Friday, January 27, 2012

December re-cap! A very merry christmas!

Josh's mom made the kids all matching PJ's
I dropped off the face of the earth for the last month. I will go into all the whys about that in another post. Let's just say I am only a day away from posting my Christmas a month late. I am over a month late! Do you still care about my Christmas? Probably not, but since I don't scrapbook, I wanted to post this. We had a terrific Christmas. 

My mother-in-law made matching PJs for all of my kids. I loved that they were monsters, cuz we kinda had a monster theme going.
Christmas eve we were honored to be invited to my Aunt Deanie's for dinner and a program. I hadn't participated in the Mangum family tradition before so it was really neat for me. I love my wonderful family! Christmas morning was kinda crazy--my in-laws came over Christmas morning, and brought over a huge surprise. How huge? I would say about 6'2-6'3 . . . my brother-in-law, Justin came down for Christmas and surprised everyone. Cooper adopted him Christmas morning and somehow I didn't get a singe picture of both of them. Well, I didn't take many pictures, but I feel bad about not getting one of Cooper. So go ahead and judge me, I am not the mother of the year.



Turner was so excited that Santa knew exactly what he wanted!
Amelia with her new "baebee!"
After opening presents, we headed over to church. I loved that Christmas was on Sunday--it helped us remember what Christmas is really all about.

We tried to have a very homemade Christmas this year. I was so happy when we got a chance to make a gingerbread house with our friends--the Hills. We also made quite a few of the kids presents. My very favorite was probably the present I made for my sister, but somehow I lost the picture I took of it. Oh well!
Here is the jist of what I made for my sister though. I put all of these letters on individual blocks. I loved how it turned out. I really want to make one for me!
We also made the stuffed monsters to go with it.
I wrote the kids a book about monsters and Josh illustrated it. Watch out Jan and Stan Bernstein . . . here come the Thomsons!
I knew the kids wouldn't be as excited as I was to go to church right after opening presents so I made these art kits for them. I think they turned out cute!




We also made them activity books. We put the pages in sheet protectors and invested in washable-dry-erase crayons. That way I didn't have to worry about dry-erase markers staining church clothes.

 
My sister came for New Years! Her family had been visiting her husband's family in Idaho for his sister's wedding and the holiday's. I loved having them here all the way from Michigan. We don't get to see them near enough! When she has her little boy in March, we will have 7 boys between the two of us (and one little girl!) It is a crazy good time when we are all together. The boys slept in a fort and had a great time (even if they didn't get to sleep early either night.) We rang in the New Year with my Nephews' friends in MI. It was a great time!







3 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness!! Love everything, the art kits, the monsters, and especially the blocks for Nicole. Will you share how you did the name blocks and the art kits, did you come up with them on your own or did you follow someone else's tutorial?

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  2. Such a great post! I love all the gift ideas....and you made them, that ROCKS! Cute pics! What fun for the cousin's to play together!

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  3. A great Christmas and I loved all the gifts you made! So fun for all those kids to be together and play!

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