Nana visits

It never gets old having this wonderful lady visit! It is always a treat to have my mom visit. The kids also love their nana time. 

We had an eventful visit this time including hosting Noah's 6th birthday with 14 kids! Nana was a huge help orchestrating this event. Of course their was lots of coffee drinking, chatting and crafting. The kids got their snuggles and special time. Noah even had school delays every day she was here!

I miss being near my family so much. At least when nana comes to visit she brings a slice of home! Thank you for visiting nana!

Family Divided

Maybe this is our problem….can ducks and beavers really get along?  I guess time will tell.  But, for now the ducks still have them out numbered!

Keepsake from Christmas

The kids made t-shirts to remember their time together.  It was fun to see their creativity come out!

Merry Christmas from NJ!

This year we were able to spend Christmas for the first time with the whole Parker-Gates clan!  It was very special.  Grandma and Grandpa flew in and we were able to drive over to Aunt Chrystal's house.  The cousins had non-stop fun for four days!  We had a very relaxing Christmas Eve and then Christmas morning was action packed.  As you can see, there was a lot of work to do under that tree.  Santa also left a nice little stash in a treasure box for the kids to dig through! We sure enjoyed all the food and fun!

Kids opening their stocking gifts from the treasure box

Grandma and Grandpa opened their custom towels with the kids art work

Christmas Eve PJs

Every year Grandma Parker works many hours to make custom pjs for each of the grandkids.  This is something I especially look forward to.  She puts so much time and effort into them; you can just feel the love radiate out of them!  This year was a very special Christmas because we were all able to be together.  It was so much fun to watch them open them all up and I think they went very well.  The kids put them right on as soon as they opened them!  

Annual thank you photo shoot

Part of the Parker tradition in this house is to take thank you photos for our thank you cards.  Here is a sneak peak of what we got.  The kids did a great job and there were certainly too many to pick from!

Projects on the cheap

I have been working on decorating on the cheap.  A challenge to myself to repurpose things and have fun doing it.  Pintrest usually becomes the first place I look for ideas.  As my dad would call it "Pins I stole."  I simply say "repined with a twist".  And, some of these projects I create on my own.  It does take practice!

This was a broken coat stand that was missing the coat stand pole.  I glued it back together and added some paint and ta-da! I have been looking for the perfect umbrella stand for awhile and now I have it!  Project cost $3

We have a huge basement full of white walls that I needed to temporarily give some life too.  Here I took scrapbooking paper and taped it up to make wall paper in the kids play area.  It really brightened the area.  Project cost $5

Here it is all completed!

This flower and paper plane mobile was a fun project.  

I just had to add this because her face is too cute.  She was pretty excited about all the organization happening in the play area.

This is the reading area.  I painted the shadows this past summer and I think they do a nice touch.