filled with playing games, long talks, games, laughter, and lots and lots of eating!!!

Here are some of the favorites:
Playing soccer and basketball outside.
(Ryder loves anything that can turn into a wrestling match.)

We ate.  A lot!

the girls:

orange bread:

mimosas:

 our little family:

(brought to you by the bribery of gummi bears♥.)

Have a wonderful week!

motherhood

In light of the devastation this last friday, these words have been playing over and over again in my mind and I wanted to share them with you.  Our thoughts and prayers will continue to be with the families affected by this horrific tragedy.

New Christmas Traditions

We started a few new traditions this year with Ryder.  

Ryder's aunt Mallory made him his own Christmas tree out of felt, for his room.  He LOVES it!  She created ornaments and lights and garland that he can decorate it with.

 How cute is the ornament with his name on it!

We can't wait to pull it out every year.  Thank you SO much Mallory!  What a treasure you gave us!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We then pulled out the "Elf on a Shelf" this year.  

It's a hide and seek thing, not so much a Santa thing.  He get's so excited when he finds it, and then HE hides it and then HE looks for it again, and is so proud of himself when he finds the Elf that HE hid.  I'm not going to lie, I may be biased, but my son is so SWEET!

 Ryder named our elf "Woody", which is a little confusing since we have two Toy Story Woody dolls, but SO appropriate since we started the tradition the same year that Toy Story is his all time favorite movie!  It takes me a minute when he asks me "Where Woody mama?" When the Elf is not hiding, you will sometimes find them hanging out together.

He seems so much more excited about this season this year.  He loves the lights, the nativity scene, the tree, our wreath...

He is so precious to us!  

I hope you have a great weekend!

creating:stuffed bell peppers

I made these this week and we really enjoyed them.  As always, the things that make a recipe a hit are: that they were easy, Kit loved them, and Ryder ate them too!  Hey, when all three criteria are met, I HAVE to pass the recipe along♥ .  If you are not a bell pepper fan, I think you could do this same filling in something like zucchini and it would be really good too!

Stuffed Green Peppers I

Rated: Submitted By: Suzanne M. Munson Photo By: Lil Mermaid Prep Time: 30 Minutes Cook Time: 30 Minutes Ready In: 1 Hour Servings: 6

"Green bell peppers are stuffed with a mixture of ground beef, onion, tomatoes, rice, and cheese then baked in a tomato soup based sauce."

INGREDIENTS:

6 green bell peppers salt to taste 1 pound ground beef 1/3 cup chopped onion salt and pepper to taste 1 (14.5 ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, chopped

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1/2 cup uncooked rice 1/2 cup water 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese 2 (10.75 ounce) cans condensed tomato soup water as needed

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cut the tops off the peppers, and remove the seeds. Cook peppers in boiling water for 5 minutes; drain. Sprinkle salt inside each pepper, and set aside.
2.	In a large skillet, saute beef and onions for 5 minutes, or until beef is browned. Drain off excess fat, and season with salt and pepper. Stir in the tomatoes, rice, 1/2 cup water and Worcestershire sauce. Cover, and simmer for 15 minutes, or until rice is tender. Remove from heat, and stir in the cheese.
3.	Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (175 degrees C). Stuff each pepper with the beef and rice mixture, and place peppers open side up in a baking dish. In a medium bowl, combine tomato soup with just enough water to make the soup a gravy consistency. Pour over the peppers.
4.	Bake covered for 25 to 35 minutes, until heated through and cheese is melted and bubbly.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2012 Allrecipes.com

Printed from Allrecipes.com 12/10/2012

I substituted turkey for beef  and used tomato sauce instead of tomato soup because that is what I had on hand.

If you give them a try, I hope that you enjoy them like we did!

good reads

This is what Kit is reading:

What Gina is reading:

What Ryder is reading:

What Eden is reading♥:

Hopefully as the weather keeps getting cooler, there will be more and more reasons to snuggle up with a good book!

If you have any good reads, please pass the titles along...

I always love recommendations!

Christmas lights

We love looking at christmas lights.  We love bundling the kids up and getting hot chocolate and driving to our favorite spots.  If you are in our neck of the woods, here are two spots that have amazing christmas lights:

Yale street in Fullerton:

(The entire street hangs these light spheres from their trees and it goes for several blocks.)

And can I just say that the pictures do not do them justice...)

 A few of the homes wrap their entire trees.  It's beautiful!

One house has their entire house in the theme of The Charlie Brown Christmas, and since Ryder loves that movie, you can imagine how much time we spent in front of that house:

One house syncs their lights to music.

Last year I felt VERY pregnant when we came here, so it was fun to have Eden with us this year!

Her eyes were HUGE while looking at all the lights.

The other spot that we like to go is off of Starflower street in Brea.  Over 100 homes participate and they do an incredible job making it a spot that is fun for families to be together.

 Since we put up our nativity scene, Ryder LOVES seeing them around in people's homes and yards.

Each time he see's one he shouts out, while pointing to Mary, Joseph, and Jesus,  "Oh, look! mama, dada, bebe Jesus!"  And depending on what animals are present, I get the list of those with their animal sounds. 

This one was a favorite!

It really helps remind me of what we truly get to celebrate this time of year!

I hope that you have a wonderful day!