First Day of Christmas

For my first Twelve Days of Christmas post I am going to back up to November. Each year we always talk about having photos done for our Christmas cards, but typically it never happens. We've always taken family pictures around Jake's birthday in the spring, but since that didn't happen this year, I had no idea what we would do. Realizing that my sisters had not had "official" family pictures for years and that my parents (mom in particular) has been wanting a picture with all of her grandchildren for quite some time, we made plans to give them a photo shoot for their 42nd (!!!) anniversary. All together this meant 8 adults, 2 teenagers, and 4 kids under 4. We booked a session with my incredibly talented friend, Cory, and used my parents' gorgeous home here in the Bluegrass as the setting. Here are a few peeks.

The real fun, though, was all because of Cory's creativity. She thought it would be fun to take some candids of all of us just hanging out, making s'mores to be exact. I have to say, it was a super-wonderful time with my favorite people, and she captured everyone's personalities so well through it. We will treasure these always… and one or two will end up on our Christmas card! I see many more family s'mores roasts in our future!

Happy Anniversary to these two wonderful people. 

I am blessed to have you as parents!

Soooo….

You've probably noticed that for about the past six months I've had every intention of keeping the blog updated, but absolutely no follow-through. It honestly probably frustrates me more than anyone, and so I wanted to find a way to kick my blogging booty back into gear (yeah, yeah, I do realize that I've said something similar before- haha!).  But I mean it this time, guys… I really, really do! (again, I do realize that I've said that before, too, so… um… we shall see I guess!). So, seeing that there are only 17 days until Christmas (yeah, I can't believe it either), I am going to use 12 of them to post our family's twelve days of Christmas. We don't officially do anything related to the twelve days of Christmas, but as a busy family with little ones, it is so important to me that we use this time to do festive things together to celebrate the coming holiday. It also ensures that I take pictures and upload them after each of these activities, so that I have something to post about! I already know we've done several, so thankfully I have a few things stock-piled to use for the first few posts, but I know we have more outings and fun things to do at home if we're going to make it to twelve. In the words of one of my favorite sitcom characters…

Challenge Accepted.

BUT…

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I do realize that I've left out a solid six months of life here on the blog, so let's play a quick game of catch-up, shall we? Here's what we've been up to…

We spent just about every Saturday with a group of friends watching good ol' SEC football. 

I think we're all still surprised as to how it turned out this year!

Hosted two fall-festival type events at the church.
Yes, there were people there. This was taken during clean-up.

Spent a very rainy day at one of my most nostalgic childhood places, Cedar Point, in Sandusky, OH. I was soooo excited to take Jake! Funny enough, his rides were the only ones open due to the weather, and it would have been a total bust without him. We'll hopefully pick a sunnier day next time!

Checked out the Midway Fall Festival. Cute little town with real train cars to climb on. 

Jake loved it of course!

Thought the kids would have a blast carving pumpkins.  

Thought wrong.

Josh and I spent an afternoon carving pumpkins! 

Went trick-or-treating with friends at the businesses on Main Street… 

something we will definitely do again next year!

Went trick-or-treating again in the neighborhood with family…

where everyone ended up being some form of a minion!

Made our Christmas wish-lists. 

Sorry, kids… you might want to keep wishing! Haha!

Hosted a "Kids Night In" for the families in our connect group. 

We had pizza and s'mores while all the parents got a date night out. It was a total blast.

Spent a day being a "teaching aide" at my sister's school. This family has a long-running history of PE teachers in it. These two thought it was pretty awesome, probably due to the whistle.

Watched in amazement while over 50 people shaved their heads and/or donated hair to support a little guy in our church who just started chemo. I love these people and their hearts…. so so SO much.

Spent all of Thanksgiving week at Gramma's, where friends from Florida were up to visit. 

I should really post more pictures from that visit. 

Hmmm… maybe I can somehow work it into the Twelve Days of Christmas. 

Finally got out to see my beloved Volunteers play live… and got Lil into the spirit of things.

She looks great in orange!

And a surprise visitor (my little sister from our Delta Gamma days) 

could not have picked a better weekend to come hang out!

I guarantee there is more… Lilly's birthday came and went, a Fall Harvest party complete with a hay ride, beautiful fall days at the park or riding bikes in the cul-de-sac… so much that probably won't make it onto this page. There are some days that I realize that the reason I'm not blogging is because I'm so much more engaged, definitely participating, in all of these fun things. But I love to have these accounts, this record of it all to look back on, and so I'm desperately going to try to be better. If all goes as planned, expect TWELVE more posts this month… anyone else want to join me in that challenge???