happy 2012

Happy New Year!

{better late than never, right!}

Reese and I got back from Baton Rouge on New Years Eve Day just in time for Mark to get off work and meet us at the Snyders to kick off 2012 together. 

love my sweet friend.

So I just read through my New Years Resolutions from last year {here} and felt like I did sorta accomplish them - or at least try to! Most of them I want to continue doing this year and will add a few... here we go.

- cook more 'real' meals {and by real I mean NOT just pulling out frozen chicken and leftover randomness and making a salad haha.}
- Begin teaching Reese how to memorize scripture (while also doing it myself!!) We listen to the cds Seeds of Encouragement and Seeds of Character in the car all the time {all the lyrics to the songs are scripture and they're fun kid songs} she's started trying to sing along and especially likes the one that says "think about such things... think about such things... true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy..." She sings the 'think about such things' part over and over throughout the day and gah lee what an awesome reminder to ME to think about those things all day!! I love it when I find myself singing it in my head too, when I'm doing laundry or cleaning dishes....
- pick up the house before Mark comes home - and by pick up I mean at least make a pathway where he can walk in the front door all the way to the kitchen haha
- maybe possibly have another baby :) or one on the way, Lord willing??!!
- post more videos on here of Reese! I have a billion of them (thanks to my last years resolution!) i just need to post them
- Truly go on one date night a month with my hubby!!!
- Finish reading 'Crazy Love' by March 1 - It's soooo good, I just have such a hard time sitting down to read
- FINISH reading at least one or two parenting books. I've started soooo many. I think the first one I will read is 'Parenting by Grace'
- Do my Beth Moore James bible study while Reese takes a nap every day before anything else!! why is this so hard to do??
- be wise in how we spend money

Jesus, we give you 2012 and pray you would be glorified in all we say and do and through us as a family! I pray you would give us wisdom as we listen and follow you through some pretty big things this year. We trust YOU and know you always provide for our every need and will never leave us or forsake us. Thank you for the promise of your Hope and Peace and that you fill us up with exactly what we need every morning. I pray you would show your mercies on our family this year and that we would draw nearer to you every day of the year. Amen

christmas recap

sorry i'm so super behind on blogging... i don't know if anyone else feels this way, but i feel like i need to document things in order and have a hard time posting new things when i haven't posted certain other things yet so then i just get really behind... anyway... here's a recap of our Christmas 2011.

Somehow Mark got four whole days off over Christmas which was an awesome Christmas miracle so we went to Branson to spend Christmas with my family. My brother came from Nashville too and we just had the best time, as usual, just playing at home and enjoying catching up and mostly playing with R. 

There was so much excitement on Christmas eve day that reeser just didn't want to take a nap so we went to the Christmas eve service at Church and then she crashed in the car on the way home before we could even eat dinner and eat the yummy birthday cake we made to celebrate Jesus' birthday. oh well. she'll understand it more next year anyway

we all had so much fun setting up all of reeser's present from santa. here's the loot she got from mark and I :) oh yeah, here's the surprise Mark and I built for her.... a play kitchen!! {I have a whole post going on how we made it so more on that later} but she loves it and we play with it every day. I think her favorite part is to pretend to wash her hands haha. 

Christmas morning... I think she really did get it much more than I thought she would on Christmas morning. When she came down the stairs and saw all the goodies out in the living room her face lit up and she just kept saying "ohhhh ohhhh yook!!! (look) ohhhh!!!" and then just stood there not sure what to go to first. so cute! my parents got her this fun barbie jeep from a friend and she loves to sit in it but is still super scared when it starts moving haha maybe this summer she'll love to ride in it

they also gave her a little train set which she LOVES!

mark has always (since he was a little boy) wanted his own bb gun so santa brought him one this year and the boys set out to shoot some squirrels or something :) funny.

the rest of the weekend looked like this: 

my mom got R a little gymnastics leotard!! we love it. (this is us reenacting a photo of me at her age in the exact same spot in my leotard) i'll have to find it.

the next day we planned to go to silver dollar city but it was cold and rainy so instead we stayed inside and played settlers of catan and then walked around on the landing and had dinner. Reese loved looking at all the HUGE fish at bass pro with papa joe

Tuesday afternoon we all split ways :( Mark drove back to Columbia to go back to work and Eric drove back to Nashville. Reese and I jumped in the car with my parents and got to go to Baton Rouge for a few days to be with my family there. It was such a treat to get to be with everyone and watch them all love on Reese. I just LOVE my family so much and couldn't be more blessed by them. (here's a four generation picture of all the girls)

my aunt found these red boots in my cousins closet and we think maybe they were erics and then he passed them down to taylor and now reese gets to wear them :) she loves them! i think bc she can put them on by herself

we absolutely loved the nice weather and had fun playing outside!

not a great picture but we love granny and papa!

 my sweet papa showing reese the neighbor dogs and teaching her how to pick satsumas off his tree in the back yard :) she LOVED them and ate about 20 while we were there

overall we had an AWESOME christmas and it was so fun to begin to teach reesieboo about the real meaning of christmas and why we celebrate it. i sure love starting our family traditions and continuing them year after year. we definitely missed seeing the mason side of the family :( It was so sad to have to mail presents back and forth. but we did FaceTime as we opened them on christmas morning and sent pictures back and forth the whole holiday. we are so thankful for such awesome family on both sides. couldn't be more blessed.

santa...

Kara and I took the kiddos to see Santa at Bass Pro before Christmas and it pretty much went exactly as I thought it would.... 

this is pretty much the worst/greatest photo all mixed in one. but let me tell you that in the moment i definitely felt like the worst mom ever as i laughed and took pictures while my daughter screamed her head off and EVERYONE around stared in fright. sorry reeser. i know you'll love santa someday.

they were all smiles when they sat in santas sleigh outside after being traumatized 

mark continued his tradition of giving little reese new christmas pjs to wear on christmas eve... but this year we wanted to include sam too :) so we did it a few nights early so we could celebrate with the snyders.

 (side note... every time we go to the snyders reese wants to get in this chair and take a picture with sam.)

merry christmas 2011

 love, the masons

photo from eric staples photography!!! {website coming}