Merry Christmas Eve

Hi all! I'm back! So crazy right! I'm just popping in to give you a little update on Christmas life. We have had lots of fun decorating, baking cookies, visiting Santa and family, and prepping for C-Day that the month flew by! It is crazy.

We took little miss back into town to visit Santa. The same one from last year. While we hoped for a good outcome, we even brought the photo of him and her with so she would look at it, we prepared ourselves mentally that she would scream and cry. We went and had lunch first and she had a mini nap on the drive over so she was in a relatively good mood because we let her run off a little energy through the mall on the walk over. Once inside Santa asked that we not show her his face and I just plopped her in his lap. I backed up and started making faces and being silly and we got a huge smile. She even looked at Santa with a big grin and shed not a single tear (the same could not be said for the poor, yet creepy, Easter Bunny.) We were in shock. He said "don't expect that next year," but we thought the same thing about this year. It was totally awesome!

We are getting to have Christmas Eve dinner at our house for the first time ever and D and I are SO EXCITED. We bought some nice dishes and some accessories so I cannot wait to set the table. Tonight is cleaning and making cranberry sauce in preparation, while tomorrow I will be cooking up a storm all day (with my mom's assistance since I have never made a turkey before.) There will be a fire, various liquors and wine, and of course family and opening of our Christmas Eve gift (pajama's.) I cannot wait to spend the first Christmas in our own home. Here is the menu:

Turkey
Cranberry Pear Sauce
Cranberry Apple Sausage Stuffing (My dear friends recipe)
Sweet Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
Gravy
and of course Starlight Sugar Twists, Sugar, Scotcharoos and chocolate chip cookies.

I hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends. This is a time for giving, for families, and for love. Merry Merry Christmas!

Love The Kimball's

Oh Hai!

Murray Farms Corn Maze

Well then. It seems like I have fallen off the face of the earth hasn't it? Well I haven't. Life has just completely got in the way and sitting at the slowest computer on the planet doesn't sound like something I am interested in doing these days.

Things have just been a whirlwind these days. The first month of living in our home we were commuting and hour and a half and two hours respectively. Once we started our new jobs things settled down, but our new schedules are a little hectic with both of us working Saturdays, and split days off seem to be having us running a little harried. We try to spend lots of time with Emma on the days we have with her. We have taken her to the Pumpkin patch, she's experienced her first snowfall and are just settling into our home with all the holiday decor up. We are loving life in our new home and just trying to find the balance finding time for everything. It's hard, but we are making it work.

The house is coming together. If you follow me on Instagram (lil_birdie_emma0701) then you will get a weekly, sometimes daily update of what life looks like around these parts. I am going to try and get a weekly post up over here. That way your all not missing out on things over here, but still can get a taste into our lives. Lil miss is transitioning into a one nap lady, and it tends to be pretty short so getting in a post while she sleeps will be hard. Lol.

Were slowly decorating and fixing little issues around the house, It's a good thing I work in a home improvement store.....and get a discount. My goodness there's lots of things you need when you own a home! We bought an island and a credenza for our kitchen, some shelving and a new rug. We still need to figure out how to make the office/guest room function as an office/guest room before my step mom makes the trip in March. I have ideas so I hope they work out and I hope to do a post when its finished.

New credenza and shelving for the dining room

Were hosting Christmas eve with my parents this year so I am off to research new and easy recipes to make for that. The hubby requested turkey.....so I guess I will me making my first ever Turkey. Wish me luck! Well I think that's all I can think of for this ramble post. Here's a couple of photos!

My beauty watching the bubbles!

His happy place.

Our first snowfall!