Merry Christmas from our home to yours!!

I love this line from Steven Curtis Chapman’s “Christmas Is All In The Heart” and was reminded of it when we were wakened VERY early in the morning today:

Lots of love to you!

Match Made is officially out!!!

(And I’m so sorry – We are having some technical issues with Nook, but it should be resolved soon!!)

I have notified all the winners of the contests! Thank you so much to everyone who participated!

I’m so excited!! Merry Christmas week!!

TOMORROW!!! 🙂

Guys, I am SO excited. I so hope that you guys like Match Made!! Please be sure to leave me a comment if/when you read it and let me know!! 🙂 And thank you SO MUCH for all your sweet comments, messages and emails about this – you guys are just the best!

Today’s contest is for ALL FOUR books in the Lauren Holbrook series and a $10 gift card to Starbucks!! You have 24 hours to enter!! Yay!!

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Merry Christmas!! See you tomorrow when I announce the winners!!

So. Who is ready for contest number TWO?? 🙂 Match Made AND a $10 Starbucks gift card!!

TWO DAYS until the big release day!!!

YAY!!

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We are doing Parker’s first Christmas up right over here and staying SO busy during the day that we can barely stay awake and then just having a snuggle party all night too. 😉

We heart CFA lunches with our beautiful Gammy after running Christmas errands. Just in case you couldn’t tell. 😉

It barely snowed at Gammy and Pops’ house this weekend, so we had to run over after church and “play in it”. This is him after he threw what was basically a slush ball at me. Stinker. 😉

Barely enough snow to scrape together a tiny, baby snowman. He was so proud of his and Jon’s little creation!!

When Jon and I were on our date a few weeks back, we decided that it would be such a fun place to start a little Christmas dessert tradition. So, last Monday night, we ate a quick dinner at home and then got the kids all dressed up. You could tell Nathan felt so grown up. And sweet Parker is pulling up on everything – even big brother. 😉

In front of the big Christmas tree! It was SO COLD. We didn’t look at it too long because we were all shivering.

Our fondue dessert night!! 🙂 Parker even got to have some bananas. Not dipped in chocolate. 😉

Me and my biggest boy. He was SO excited to be there and acted so grown up. He’s been talking a lot about Jesus and God and these huge theological ideas like sin and heaven and Jesus being the Good Shepherd and what that means for us. It just amazes us what he’s learning!

I heart these two cuties. 🙂

Someone is so stinking proud of his new skill! He looks so weird – I remember when Nathan started standing up and just having to do double takes all the time. So strange to see them vertical! Ha!

Our advent calender told us to go to Starbucks and then go look at Christmas lights and so goodness, we did. 😉 This house is one of our absolute favorites!!!

So many lights and yet SO COLD.

We had to get a picture of my silly boy with the nutcracker. Just had to. I have no idea why he loves nutcrackers so much but he just adores them and I think it’s just so cute.

This little one is a mess. Hands down, 164% MESS. He’s everywhere all the time and at the loudest volume setting he’s got.

This face cracks me up. I was trying to take pictures for his ninth month by making him sit in front of the tree and he was just not quite as impressed with the lack of an action shot as I was. 😉 Ha!! He looks so old and grown up here!

Don’t forget about my contests I’ve got going right now!! So excited for Match Made‘s release!! 🙂

Today is a lovely day for a contest, don’t you think?? 🙂

I’m SO SO SO excited for you guys to meet Annie and get reconnected with the Lauren Holbrook gang in Match Made!! THREE days until the release!! Augh!! SO exciting!! 🙂 🙂

I have some FUN things up my sleeve for this book!! So here’s our little schedule for the next couple of days:

Today, I am giving away THREE free copies of Match Made on your choice of Kindle or Nook!! Use our handy dandy Rafflecopter to find out how to enter!!

Tomorrow, I’m going to be giving away Match Made and a $10 Starbucks gift card to one lucky winner!!

Friday, I’ll be giving away the four novels in the Lauren Holbrook series (Miss Match, Rematch, Match Point and Match Made) on Kindle or Nook to one person!!!

Saturday is release day!! And from Sunday to the following Saturday (the 21st to the 27th), I will be running yet another contest! If you read the book and then leave a review on Amazon (good or bad! Just a review!) and then come back here and tell me about it, you’ll be entered to win a huge prize pack that I’ll share more details about that week.

