All things Christmas

It's December 5th, so naturally everyone is talking about Christmas.  So let's jump on the bandwagon as I share some of my favorite things I've seen around the internet recently :)

These prints.  Oh how I love them.  Unfortunately Christmas budget is MAXED out this year.  So maybe next year :)

{all from Lindsay Letters}

LOVE this post by Shauna about being present over perfect over the holiday season (hence the print above :)

This year I have been doing much more thinking and praying about what traditions we want to start with Jake.  And I have to be honest with you, there are a lot of great godly women who do many different things on Christmas.  Some give lots of gifts, some give 5, some give none.  Some incorporate Santa, some don't.  The list goes on and on.  And amidst all the articles and blog posts I've read, I found this one by Kevin DeYoung the most refreshing and balanced.

{So excited to read this book}

Love this Christmas song.  And I'm biased since she used to be one of our worship leaders at my church in  Chicago :)

And lastly, these are some of my favorite "winter pics" from my Tumblr account.  Merry Christmas, friends.

Christmas 2013: New house & New traditions & a whole lotta lights

This is what happened when we plugged the lights in.  At least Jake got excited about them haha

And we started the tradition of doing Elf on the Shelf!  It is SO cute to watch Jake look for him every morning. 

This is what we're doing this year :)

Into the mountains

This whole Northeastern area is so incredibly new to us.  Once in high school my family travelled to New York for a wedding, but other than that I had never been out here before we moved to Binghamton.  And Dan grew up in Arizona and Florida... so this is REALLY new to him.  I have to say that aside from the really cold temperatures right now (but I think Chicago is cold now too so I won't hold that against NY :)  it really is so pretty.  The mountains, trees, snow, leaves, "Gilmore girls" type small towns are all so beautiful to me and we have been trying to soak it all in. 

Two weekends ago we travelled up to New Hampshire to visit with some friends we met at Trinity that now work on Dartmouth's campus with Christian Union.  It was so fun to see some old friends and get a glimpse into their life in New Hampshire.  I love staying with people because you get to learn so much more about someone.  Not only did I take notes on almost every piece of furniture Caroline picked out for her home (seriously though.. if she didn't go into ministry I would have 100% recommended her to be an interior designer) but we ate blueberry muffins and drank coffee and read books and talked about what God was teaching us.  And we talked about babies (they are expecting a baby next May!) and we visited their church and did "maple syrup and cheese" tasting (I know, right?  Amazing.)  Dartmouth's campus is in such a quaint town and we really enjoyed driving around with them and hanging out.  And they were super accommodating with Jake and his naps and his limited time to sit at restaurants :) always a plus.

Hopefully we can go back to visit again- we had a great time!  Here are some memories from the trip.

We took a couple Christmas pics of Caroline and Zach :)

Cheese tasting

Jake LOVED the maple syrup tasting.  We are never going back to the "fake" maple syrup.  Well, maybe we will when the real stuff breaks our grocery budget.

they had TONS of samples of their dips.  What's that in the bottom right you ask?  Maple Butter.  The most amazing thing you will ever taste.  We didn't know we loved maple so much until this store...

We did a little outdoor tour of where the syrup comes from

I know. So cheesy but we had to.

Then it started to SNOW!

Attempting to get some in his mouth ha

Woodstock, Vermont.  Cutest. town. ever.



Dan got a different haircut after almost TEN years of getting the same cut.  And he looks like a babe :) Hands off ladies. He's taken.

So Zach and Caroline named this deer Judith.  And Jake was obsessed with it.

I can't get enough of his cheesy smiles these days.

Here is Jake giving a "pound" to Judith lol