Shutterfly photo book

This is the photo book I made on Shutterfly and gave to several family members for Christmas this year. I used Ali Edwards Everyday Life design, and I'm thrilled with how they turned out. I was intimidated by the process at first, but it actually turned out to be super simple.

Click here to view this photo book larger

weekend recap, Part I

Howdy!

I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas!

We are still recovering around here...

Full bellies,

trashed house,

tons of laundry,

but 3 kiddos and 2 parents who are feeling extremely blessed to have this beautiful mess!

Following are several pics from the past weekend. I've chosen my favorites, since I took roughly 500 knowing that about half of those would turn out to be decent photos. After dumping them all onto the computer last night, I realized I was right. A little over 200 were immediately deleted because of poor lighting, blurred subjects, etc. Here are some of my faves from camera numero uno:

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breakfast at the in-laws Christmas Eve morn:

LOTS of yummy yummy breakfast foods.

(and one of the many reasons I'm now sporting an awesome muffin top. Well, maybe not awesome)

 Here's Carol and Carroll. One of them is singing and holding a baby, and one of them is just holding a baby.

 Lots and lots of kiddos at breakfast.

 Savannah helped E open her presents. So sweet.

Cutie pie Samuel.

 Thomas opened his gifts with a lil help from mommy.

Who doesn't love a big giant microphone?

 See?

After the company was gone, the kids opened their presents from MawMaw and PawPaw Ed-

Anyone else out there have a sit n' spin?

This totally took me back to 1986.

I love that my kids will be spinnin on one now.

 Activity books.

Oh how my kiddos love books.

One of O's is even 3D.

 And then came the bike...

I think I caught O in the middle of "AWESOME" here

 This is one happy dude on a Clone Wars bike

 E got a doll

 that's almost as big as she is.

 Sit n' Spin time!

 And here's a pic with me in it just to prove I was there.

Once the hubs got off work (hoo-ray) we headed to Mannie and Grandaddy's for supper and presents.

MM with her toys. LOVE the Olivias!

 E got a doll that drinks a bottle and closes its eyes to go to sleep when its done. Wish real babies were that easy...

 O got a supercool Cat in the Hat game

 Here's Linus with Grandaddy

 The photo books I made on Shutterfly for the grandmothers/great-grandmothers were a HUGE success. If you've never made anything on Shutterfly, I highly reccommend you try it out. They've got cards, books, calendars, anything you can think of to slap a picture on- they've got it. And they were made and shipped to me real quick-like too. Gotta love that.

 E is showing me her baby-

I think she actually said "I've got one tooooo..."

No idea... 

 Then we headed to Ma'am and Pop's...

E got a shopping cart from MalMal-

 And a bike from Ma'am and Pop.

I think hubs is doing all the work here.

 O got new Star Wars boys!

 The Hubs got several t-shirts, some ties and a sweater.

He wanted to model them simultaneously.

 MM got soft squishy play food

 Batcave!!!

 One of these things is not like the other...

 Back home after a LONG day. The setting up of the Batcave was a priority. E was fine to play with a slinky.

 See?

And normally, that would have been the end of our evening. We would have gone to bed, anxiously waiting for Santa to come, BUT... since one of Santa's helpers had to work on Christmas Day, our night was actually far from over.

Santa came to our house early this year.

Part II coming soon...

well hello Kevin McAllister...

my family of 5 sat down tonight and did something together for the first time...

we watched McCauley Culkin run around the streets of NYC and terrorize a couple of hoodlums.

Oliver cackled.

LOVED watching him watch one of his daddy's favorite movies for the first time.

Eliza felt bad for the robbers.

She said, "uh-oh" each and every time they got hurt.

Which was quite often.

Maybe we can make this a yearly thing.

Who knows?

Are YOU doing anything special this Christmas for the first time?

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And while Santa will be delivering a few gifts in a couple days,  he is not why the Mathews will be celebrating.

A babe in a manger is the star of the show.

A babe who came to earth just like us.

Who showed us the way to His Father,

and then died for us.

Because it was the only way.

That Man is why we'll be celebrating.

Not a fat guy in a red suit.

Jesus is the reason.

Merry Christmas to you, friends.

God Bless

whew...

all done-

 and this is all the wrapping paper I had left.

I just squeaked by with enough.

The white background with the red swirlies was left over from last year, and the red paper with the snowflakes is from the dollar spot at Target a couple weeks ago.

That's right- I spent a total of ONE DOLLAH on wrapping this year. Ribbon was left from last year too- I buy it by the butt-load at Sams.

Of course, you know this means I'll have to start all over next year since nothing is left.

But you see...that's what after Christmas sales are for.

And since I've grown quite fond of posing for the camera with a prop in my hand, I just couldn't go all day and not use the ole self-timer.

MM was my buddy today, running all over town with me.

She is my prop, and she is precious.

I call this pose,

"Young Mother tries to understand the gibberish coming out of her babe's mouth".

Babe's top and pants are Circo from Target

My top/jeans/vest are from the Limited

my earrings are from the Watoto children's choir

my clogs are Dansko

3 more days....

Feliz Navidad y'all

(*** no what I wore wednesday post today. I am currently a hot, hot mess, with it being my first day of Christmas break and all...***)

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Last night, we had the first of several yearly Christmas festivities with our family.

We celebrated Feliz Navidad with my in-laws and the name is pretty much taken from the fact that we eat Mexican food. LOTS and lots of Mexican food.

When we arrived, E immediately found her a nice cozy spot on one of the gifts under my MIL's tree and looked at/touched all of the ornaments within her reach.

 And, of course, had to pick up most of the presents too.

 Family-

 MM and white mawmaw

 Food, glorious food....

 The adults play dirty Santa with gift cards each year while the kids get actual presents, so it was a bit odd when my MIL had a gift for each male in the family...

 And then we realized why...

they started pulling them out of the boxes....

shirts....

BIG ginormous shirts.....

 And so they, of course, put them on...

(Isn't my hubs pretty? Even with this thing on...)

 And here they are.

ALL of them.

Each shirt was a 2x or a 3x that my MIL purchased on her yearly trip to the mountains.

Because she's funny like that.

 no caption neccessary.

just stinky shenanigans.

 Back to the kiddos...

Here's O flying a new star wars spaceship.

MM opening her presents with Mawmaw and Diane.

 Blake and O shooting new nerf guns.

 E got musical instruments and a doll house.

 And then it was time to play dirty Santa.

Here's Howard opening a gift card to ULTA.

He had to ask what it was.

Needless to say, a female stole it from him.

Such is the game, ya know?

Clay ended up with a card to Best Buy (which we had taken ourselves) and I got a card to Old Navy.

Wa-hoo!

 So there it is folks- Feliz Navidad!
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Here's what I'll be doing today- wrapping gifts with my little helper.

 She's really excited about it!

And...I must confess- I am too. Love wrapping me some presents.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that when I was about 4, I wanted to be one of the gift wrapping ladies at the mall. They always had the prettiest nails and were always dressed so nice. I thought they were the coolest.

I was 4.