Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

The celebrating is officially over, though I am sure there will be plenty of opportunities for gatherings. There are still plenty of birthdays, NYE parties, Super Bowl, and vacations.  Yesterday went by in a flash.  Here's some photos of our day below.  We started the day getting ready for church and packing up our things for the day. Church was absolutely excellent! We rushed home and loaded all of our goods to grandmas (Peter's mother).  We ate a delicious meal consisting of ham, potatoes, homemade root beer that Peter and I made,  salad,  roasted root vegetables and more. I always look forward to the 'candied' cucumbers. I am sure they have loads of sugar but i just dont care.

After this, some went outside to ski. i did some dishes and peter and I practiced our song for our program. The girls played piano, Ella recited Psalm 34:14-19 and I sang.  We opened gifts after that, and then it was time for our picnic outside.  This time it was in the evening, which was fun. Desert was after and at 10:30 we finally crawled into bed.

I'm still unsure how to get photos lined up nicely.  It has been really fun to go back and read some of the posts written years ago. It has been 5 years at least. Little Maddy was only 4 and Ella just a baby. Since then, so much has changed. I really miss those years when the kids were so young, and its sad that I'll never get them back. 

Its been years..

Wow! I cant believe I'm doing this!  It's been years. 

So, why am I back?

I'm not sure that I am, but the thought came into my mind this morning as I scrolled feeds of others who share their paint colors of their new house.

There's so many decisions that go into a house. But I am so thankful that it hasn't been too overwhelming as I thought.  I mean, let's be honest here.  There have been stressful times! Years ago when we re-did our kitchen, it had seemed to be a nightmare. And that was just a kitchen!

I'll tell you some of the stressful times we had/have during the process:

• the layout.  I mean, this is the bones of the house!  Two story or one one and a half? Where will the powder room go? What about laundry? How big will the rooms be? What will the exterior look like?   Can you imagine?  So glad that part is DONE!
• Door.   This was very stressful for me.  We still don't have one! 
• Size of windows.   This is honestly a big thing. I remember us measuring my mother in laws and going through the blueprint to make each one just right.  
• Flooring & Tile.  We still are not done choosing all the flooring yet! 
• Vanities. I have logged a lot of time on Pinterest.

I would say the #1 stressful thing of the house has been the layout. I lost many hours of sleep over it. In fact, i scrolled through so many layouts that i did some minor damage to my eyeballs! (true story) 

its been so long that ive forgotten how to easily add photos.  More later!