The Erwins: {Christmas & New Years} 2012

My goal was to get this post done before the New Year but that didn't happen, obviously :) As I look back on my posts last year though, I noticed my #'s dropped quite a bit! 2010 I had 81 posts, 2011 big drop to 49 and 2012- 36....so one of my goals is to try to post more, which shouldn't be too hard with the cutie pie I currently have in my lap! Although typing with one hand is definitely slowing me down :) His teething is really getting ridiculous....cranky little guy! Anyway...back to the holidays...

Well throughout the month our elf Tinker Bell had a little fun throughout the house. Evelyn really loved finding her in the mornings and seeing what trouble she got up to. here's a few of our favorites!

makin' a snowman!

Building a tower

checkin' in on Evelyn at night

gone fishin'

Zip-lining through the house

Tink made a mess opening her present

Tink in her new skirt :)

Here's some pics of the kiddos I took with the tree...I was playing around with my camera and the tree/lights and got some cute shots but couldn't quite figure out the settings/what I was doing wrong...there are seriously so many settings you can adjust and I can't always keep them straight...they turned out good but the coloring was coming out so reddish. It wasn't til after I posted them to facebook I finally realized that I had my white balance set to sunlight...duh Tara! Someday I'll get the settings down so it comes automatic to me....in time! I also made Evelyn a holiday dress and wanted to take some pictures of her in it. The dress turned out pretty good, although it was a smidge big but that seems to be how I always do it...but better big than too small!

Hanging some ornaments :)

My gorgeous girl!

Love this kiddos sooo much!

Can you tell they get a little tired of me taking their pics all the time? :)

So cute!

so adorable :)

He really liked the lights and was really upset when I took them away later!

LOVE this one! Great in B&W

and in color :)

he was so interested in the presents! :)

LOVE this one!

Next is Christmas break! Mark's parents came up on Saturday, we went out to dinner and then enjoyed a nice holiday together. Evelyn was loving having a new audience and demanded their attention pretty much the whole time :) They played lots of games, puzzles, she danced and sang for them and was utterly adorable :) Christmas Day they all went to a nearby town, Wilmington, where Dennis had lived for a couple years when he was little. They went a toured the Battleship North Carolina, went to a park, and had lunch. Andrew and I stayed home and baked/cooked for our Christmas Eve Dinner. I made a delicious lasagna (courtesy of Our Best Bites, I made it once before, it's so yummy!), my pumpkin cheesecake (it turned out so well for Thanksgiving so I really wanted it again..it turned out pretty good-no cracks or anything but it could have cooked a smidge longer), some delicious rolls (OBB once again, my favorite roll recipe), and enjoyed some quality time with my little boy! So Christmas Eve dinner was awesome and afterwards we watched Elf and set out cookies for Santa and went to bed!

cookie time!

All ready for Christmas morning!

Christmas Morning I woke up a little early, started my dough for fried bread (I used the "everyday cinnamon roll" recipe from OBB...it's a great recipe that doesn't take nearly as long to wait to rise/etc. and the fried bread turned out great!). Then the rest of the fam followed down with Evelyn last...totally gonna enjoy every year she doesn't wake up in the early am while I can! :) She was very excited and we had lots of fun opening presents. She was excited to see Tinker Bell and the new skirt she got and then very sweetly helped Andrew open his present from Santa before she opened her own. We let her go first and then we all opened ours. She got a lot of stuff but the big things were a Leappad 2 from Santa, with some games from us and the fam to go with it, a new dance skirt from Santa (that's what she asked for), some new games, lots of puzzles (this girl has SO many puzzles now! Luckily she loves them and plays with them everyday, she's definitely her Momma's daughter! She even got me started on one for me...I haven't done one in years). Then Santa also brought us a keyboard! I want Evelyn to start getting interested in playing cuz I really want her to play :)

waiting for Evelyn on Christmas morning!

She was excited about Tinker Bell's skirt

Helping Andrew with is present

Evelyn's turn!

She really loves this! I had found this tulle twirly skirt but it was super long so I cut it shorter and added it to some leggings and wa-la! fun dance skirt :)

and it's a....

Leappad!

I switched off of manual here cuz I was frustrated with how red the pics above were turning out :)

silly faces

watching Evelyn still :)

stocking time...

And the keyboard!

She was pretty excited

Presents for Andrew!

SO intently watching!

And right into the mouth! :) I have a feeling he's going to be WAY more into things than Evelyn was...we got so lucky with her!

