Christmas Card 2014

I'm linking up with the lovely Faith of Walk With Me By Faith for her annual Christmas Card Carousel. I love linking up each year and looking through everyone's cards!

*spoiler alert* sooo these haven't even gone out yet! I got them back from shutterfly the day before we left for new york and haven't had a chance to address them. I LOVE to hand address envelopes but don't know if I'll have the time this year :( Hoping the twins will nap today so I can work on it!

I am so happy with the pictures our fabulous photographer (Volree Wade Photography) captured. A few weeks ago she sent me a text with this hilarious photo of sassy picking her nose, shep crying, and holdie sticking his tongue out. I knew immediately that this would be the perfect Christmas card photo.

This season of our lives is crazy but fun. Things are never peaceful and always chaotic but I love this crazy and wouldn't trade it for the world. I felt that this photo totally captured our life this year! It's messy, whiny, full of tears, but also full of smiles, laughter, and big hugs and it's beautiful!

Have a Very Merry Christmas and a fabulous New Year!

 The picture of the three kids is the front of the card. The three pictures on the side are printed on the inside of the card.

 This is the inside right of the card

This is the inside left of the card. I had to put a picture of Sheppie since we didn't send out birth announcements... whoops

My family has always done a Christmas newsletter as part of our Christmas Card each year. I've kept that tradition with a little write up of our family. I know that so many keep up with us on facebook and instagram but a lot of our older relatives appreciate hearing about our little ones from our card :) 

Oh Christmas Tree

Like I said in my Thanksgiving post, this year has been really different as far as holidays. In the years past, we've driven to the mountains on Black Friday or the Saturday after Thanksgiving to get our tree. We normally go as a family. We found this AWESOME tree farm but it's around 2.5 hours away, just outside of Asheville. Because my parents were in London this year, we postponed getting our tree until this weekend. Unfortunately, my Dad is in New Jersey this week (he lives and works up there and flies home to Charlotte on the weekends) and my sister is obviously still in London. The weather was gross on Saturday so we switched it up and went today and Jay's mom wasn't able to make the trip either.

We headed up after church to a new tree farm. It was a lot closer and had a pretty good looking website... Well. It just wasn't the same as our beloved Boyd's. It was FREEZING and the poor kiddos were shaking like leaves. My mom found her tree right away and soon after Allie & Brett found theirs. Jay and I finally agreed on one, snapped a comical family photo and they guys there cut it down. At Boyd's you scream, "I found the perfect tree" and a lumberjack (is that what you call them?) comes dashing over and happily takes a million pictures of your family in front of the tree with a smile on his face and then cuts it down and hauls it off. You go pay for your tree and sit on santa's lap and drink hot cocoa while they tie your tree to the top of your car and off you go! This place was sort of like a tree lot with the trees still attached to the ground :P. 

Regardless, I'm still thankful for the fun family memories of going to get our tree! The kids liked watching the trees fall and seeing the tractor haul them off.

We got home and set up our tree. It is the ugliest thing ever! Seriously there are like some major holes. And the thing is HUGE like wayyyy bigger than our space. We had to remove part of our sectional to get it to fit in our family room. I've tried trimming it and it just looks awful. It also isn't very steady on its base. We put the baby gate around it and hopefully the kids won't tip it over!

I'm excited to decorate this week! 

Thanksgiving

This was the first Thanksgiving I havent celebrated with my immediate family! In the past we've celebrated on a different day if we had to but this year we just didn't celebrate it at all. 

My mom and dad decided to go to London to spend the holiday with my youngest sister who moved there in September. We were soooo excited for them! My mom took tons of pics and the three of them had the BEST time! Of course we missed them but we're thankful they could spend thanksgiving with my sister! My middle and newly married (geeez I need to blog about her amazing wedding!) spent the weekend with her inlaws and we snapped, texted, and  FaceTimed all weekend. Love technology!