SO FUN.

Oh I am so excited!! What a fun couple of days we have coming up!! 🙂 🙂

Good luck to you all!! And merry Christmas!!

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Of all of the months, I think it’s the nine month birthday that gets me the most. I don’t know if it’s because he’s now been outside of the womb for as long as he was in it or what it is, but I just go through a little mourning period at the nine month mark. 🙁

Parker is so big and sweet and loud and fun!

He has found his voice this month and baby talks all. the. time. He says “nuh-nuh” and “leetle” a lot, occasionally “mama”, “dada” and “buh-buh” (assuming “brother” since he always says it when he sees Nathan!). He squeals and yells and babbles at the top of his lungs. He waves, high-fives and is trying to clap, but we haven’t quite made contact with the two hands yet. Ha! 🙂

He’s crawling everywhere and into everything. I dig something that he isn’t supposed to be eating out of his mouth at least once a day, whether it’s paper or a toy or a ball of Kody hair or an ornament or dog food or you name it. He’s started pulling up pretty regularly on his knees and has now gotten up to his feet. He’s so big I can’t even stand it.

Parker loves to eat! He suddenly decided overnight this month that he loves different textures and will now eat bananas, sweet potatoes, blueberries, puffs, chicken, fries and LOTS of other foods just cut up on his tray. Making a big mess is his specialty. 😉 We still haven’t tried gluten again and we are holding off on dairy a little longer, but it’s been so fun to see the world of food opening up for him. And you can tell he LOVES feeling big like brother when he gets to eat the same things. It’s so cute.

This baby hates to sleep. HATES it. He goes to sleep fine but usually wakes up at least twice if not three, four or five times a night. Lavender oil worked for a little while to keep him asleep but teething threw that off and now he’s still having trouble. And he loves his dad all day long but at night, it has to be me rocking him or he will just scream bloody murder. It makes for some long nights and a very tired mama during the day, so I’ve been feeling so behind on what I needed to have done by this point for Christmas! We are now planning on sending out Martin Luther King Jr. cards instead of Christmas ones. 😉

He will give open mouth kisses on your cheek and he loves to hold your hands and walk around the room. Anything that involves Nathan or us is immediately the best thing ever. And he loves when Daddy gets home – he gets so excited to see him! He still loves to just be carried all around and he’s started really loving to go out and do errands. As soon as I open the garage door, he starts waving his arms and shouting happily.

He’s wearing mostly size 12 month clothes now. So big!! He’s got an appointment in the morning, so I’m very curious what his stats are! I’ll update on here when I know. 🙂

He got his bottom two teeth this month – the first on one day and the second the very next day! It was so funny because when they finally both popped through, he just would sit and rub his tongue over them. So cute. 

He’s loud, obnoxious, goofy, silly, super smiley and laughs all the time. He has the scrunchiest little grin and I just adore it. We are so so so blessed with this little love. I say this all the time but I just can’t believe how fast time is flying and how quickly he is turning more and more into a little boy and less and less like the tiny newborn he was just…what, like a week ago, right?

We love our Parker Bear!

These days are just filled to the brim!! 🙂

I absolutely ADORE this picture – Parker is usually up from nap before Nathan is done cleaning his room up after his rest time, so everyday Parker always crawls as fast as he can over to Nathan’s door and bangs on it while yelling “Buh-buh! Buh-buh!” So precious. He loves Brother so much!! He’s pretty consistently calling him “buh-buh” for brother. I about die from the cuteness every time. 😉 He says “dada” and lots of baby talk too! He also says Mama but only when he’s either hurt, sad, tired or hungry. Ha!

Advent has started!! We love this advent calender house! Nathan looks forward to opening the door every single night. 🙂

And Christmas is officially here because it was time to go see the Nutcracker again!! This is one of our FAVORITE things to do and this year, we invited Gammy along so the adults could be on man-to-man defense. 😉 I love this picture!

Waiting to go into the auditorium! Nathan was beside himself with excitement. 😉

Finally inside!! Both boys did fantastically – SO much better than I was anticipating!! Parker even watched most of the performance! We had the best time!!

Sweet little doll-face. He is becoming the funniest little ham – I think we are going to have two VERY big personalities on our hands with these boys. I just adore this little pacifier smile!! 🙂

Making ornaments as per the advent calender’s instruction. 😉 He was so very careful with it. It’s so amazing to me how much he’s grown up even in the last couple of months.