Mark is getting musical this year too and got a guitar for Christmas! He's always wanted to learn and I decided to get him one :) Unfortunately the one I got was 3/4 size, which I didn't realize, so we took it back and got him a full sized one. Hopefully he actually learns! :) I also got him a tool chest but we got it on Black Friday so he got it then. Mark got me a pizza stone, some attachments for my KitchenAid, a movie, and then we got some fun stuff from the fam- gift cards, music books, a cool quilt that Mark's grandma quilted...and that's all I can think of right now :) It was a great Christmas though! Oh, Andrew got some toys and books :) can't forget my boy! He was pretty cute though...he LOVED watching Evelyn opening presents and got so excited about his toys! I love how playful and excited he gets about everything and how much he loves toys! Evelyn was pretty funny opening her gifts too....just like last year she had to get every piece of wrapping paper off and then she'd look at the gift. :)

Mark opening his guitar!

The rest of Christmas day was spent eating and hanging out around the house playing with our gifts :) Like I said before, we had fried bread as my family always does, and I used the extra dough to make some cinnamon rolls in my waffle maker....SO good. If you've never tried it, you should. Christmas dinner we had ham, cheesy potatoes, green bean casserole (I used the OBB one as well from their new cookbook...soooo delicious! Uses fresh green beans and you make your own sauce instead of cream of mushroom...delicious!)

The day after Christmas was a fun one...started the morning out with some tornado warnings (luckily it was more on the coast/coast and not by us). We heard about it as we were headed out the door to go on a movie date so I was a little worried about leaving the kiddos at home but it was alright and Mark and I saw "The Hobbit" which was really good! That night we made some homemade pizza...I used my new pizza stone which was pretty good although I bought a pizza peel after cuz it was pretty hard without it! I also made on in my cast iron, which I've been doing for awhile now and it is SO yummy! Gives it such a nice crust :)

Thursday was pretty laid back, Mark's parents left and Mark had to go to work so we stayed home and finished packing up Christmas stuff/getting the house back in order. Friday Mark had a half day and then we enjoyed a nice weekend together. I got a few projects done because my front entry was a bit bare without the Christmas decor so I used my new Silhouette and came up with this!

I know it rarely snows here but it's the only "January" thing I could think of. The candles are hard to see but they are glass jars rolled in epsom salt which makes it pretty/snow-y/glittery :)

I found this sled at Michael's on super clearance and added the glitter snowflakes to it

and then did the letters here with the glitter Silhouette kit as well! little hard to see the glitter though :)

I also re-did part of the decor above my cabinets/fridge...I already had the flowers up here so I just replaced the manger canvas I did before with this one...this is the scripture for the youth theme for church this year so I thought I'd use it. The all-caps letters here are done with the glitter but you can't really see it. It's also pretty messily done and didn't turn out quite as nice as I wanted but luckily it's up high and isn't horribly noticeable :)

I love the snowflakes on the bottle though! :) These are mini-glass bottles from some ginger ale I got awhile ago and I saved them cuz I thought they were cute :)

I also made this snowflake bottle to go on my counter, looks so pretty lit up!

For New Years Eve we had 3 other couples over from Mark's work, our awesome friends the Korpi's, Morgan and her fiance, Erwin, who just got back from 4 months of training, and the Bev and Mike Yeary. It was super fun and I'm really happy that we have such awesome people to work/hang out with. They really are great and I look forward to hanging out more with them! Anyway, we had lots of yummy food to snack on throughout the night and played games til 1am, which was awesome! I was exhausted the next day but it was so worth it :) Great way to bring in the New Year though! Usually we don't do anything but I'm glad we did this year!

SO Yeah! There's our holidays/start of our new year! 2012 was an ammmaazing year for us and 2013 is looking to be an awesome one too! We have a lot of fun things planned this year, lots of great friends so share it with, family to visit, kiddos to keep us busy, church callings to keep us busy, and I'm hoping to explore the area a little more! I really, really, really want to go up to DC and visit Crystal and go to the Cherry Blossom Festival this spring and I really really want to go see the scenic byway/fall awesomeness in western NC, and then in the summer Evelyn is going to be the flower girl in Morgan and Erwin's wedding! The wedding is in Orlando so we're planning a fun family trip after the wedding with a trip to Disney! (thank goodness for awesome military discounts and getting to use the in-laws time share! Thanks so much!) Anyway...I'm excited for this year and all that goes with it! So Happy New Year everyone! We love and miss you all! Here's some misc. pics that I didn't add above :)

Evelyn giving Mark a check up :)

showing off her new dress....looks so enthused doesn't she?

just hanging out :)

Evelyn went over to her friends one day and they decorated gingerbread houses

My little angel boy!

This is supposed to be rotated left on turn but I couldn't get it to do it in blogger...anyway, Evelyn drew this train and I thought it was pretty darn good! I love that she's drawing actual things more. :)