We started out with our an us turkey trot. We've been doing this since 2008 only missing 2011 because I was only 5 weeks pregnant with the twins! We've downgraded to the 5k because pushing a stroller and running 5 miles is hard work! Jay and I had a blast dodging the walkers and trying to compete with each other! 

We came home in time for the Macy's parade and the kids sat in front of the tv and watched all the cool floats while I cooked a bunch of sides to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. Since my mom wasn't cooking I had to bring along my favorite sausage stuffing, green bean casserole and sausage dip!

It took at least 2 hours to pack to head to Asheboro for 2 nights. With me in nursing school, Jay and I have been splitting household duties and things are definite not as organized as if just one person was doing it. We each have our own methods :) and picking out 3 days of coordinating outfits plus back ups was quite the task! I ended up buying lots of white collared shirts for under longalls when we returned home because those always seem to be in the stain stick/to be soaked pile!

We hit the road around 2 and had a lovely time playing at Jays moms house until it was time to head to Jays grandmothers house for dinner! We are until we were stuffed and the kids played and played. We got to meet jays cousin's new precious baby girl and got a pic of grandma and all her great grandbabies! We had a great time celebrating with jays side of the family!

Friday was a little tough for me because I missed our family's Black Friday shopping tradition. There weren't a ton of doorbusters to be had in Asheboro. Can't wait until Emma Cate is ready to hit the stores with her mom, aunts, and Gigi! We ended up hitting up the local wine bar with Jays cousin and his wife. Fun to get away for a bit!

I hit the road after dinner to meet up with my college besties! Everyone was in tow and this was the first time in years that almost all of us were together! We went out for drinks and I didn't get home

Until 2... Super late for this old lady!

Saturday morning I attended an engagement brunch for one of my she besties, Nikki. The brunch features lox and bagels and was right up my half- Jewish alley! Jay and the kids came back Saturday afternoon and we did a little decorating! We always get a tree on thanksgiving weekend but with my parents and siblings out of town, we held off this year. We did pull out our fake tree (our formal tree) and set it up in the living room. The kids are obssessed with the tree and I can't wait to start decorating!

We did loads of laundry, decorated more on Sunday, and made a crazy trip to donate blood (so that I could exempt my anatomy final- more about that another time)! Such a great weekend! I hated to see Monday roll around but am getting sooooo excited for Christmas this year!

I'm blogging on my phone and just deleted all my pics to get more space so follow on insta if you want to see all these fun adventures! akscarroll

I can't even think of a good one!

So recently I was as contacted about my blog being featured on a company's social media outlet and I thought "oh that would be fun!" Then I thought: well, I never blog anymore so maybe that would be dumb or maybe I could start blogging again because I MISS it and this would be the little bit of motivation that I need!

I hate that I even need motivation because this something I truly enjoy doing for me. I love looking back on posts about my family and reading about our adventures! I'm hoping it's something my kids will treasure when they are old enough to understand. I've thought a lot about filtering- especially with some of the emotional IVF posts- but then I thought no, that's really a part of my whole story. And even though I can now very casually say my babies were all IVF babies when the inevitable "do twins run in. Your family question" comes up, I never want to forget that raw, emotional struggle it took to get to that point.

This Christmas season, I am extra extra thankful for IVF. I get to do elf on a shelf! I got to participate in a family advent ornament exchange with my Sunday school, I get to play nativity and read about Baby Jesus with my family. I get to visit Santa multiple times a week and discuss the naughty list with the twins. I have gotten to shop for adorable Christmas outfits. I get to plan a Christmas time baptism. I am so thankful each day for my babies. Even though this is a hard and extremely busy season of our life, I try to never take my children for granted. I always have a thankful heart for the true miracles God has blessed us with.

Whew! I don't know how this post made it all the way to sappy and reflectional (is that a word?) but like I said before, this is my space and I'm thankful for this little outlet to write about our family, thoughts, and adventures! Here's to posting more!