Our Christmas

I know it's almost a week late, but I thought I would share some pics from our Christmas.

Here's the girls on Christmas Eve. We went to church in the afternoon with my family and then to my aunt's for dinner. After we go to my mom's to open gifts. As usual, she goes overboard, but thankfully many of the gifts stay there for the girls to play with when she is watching them during the week. They received these Disney princess nightgowns from her and my step dad and had to wear them that night.

The girls woke around 6:20 on Christmas morning. I managed to keep them from the living room and talk them into going back to sleep for about an hour. They woke and came into the living room to see that Santa had arrived. They were so excited.

This was the first Christmas that T really knew what was going on, so it was fun to watch her. She would tear open one present and move right on to the next.

Here are some pics of them opening their gifts.

Here is one of T playing with some of her gifts.

And here is one of R playing with her "potty doll".

And finally, here is where the dog was hanging out while the chaos was occurring in the living room:

What we did yesterday

Since Sundays are my "unplugged" day, I figured I would show you on Monday what we did on that past Sunday.

The girls got a Rose Petal Cottage from Santa so we finally put it up on Sunday. They spent a better part of the day playing in it. They love it!!!

What did you do this past weekend?

LTDchix "Living the Dream" - A Review

LTDchix make shirts for moms that are "Living the Dream". 

From their web site: 

"Whether you’re balancing the full-time jobs of work and home or you’re holding the line on the homefront all day – or somewhere in between – we can all relate to the trials and joys of being a Mom.

So we got busy and hired an illustrator, Steven Anderson from Appleton, Wis., who helped us bring our vision to life.  We came up with our slightly sarcastic theme – "Living The Dream" – and then created our signature Mom, who is shown on our shirts overwhelmed and in various situations, smiling her way through daily life."

The ladies at LTDchix were kind enough to send me a T-shirt.  I received an orange T-shirt with the laundry picture.  Very fitting because it seems like I am battling the laundry monster.    

I think that these shirts are a fun way for moms to express themselves.  They have many pictures and colors to chose from, so there is something for everyone. 

Click here to find a location near you to purchase your very own "Living the Dream" T-shirt.  You can also order online.

Need Help! Calling all organizers!! (and a giveaway)

We had a great Christmas. I will share more about that later. For now, I need help. I am way overwhelmed with all this new stuff we got. I don't know how to find room for it - even if I do a purge of old stuff first. I need some good ideas on how to organize toys. Here are pics of places we keep them.

1. The living room. We want to have less toys in here though and find a better way to organize them. Excuse the small tree....I just was not in the spirit to put up the big tree this year.

2. The girls' room. We just have a small two bedroom house and the girls share a room. There is room for some toys, but I am looking for ideas on how to better organize them.

3. Lastly, our basement. It's partially finished, but we haven't really utilized it other than for storage and an office when we had the desktop. We want to put some toys down there as the girls got a Diego train set that needs some more room and a rose petal cottage. It gets pretty cold down there in the winter (we are going to get some sort of heater), so I don't want to move ALL toys down there - just want them to have a space to call their own. I also want to make the one corner my "office". Even though I have a laptop and can work from anywhere in the house, I need a space I can call my own with all the stuff I have going on.

ANY suggestions anyone that is good at organizing has would be much appreciated. Oh, and I don't want to spend a fortune running out and buying all kinds of organizing products, so if this could be done cheaply, that would be even better.

To make this more fun, I am going to have a giveaway for a $10 Starbucks giftcard. Leave me a comment with your ideas. I will take suggestions through Tuesday, December 30th. Then I will randomly chose a winner. Please, only US entries. Thanks!

Conversations with "R"

I did share this last night on Twitter....but thought I would document this here too.

"R" is my 3.5 year old daughter (she will be 4 in March). She's a talker. And too smart for her own good. This is what she said yesterday:

R: "Mom, I don't need Santa to come. I have enough junk to pick up."

Me: "Why do you say that? Because you don't want to have to be good anymore?"

R: "Yeah, and I just have too much junk to pick up."

Me: "But what about "T" getting toys."

R: "Yea, I will just play with T's toys when she is done."

Unbelievable.....She wouldn't change her mind for a long time. Finally, she agreed that she wanted Santa to come.

I am going to have my hands full with this one, aren't I???