Merry Christmas from our family to yours!
Wishing you a wonderful and loving holiday even if it’s not how you’d normally be spending your holiday this year! We’re home by ourselves this holiday season and while it’s not our first pick – we’re making the best of it and making new traditions!
Kristi
This year has been rough for the majority of us! My brother shared a quote a few months ago that “Were in the same storm but Were not all in the same boat. Some are on yachts, some are on rowboats and some are drowning.” That’s not exact but I truly felt that when I read it! It’s so true – it’s been rough for us but it’s been so much worse for others and I’m constantly thanking God for all our blessings! ❤️
If you’ve followed me for a while then you know Christmas is my FAVORITE time of year! It’s just so magical and honestly, after October 1 comes, I’m counting down the days until thanksgiving so we can be full on Christmas mode! 🎄I even had a baby shower that was even Christmas themed!
But if I’m being honest… this year I’m just not feeling it! I’m not sure if it’s because we aren’t seeing family snd havent for so long or what the reason is but it’s just not there for me this year!
However, I still want all the Christmas magic for Magnolia this season (and every year!) so I’ve been doing things to make sure she feels it! If you’re feeling the same as me this year… here’s what I’ve been doing to help:
One
BAKING! I shared of our favorite recipe on Monday but we have been doing so much cookie baking for ourselves! And this weekend, we’re going to make some Christmas sugar cookies (with Magnolia’s great grandmas frosting recipe!) and next week, we’ll do more peanut butter blossoms! I always loved baking Christmas cookies with my Mom so I’m excited to keep this up with Magnolia!
Two & Three
Decorate a Christmas tree! Even if it’s a little one! I put a small tree in Magnolia’s room with all her favorite things on it for ornaments and she just lights up when we plug it in!
Wear Christmas jammies! I bought a few pairs from Target for Magnolia and she loves seeing Santa on them! She’s a huge fan of Santa and reindeer so she loves wearing them! She’ll be wearing them loooong after Christmas as well 🎅🏻
Four
Drive around (or walk if it’s nice where you are!) and find Christmas lights! We did a display show this year but we also drove around to a neighborhood or two that have great Christmas lights! When she (snd the twins) gets older, I really want to do Shay’s Hot Cocoa Christmas tradition! It sounds perfect!
Five
Give to a family or child in need! I did this with my Mom when we were way younger.. we’d go to the mall and by Santa, we’d pick a name off the tree and purchase a gift for that child. I still remember doing that today! Logan and I have been doing this now for quite some years and I can tell you, it’s one of my favorite things! I can’t wait until Magnolia (and the twins!) truly understands and can go with us to pick out the gifts!
I still can’t believe we’re a week until Christmas (and our sweet girl’s birthday!) . What ways are you brightening up your holiday season?! I can always use more ideas and tips!
Kristi
Happy Monday and 1 day closer to Christmas!
This is my reminder (mainly to myself) to get to the post office AGAIN to try to send out our gifts. I’ve been 3 times and Logan once and the line is out the door each time.. but we gotta get them out! 😬
Another slow weekend for us – per usual since March!! So we decided to do something both myself and Magnolia love.. BAKE! This pregnancy im alllll about the sweets and baking so we thought we’d do some of our favorites!
If you need a good Christmas cookie recipe, look no further!! I made these last year for the cookie exchange and almost forgot how good they were..
White Chocolate Dipped Peppermint Chocolate Cookie
We finished Christmas shopping this weekend and now it’ll be wrapping time (which I love!). Logan and I decided no gifts for each other this year – with the twins coming, we’ve already made a few bigger purchases! 👶🏻👶🏻 Do you guys exchange gifts with your significant other??
Kristi
Now that you’re all caught up… (if you’re not, go here to see the news!) I’ll give an update on my pregnancy..
I’m 15 weeks pregnant and am finallly starting to feel better. I was nauseous 24/7 with Magnolia and this pregnancy has been no different. The nausea started at week 5 and regardless of what I ate or didn’t eat it didn’t change. Although I did notice eating sugar, made it a litttttle worse. It’s been rough!
Weight gain has been surprisingly low compared to Magnolia – I was only up 2 pounds at my 12 week doctor appointment (and we go back next week!! I’m living for all the doctor appts and am still so nervous in between) but with Magnolia, I gained like 8 pounds in the first trimester alone!
We found out we were having twins at 6 weeks after experiencing some bleeding followed by an ultrasound… I will tell you, Logan couldn’t come with and I was so nervous. I had a miscarriage in May (we can talk about that another time) and had to find out myself, there was no heartbeat, at the 8 week ultrasound since Logan wasn’t allowed in. I facetimed Logan and made sure to not look at the screen or show Logan it until we heard either way. I heard the doctor say “I think there’s a heartbeat there…” and I thought to myself… “YOU THINK?!” this isn’t good… and she said Yep there’s a second heartbeat! AND Y’ALL……. my first response was “There’s a heartbeat???” and I look at Logan and he has a huge smile and he says “There’s TWO heartbeats”. It was surreal to see. We knew it was still early at only 6 weeks but a heartbeat for us, after losing 2 babies and seeing them with no heartbeat, a heartbeat was what we needed! We’ve seen the babies 2 more times since then and it’s so sweet to see them!
We do not know the genders of the babies and we’re actually going to be CRAZY and not find out again! I thought for sure, our next baby, I’d want to find out ahead of time since we didn’t with Magnolia (and I reallllly wanted to) but this time around, it just doesn’t matter to me!
Hmm I’m trying to think of anything else to update you on with the pregnancy and babies so far… If you have questions, leave them below!
Kristi
I am back after a LONG break from this blogging world…. like 10 months?! I didn’t necessarily mean to take a full year off – but after putting Magnolia to bed, it was so much easier to relax for about an hour before we went to bed as well!
I feel like SO much has happened since my last blog post but also that a whole year went by with not much to chat about due to Covid.. we haven’t done anything or gone anywhere in like 9+ months and y’all…. I’m so over it! But I didn’t come on here to tell you that…
I’m back to blogging about our lives and what we’re doing to stay from going too crazy in this new world we live in! To catch you up, I still work from home (not due to the pandemic but before that I did as well) and now Logan got a new job in September so that he is 100% remote as well (he had been remote since March with his old job due to Covid) and our sweet girl is now going to be TWO on Christmas Day. She’s absolutely precious and has such a fun personality (and girl LOVES to talk – wonder where she gets that from?! :)) and I think we’re both in disbelief that she’ll be TWO!
Otherwise… not a whole lot has changed for us this year… except one thing…
Just a little change for us to end 2020 on a high note 🙂
I plan to share more about our journey to TWINS and what we’ve been experiencing fertility wise the last few years after having Magnolia (I know many of you follow me from our previous infertility journey which lead us to our miracle).
Short and sweet to say Hi, I missed you all – and hope you haven’t had too rough of a year with what seems to be the “new normal”. Let me know how you’re doing below… and we’ll chat soon!
Kristi
happily ever griedls 