Slacker!

Wow! I have been such a blog slacker lately! I appologize to the 2-5 of you that read my blog! I am going to do a post (hopefully tomorrow) with some of our wonderful pictures from our Christmas celebrations! But, today is not that day! So, I will say that we had a fabulous Christmas! Here is the kids' Santa photo that just makes me smile!

Well, just gearing up for a busy weekend! Nick's parents, younger sister, and older sister and her family are coming Friday to Saturday. Then we have my mom's side of the family's Christmas party on Sunday. Should be a very busy weekend! Today I am catching up on laundry and trying to get motivated to get lots accomplished! But, I would rather just look at these cute people!

The Nester's Tour of Homes

The Nester is doing her Christmas tour of homes and I didn't want to be left out. Even though mine isn't that impressive I thought I would show a few of my favorite decorations this year!

This is the table in my entry way. I put a berry garland around the mirror and then some glass vases with red and gold ornaments in them

Our mantle with our stockings (not a great picture). But I just love stockings on the mantle. When we built our house I told Nick that if we didn't have a fireplace with a mantle we would not be able to celebrate Christmas

I wanted to add a little Christmas to our kitchen table so I put some red and gold ornaments in a cake plate!

A little up close of our stockings. My mom got them for each of us from Lands End. I can't wait to have one more on our mantle next year!

My Willow Tree nativity set. The star is there year round but I think it looks neat with the nativity in front of it! I love this set so much.

Our little tree. It is not the best tree, we got it the first year we were married but it works. And I love all of our ornaments on it!

My mom made me this glass block with lights in it. I love it! I think I need more of them next year!

And a few of my favorite new ornaments. Handmade by sweet Brother Bear at Mom's Day Out. I know in a few years our tree will be covered with ornaments made by our kids... I can't wait

Well, that is about it! Merry Christmas!

If this doesn't brighten your mood on this freezing day I don't know what will! :-)

So busy!

The business is really starting to pick up here at the Ramsey's. Honestly, it is not my favorite. A few years ago I would have loved having every weekend packed to the brim. But, since having the Little R's I hate it! Our weekend time as a family is so precious to us! On weeknights Nick gets home from work , we eat dinner, he gets about half an hour to play with the kiddos and then the bedtime routine starts. By the time the Little R's are tucked in we are usually so tired we just lounge on the couch watching TV until bedtime. Not exactly quality time!

So, I love our weekends that are lots of togetherness. I also love to use weekend time for one on one time with the hubs! The next few weekends are filled with get togethers, visits, and traveling. I LOVE all of these things but in big doses I get VERY stressed out! Honestly, I wish I was better at saying "no". It is something I am trying to learn from my husband. He is excellent at saying "no" to doing anything that he does not believe is the best for our family. I unfortunatly, am a people pleaser!

Maybe that should be my New Year's Resolution... no more being a people pleaser! And instead work on being a God pleaser! What a concept :-)

BooMama's computer giveaway

If you are looking for a new computer... why not try winning one? BooMama is giving away one HP Touchsmart 600 on her blog. It looks awesome. At least enter and if you don't want one you can give it to me if you win! ;-) http://boomama.net/hp-touchsmart-600-giveaway/

Show Us Your Life- Christmas Trees

I love that Kelly's Korner is all about the Christmas Season right now! This week it is all about Christmas trees. Mine in not very impressive at all and I only have one so far! It was a cheapie we bought when we were first married and there is a ton of space between branches so I feel like I don't have enough room to hang things! But, either way, I thought I would show it off and take the opportunity to show off some of my favorite ornaments!

Here is our tree this year. It looks pretty good all lit up. But, like I said... I need a new tree!

This is the ornament I got this year! My mom has a fabulous tradition of buying us all Hallmark ornaments for Thanksgiving every year. I love that I still get them!

Here is a nativity I got last year. I LOVE nativities! I love for everything I look at around Christmas to remind me of Jesus and of course nativities do that just perfectly!

Now... this is the ornament I am MOST excited about! Max brought it home from Mom's Day Out on Monday and I won't lie to you... I cried when I opened it! Wait for it...

Is that not the CUTEST thing you have ever seen in your life?? I just love my little man in the reindeer ears! And it was a total suprise so I am just thrilled!

This is my other favorite ornament. We have had it on our tree ever since we were married. It is Nick when he was in kindergarten. I just think it is the cutest thing ever!

Well... that is my tree! Hopefully I will have something better to show next year. I was VERY inspired by Kelly's pink tree. So, I hope to have some other fun trees next year too! But, I LOVE all my special ornaments and am glad I got to share a few favorites!

Get ready...

Another little Ramsey baby will be here this summer! We are so excited! 3 little R's to love. What could be better than that?

Our Christmas Traditions

Kelly at http://www.kellyskornerblog.com/ is doing Christmas Traditions this week! I was excited to jump in for the first time because I LOVE traditions and I LOVE Christmas! So the combination is more than I can take sometimes!!

We have a lot of traditons that have carried over from my family and then Mr. R and I have started some of our own as well! Here are some of my favorite traditions!

We do a Christmas Eve present every year and it is always new Christmas p.j.s... usually even the grown-ups get some. Here are my kiddos in their new Christmas p.j.s last year!

We also started a new tradition last year of making cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve! Very fun!

