Chinese New Year

Year of the Dragon

This year we stayed home and had a little celebration with just the four of us. It was a lot of fun!

We had our decorations out, Chinese food, and Chinese music playing.... which reminded me of the music (I miss that music) that we heard every night outside of the White Swan Hotel.

It brought back memories of a baby Lily sleeping in the crib and Jeff and I watching (from our big window) the light and music show every night.

With our 50 degree temps this January we were able to get some outdoor photos of the littles in their Chinese outfits.......

Lily LOVES a photo shoot and was super excited to wear this cute little winter suit.

She also loved that we tied her long hair in these cute knots.

The sun was just starting to set.....

Beautiful Lilybug....

Ty was also happy to take some photos (in exchange for some Ipad time) and pulled out all of his poses....

This is his favorite pose.....

He insisted on wearing this hat for his photos...

I love this picture.... he is growing up so fast but this picture reminds me that he is still our

Ty baby.

He thinks this face is so funny...

We made paper dragons.....

Our giant lantern..... Lily and Ty love this lantern because they think it looks like them.

We've been putting this book out for years now and they still really enjoy it.

Lily's favorite new book.

Ty laughed his head off (his words) when we read this cute book.

He loves shrimp....

Going back to 2011 for a minute....

As I am going through pictures I just realized that I never posted pictures from

Ty's 6th birthday (in October)...

We had a small family party at home and he LOVED all of the Angry Birds!

It was such a fun day! I just had to share..... even if we are in 2012 now...

We always hang a birthday banner ...... the littles look for this first thing on their birthday.

The Angry Bird line up.....

Ty LOVED these...

AND... we found out that Hershey loves these just as much as Ty....

Such a cute birthday boy...

Check out the adorable Angry Bird Cake (he was so surprised) and he noticed that the balloons where Angry Bird colors... he notices everything!

Happy New Year

Happy 2012!!!!

OH I had all the intentions in the world to do many posts in the month of December but the busy season and changing over to a new computer kept me from it.

AND... while it feels a little weird to post Christmas pictures now I am going to anyway...

Let me must say......We had a very Merry Christmas together and with our family!!!!

I always have this picture in my head of what our Christmas will be like....

WELL...

It never ends up like that picture in my head and I am not sure why I do that.

We had LOTS of time together which is nice but also put us on each other's nerves. I would look at other blogs where everyone looked to be getting along beautifully.... everything just looked so perfect.

I might have even wondered for a minute what in the world was wrong with us....

But Christmas is a reminder of the fact that there is only one that is perfect .... JESUS...

We don't have to be perfect..... life is not perfect.....

SOOOOO while our holiday was not picture perfect it was SO wonderful and I loved it!!

We are so blessed and so thankful!!!

Our 2011 Christmas Card....

When it came time to do our Christmas card I realized that I had no family pictures in 2011. SO.... out came the tripod... which is always great fun and so easy (not).

Note to self..... take more family pictures in 2012 and do the Christmas card way before December.

We usually put up 2 trees but this year (in an effort to simplify) we just did one. This is what we call our family tree. Each year the kids add the ornaments they make at school, we add a family picture ornament, picture ornaments of the littles, and I give them each an ornament on

Christmas Eve.

I love this Happy tree...

Lily and I baked LOTS of delicious treats.... which we shared with our neighbors and

Jeff's co-workers.... and we saved a few for us....

This year we did our Advent Calendar but we also did Bible readings for each day of the Advent season. This was a great addition to our Christmas.

Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa N. we added this beautiful nativity set to our Christmas traditions. Hershey thought he was part of it and could be found in this spot each day.

We baked and enjoyed our birthday cake for Jesus... we started this tradition about 3 years ago. We sing Happy Birthday and have candles.... the whole birthday works.....

The littles get so excited about doing this!

Lily and Ty LOVED their new pj's from Robin....

(another fun tradition)

Lily with her favorite Artsy Girl doll.... just like her... an Artsy Girl...

Ty very excited about his Lego Kingdom Castle... he wanted this for a year.... he spent the next day and 1/2 putting it together... all 933 pieces.... (by himself).