Soooo much to catch up on!!

Oh my goodness have I been a bad blogger lately! Shame on me :) We have been really busy with the holidays and then the birth of our sweet baby #3. She will get a post all her own, and this post is going to be a bit of a catch all for the past two months. First up, Christmas 2012 :)

Christmas is a major holiday around our home, and we are BUSY!! We do Christmas with Nick's family, Christmas with my family, and Christmas the 4 of us :) It is a wonderfully busy but fun filled time of year.


This year Hannah got a Kaya American girl doll from my parents. She thought it was sooooooo cool!

My niece Sera :) She is so stinking cute!

Gabey got a ride on horse from my parents...he named it Maximus and he loves to ride his "hee-hee." (Gabes word for horse :))

My sweety niece Bella :) Or as Gabe and Hannah call her, Bell-jel :)

Grandma and Grandpa Hollingsworth :)

Hannah's big gift this year was a sewing machine. She LOVED it! her little face was so precious when she opened it up. (Unfortunately it didn't work and we had to send it back :( )

Gabey got a toy gun. It is soo cool! It makes lots of good noises and even ejects the play bullets when you shoot. Him and his daddy had a good time playing with it on Christmas morning :)

Daddy and his monkeys :) They picked out those Mario PJ's for him and were so proud of their choice. One of the things that Nick and the kids do together is play Mario on the Wii, so this was the perfect choice :)

Matching Christmas PJ's and ornaments :) Yep, I am nerdy like that! :)

Very pregnant mama on Christmas...oy vey!

Hannah loved her Rapunzel!

Gabe loved his Cars chair from Mike and Melissa.

Stockings time at Grandma and Grandpa Hershbergers!

I think that they liked their Keurig :)

Daddy got a knife...watch out!

Decorating cutouts...such a fun time!

Well I think that is enough catching up for now, more pictures and updates coming soon :)

Nursery Pics :)

So since we didn't find out the sex of the baby this time, I was pretty stumped for awhile about how I wanted to decorate the nursery. Everything I saw in stores that was neutral was ducks, frogs or tan colored teddy bears. Not that there is anything at all wrong with those themes, but I like color and shapes and I just couldn't find anything I liked all that well. That is where I came up with the idea to make the nursery stuff myself :) I decided to do a Dr. Seuss theme, and I really like how it came out. In my opinion it is pretty gender neutral, and I was able to do it for about $50.00 :)

The crib with a super soft cat in the hat flannel crib sheet. The framed pictures above the crib are just frames that I put some extra bits of the material that I used in :)
I made the curtains and basket liners too :) The baskets have our cloth diapers and wipes in them, although I plan to use disposables until the babies cord falls off.
View of the whole room :)

Gingerbread Houses :)

Oy vey, I am so far behind in blogging. A few weeks ago we did gingerbread houses with the kids, which is a tradition at our house. Hannah had a blast, and Gave even participated quite a bit. I love having fun family traditions!! :)

Hannah's completed masterpiece.
Hard at work!!
Gabes completed masterpiece! :)
She had so much fun!
Gabey hard at work :)
Cheeser!!

Trimming the Tree

As per Christmas time tradition, we put our tree up the day after Thanksgiving. The kids absolutely love doing this, and each year as they are a little bit older, it gets to be more and more fun :) Here are some pictures of our tree trimming festivities :)

The four (and a half :)) of us :)

Hannah helping put up ornaments :)Gabey hanging up Thomas. :)
Our nativity :) I love that this year we actually have space to set it out and not have to squish all the figures together :)

For Auntie Krissy :)

Hey sees :) I finally got around to taking a belly shot for you :) This is me at the beginning of the 29th week. Love you!

Words on a Page

As most who read my blog know, we are homeschooling Hannah for kindergarden this year. She amazes me at times with her requests for homework, so when she asked me for something to do yesterday I told her to pick any six words that she wanted, and write them down and let me know when she was finished. This is what she did :) Girlfriend definitely got her daddy's smarts :)

Trick or Trunk!

Last night we had trick or trunk at our church and the kids had so much fun! Gabe thought that it was so cool that he got so much candy (he has a major sweet tooth) and Hannah loved getting to dress up like Rapunzel! I loved that they have a safe place to trick or treat with friend and family :)

Lightening McQueen and Rapunzel ")

Family picture :) We have one from each year at trick or trunk, so we had to keep up the tradition.

She was completely freezing at this point, but didn't want to put her coat on and cover her costume up :)

Also freezing :)

Love this picture! I am so blessed to have these two little monkeys! Love their rotten little butts to pieces!

Museum of Natural History

Yesterday I took the kids to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. It was SO MUCH FUN!! The reason that we decided to go, was because this past week, the science part of Hannah's school stuff was dinosaurs. She was way more into it than I thought she would have been, so I figured why not reinforce all the stuff that we read and learned about by actually taking her and Gabe to see the dinosaur bones. Hannah was a little nervous at first (I don't think that she actually realized how big the dinosaurs would be) and Gabe thought it was pretty much the coolest thing in the entire world.

One of the things that really cracked me up was that Gabe kept calling the baboons bapoons and the skunks teddy bears. One of the museum workers really got a kick out of the skunks being teddy bears :) It was also so much fun to watch Hannah practically run from one exhibit to the next, because she was so excited and wanted to take everything in all at once. I have to say that even though are days when doing school at home is frustrating and really works on my patience, days like today are so good for my heart and seeing my kids learn and be excited about learning makes it totally worth it. When we got home Gab couldn't stop telling his daddy all about the dinosaurs (dinos) and Hannah kept saying that the best part of the day was the whole thing :) All in all, it was just a really great day :)

Pumpkin Carving

Seeing any connection between the last post and this one? :) The pumpkin that we picked a few weeks ago has now been carved. It was so much fun! Gabe was cracking me up, he kept saying, "Why daddy chopping the pumpkin?" He just couldn't figure out why daddy would want to cut the pumpkin up :) Although when the candle was in and the pumpkin was lit up both kids thought it was really really cool!

Pumpkin Patch

Last weekend we had small group and our small group went to the local pumpkin patch/petting zoo for the evening. It was so much fun and some much needed family time for us. We started the night by taking a wagon ride out to the pumpkin patch and picking our pumpkins. It was dark by the time be go there, so the kids got to have flashlights as they looked for pumpkins, which they thought was really cool :) Then we headed back to the petting zoo (we got to ride in a covered wagon which Hannah thought was really cool) and all the kids had a blast seeing and petting the animals. Because it was family night, all the pony and wagon rides were free so each of the kids rode the small ponies twice and then we got brave and decided to ride the draft horses too :) Gabe rode with Nick and Hannah rode all by herself. She was so brave and I was so proud of her!! Gabe wasn't scared at all either, and they are both now convinced that we should get them a pony :) We finished off the night by holding the adorable puppies, which they are both also now convinced they need one of :)

Two weekends ago we had the annual Swiss Festival in our town. Unfortunately the weather was less than cooperative, and it was cold and rainy all weekend. We didn't do many festival activities because of the weather, but we did manage to make it to the big parade. :)


Hannah had so much fun!

Gabe did too...really, I promise :)