Some of our other traditions include:

Monkey Bread on Chrismas morning

appetizers on Christmas eve after going to Christmas Eve service at church

I think this year we are going to try doing the Advent thing for the first year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgivng! I am SO excited for our first Thanskgiving in our new house! We have SO much to be thankful for! Here is a list of just some of the things I am so thankful to our Heavenly Father for!

1. Jesus! His Grace, love, goodness... all of it! I am beyond thankful that the creator of the universe loves me.

2. My husband. This year has been one of the hardest and best years of our marriage. But we came through it together and have never been more in love! He is truly my best friend and I know that God put us together for a reason!

3. Max. He is the most amazing little boy. He is my first child and will always hold a very special place in my heart because of that. He has such a sweet and loving spirit. He doesn't like to see me cry or be upset at all. He gives the best snuggles and kisses. But then he is this crazy wild boy who runs and jumps and screams all about Spiderman and dinosaurs and other boyish things. I am so thankful for his life. He is so much like his daddy in so many ways but I still see the me in there and it makes me happy. God has big plans for this little boy.

4. Sophie. Having a little girl is better than I ever dreamed it would be. She is so beautiful and sweet! I love how she giggles and smiles. I love how she snuggles with anything that is soft... even if it is the clean laundry I just folded. And I also love how sassy she is. She knows exactly what she wants at all times. I pray that we can deal with this attitude as her parents but that she will keep it somewhat into her adulthood. What an amazing woman she could be with passion like that. I can only imagine the awesome things God could do through that girl!

5. Our new house. Our new home is nothing short of a gift from God. We could never have gotten this house on our own. Through the generosity of my grandma and the weird job changes and lay offs Nick had this year God provided our family with this beautiful home. I am so thankful!

6. Nick's job. It may not be his dream job but he likes it and it takes care of our family so well. Nick is learning amazing skills that will give him amazing opportunites in the future. Plus, it took us to Las Vegas this year which just rocked!

7. My parents. We love living close to them so much! They love our kids so much and it means the world to us. Max talks about Grandma and Grandpa nonstop! I am so grateful for their willingess to help us out so much. They are awesome and we love them so much.

8. My grandma. What she did for us this past year is nothing short of amazing. How do you even thank someone who has done so much for you? She will never know how thankful I am. She has always been one of my most favorite people in the entire world and will continue to be. Basically, when I say I have the best grandma in the world, I think I know what I am talking about!

9. Friends. Old and new I am blessed. God has shown me so much about friendship this year and I am grateful for it. I am so thankful for my friends near and far that have helped me through this year and have helped me become a better person!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

My little man...

Brother Bear was in desperate need of a haircut. It had been waaaayyyyy too long. When I picked him up from Moms Day Out today he was all sweaty and his hair was sticking out everywhere. The poor boy looked like an orphan! But, he is in full on 3 year old mode so I just wasn't in the mood to risk a tantrum at the hair place. Then my mom had the BRILLIANT idea of having Nick take him... you know, just the boys! He came back looking like this...


Not sure what is on the agenda for today. Sister and I have been up since 6:30 and brother is still sleeping soundly. I think we will head over to Grandma June's at some point to drop off some groceries... not sure what else we will do! Should be a good day though!

Getting ready for Thanksgiving

We are hosting our first Thanksgiving this year and I am quite excited about it. I know that there is a lot of preperation that goes into having a large group of people over for a huge meal... especially one as important as Thanksgiving! So, to prepare I took care of something very important yesterday... painting my kitchen



Okay, so maybe I am procrastinating a little bit!

I really do love Thanksgiving though. And as we have been trying to give more this season it is so more meaningful to me. We decided to do shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child this year. Our hope was to begin planting seeds of what it means to give to our kids, mainly Brother Bear since he is older. But, I think I was the one that learned so much through it this year. With every little gift I found to put in the shoebox I was just overwhelmed with how much I have. I am able to give my children EVERYTHING they need and so much more. I am able to buy them lots of clothes for every season, fun toys, presents for every occassion, candy.... I know that these mommas love their kids just as much as I love mine, but they can't give them everything. I am truly beginning to understand that we are blessed to be a blessing!

Our Parent's as Teachers Program put on a Jammin' in Your Jammies event where the kids were supposed to come in their jammies and play with music. Since our kids LOVE music they of course had a great time. It was so fun to take Sophie to something like this. We had an AMAZING library program when we lived in Springfield so Brother Bear went to stuff like this all the time.





We followed up the night with a special trip to Starbucks for chocolate milk and cookies... and of course coffee for Mom and Dad. It was so much fun!



It is so neat to do fun things with our kids! I can't wait for all of the fun memories will make in the years to come!!

Spiderman came to dinner last night...

Spiderman joined us for dinner last night. As you can see Halloween isn't quite over yet at our house! Having a little boy is way too much fun!



And of course this post wouldn't be complete without showing that having a little girl is also too much fun! Doesn't Sister Bear look so cute in her dress? It was a hand-me-down from our friend Maddie and I just LOVE it!

A new blog!

I decided to get a blog going to let everyone know what is going on with the little R's... Max and Sophie or Brother Bear and Sister Bear as they are usually called around our home! They do cute things pretty much constantly! And since I really enjoy blogging I decided to merge two of my favorite things! Stay tuned for more updates. But for now, enjoy a few cute pictures from our time playing outside yesterday!