“Hey! Hey! I think I see Santa!” This little sugar is a little obsessed with our fireplace and the doors and the glass and the extra fun little pebbles inside it…

I let Parker have a snack of puffs with big brother while they watched a short show after nap and rest time one day. Guys, he totally thought he was the big man on campus because of it the rest of the day. It was SO funny. Ha!

The real date night for my love’s birthday! We had a wonderful, wonderful time just talking and not having any children around! Ha! 🙂

My big helper at destroying the kitchen. We made Christmas popcorn with M&Ms, pretzels and sprinkles. It was great except for the popcorn part. 😉

Teeth are so helpful when it comes to eating real food! This boy used to not like anything that even remotely had texture to it but now he is scarfing down real food like a pro. He loves sweet potatoes, loves bananas, loves blueberries and especially loves French fries. 😉

Dad’s helper with the lights. Nathan loves, loves, loves to help. He’s loved to be a helper with anything we are doing since he was tiny. Love that about him!

First sippy cup!! He did pretty good! 🙂 He wasn’t a huge fan of the ice cold water (probably should have tried room temp first – oops!) but all in all, he liked it! 🙂

Parker’s best baby friend, Junie. 🙂 These two are hilarious together. We just love these girls!

Brothers make the best pull-up bars slash snuggle buddies. 😉

Nathan wrote his first letter to Santa this last week! He was so meticulous and worked so hard on it. It was adorable. He wrote Santa’s name and his name and then drew pictures of what he wanted Santa to bring. Jon helped him write the envelope and we drove to Macy’s to mail it in the big red mailbox. 😉

He was not excited about it at all. 😉 He could barely contain his joy. Ha! After we mailed it, we went to the Disney store and Nathan picked out a buddy for Parker for his Christmas present. He hid it from Parker through the whole store and wrapped it himself the very next day. So cute. 😉

He’s been so funny about Santa this year. We don’t really talk about Santa that much except to just say that he lives at the North Pole and brings presents and likes cookies and stuff. Nathan was listening to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and heard the line about him seeing you while you’re sleeping and knowing when you’re awake and was just completely aghast and said, “Mom. Santa doesn’t know when I’m sleeping or when I’m awake! Santa doesn’t know that! Jesus is the only one who knows that. Michael Buble lied!” 

Speaking of Santa… 😉 This baby loves himself a bubble bath.

Look at those teeth (and ignore my messy house!)!! I cannot believe how big my baby is getting!! 🙁 And that little grin just makes me laugh!

So I am so sorry for the break in blog posts. I’ve pretty much given up sitting down these days. 😉

We are in the midst of such a FUN but incredibly busy and crazy and exhausting time of our lives!! My sweet, precious Parker Bear has pretty much decided that sleep is just not something he’s super interested in, so we don’t do too much of that around here. And he’s crawling everywhere and getting into everything now so adding him in with my crazy big boy and I spend a lot of my days feeling about eight crayons short of a box.

And today marks FIVE DAYS until Match Made releases on Kindle and Nook!! Five days!! Augh! I’m so so excited!! 🙂 I absolutely LOVED writing this one and I so hope that you guys enjoy seeing what the gang from Miss Match has been up to. 😉 (And an extra note because I’ve been getting a LOT of emails about this – yes, it will ONLY release on ebook right now. I am SO sorry for the confusion/inconvenience/frustration this has caused!! You can download a completely free Kindle app for your computer or smart phone if you don’t have an e-reader and I do completely understand and agree that a paper book is best! For right now though, this is the only way that I could make this story available to you guys. Hoping that I get to release it in paperback someday but as of right now, it’s only going to be available on ebook. Again, I’m so sorry!!)

So, with that in mind, I’ve got a fun contest coming on Wednesday!! 🙂 Keep your eyes open for it!

And here’s the next installment in our happenings lately! Maybe I’ll be caught up by the end of the year. We can hope anyway!! 🙂

Have I mentioned it’s impossible to get a picture of two boys both smiling at the same time? And Parker is not too down with anything being on his head, so this lasted all of about .008 seconds. 😉

Thanksgiving was pretty low-key this year and it was WONDERFUL. We went to Mom and Dad’s and Jon left and played football with my brother and some friends while we worked like crazy on birthday preparations and Thanksgiving dinner. Parker fell asleep on Pops while we were busy cooking and, considering this baby’s feelings toward sleep, that should have given me a clue about what was coming but I was a little preoccupied. 😉

He pretty much just changed hands throughout the day. Bless his heart. By this point I knew he wasn’t feeling very good. 🙁 So sad that his first Thanksgiving was spent feeling yucky!

All the girls!! Love this beautiful women. 🙂 We SO missed Caleb and Nicole!! I miss them all the time but it’s especially obvious on the weekends and holidays (and all throughout May… name that quote!).

Me and the biggest little brother. 🙂

Little love. He’s loud and goofy and never stops talking or singing or moving but he’s just the funniest little four year old I have ever known and he’s all mine. I adore him.

And then, the day that Nathan has been waiting for since December 26, 2013 came around and Freddy Frinkle came back to our house the day after Thanksgiving. 🙂 Nathan is still pretty obsessed with nutcrackers, so Freddy brought a package of nutcracker ornaments with him.

Such happiness has never been seen before. Ha! 😉 There was quite the celebration that morning when Nathan saw that Freddy had really come!!

Life is good. 🙂

On Friday, after months of planning, we had a surprise party for Jon and oh did we surprise him!! He was shocked. Completely, one hundred percent shocked. I had him totally convinced that I was taking him to dinner at a surprise restaurant and then I had my mom “leak” the restaurant I was surprising him with so even he didn’t even think he was getting a surprise. Then, when we were supposed to be dropping the boys off at my parents’ house, friends and family all surprised him with the party. It was so fun – such a wonderful day!!

His dad, brother and sister-in-law all got up at 2:30am Friday morning and drove the whole way to the party. We were SO glad to see them! And Jon was so so surprised and excited! So thankful for these people!

In another surprise though (and not a good one at all), Nathan, Jon and most of the family and friends at the party ended up getting either food poisoning or a stomach bug that then lasted through the rest of the weekend. Such a bummer. But I am thankful that it hit after the party! 🙁 I was basically bathing in essential oils to keep myself well and somehow I avoided it. But it was a LONG weekend and we all sort of felt like we were in some zombie movie wondering who was going to succumb to it next. Jon’s family left on Sunday and I found two teeth popping through the surface of Parker’s bottom gum on Sunday night.

So we spent the next several days really not sleeping and on a constant dose of Tylenol and ibuprofen and lavender oil. Poor baby. He had a very rough time getting those two little teeth through. The right one in particular was in and out of the gum several times – we fought hard for those teeth!

Okay. On to merrier subjects! What are you MOST looking forward to this Christmastime? 🙂

Well, after probably the longest week we’ve had in a long time, Parker is now the proud owner of two brand new bottom teeth. 😉 Life is hopefully going to be back to normal here soon!

We ended up decorating the house two weeks before Thanksgiving this year. We were in the garage getting down the boxes of Nathan’s old clothes for Parker and I was like, hey, let’s just do Christmas while we’re in the unpacking mood. Ha! 🙂 Two people were not at all upset about this plan. 😉

First time seeing the tree!! He’s actually done fairly well at leaving it alone, though there is one string of lights that he’s pretty fond of yanking.

Nathan has been dying to get his Nativity set out since we put it away last year. So, this was a major deal that he finally got to unpack it!

Hard working dad. 😉

Love this – the tree, the Christmas movie, the elf hat and especially the snuggly boys in their jammies. We heart cold, Christmas season mornings. 🙂

And Chrismas season evenings. 🙂 There is a brownie under all that whipped cream. And a blanket was on my lap and we had our favorite show on the TV. Life was good.

This little sugar desperately needs a haircut. He had on shoes for the first time and was not quite too sure about them.

We have found Nathan sleeping like this several time over the last few weeks. So funny. That kid is bouncing off the walls about Christmas!

And Parker Bear is officially out of a sleep sack and sleeping with a crocheted blanket. I can’t even believe he is old enough. 🙁

 Our house is covered in static these days. Love these static-clung baby smiles.

We ran to Hobby Lobby one day and Nathan said, “Hey Mom! There’s a giant candy cane! Quick! Take my picture with the giant candy cane!” And then he struck this pose. Ha!

I walked out one morning after brushing my teeth and found this. My house was a total, complete disaster but these two were just so sweet. Love how much they love each other!!

What are some special Christmas traditions you guys have??