The Owens

 I have been trying to get this posted for three days!! Every time I go to work on it, something comes up and it keeps getting delayed. I usually post pictures through Picasa, but it isn't linking the pictures I need to the web.
 ANYWAY........... sorry to keep bombarding you with these pictures, but I am almost done. On Saturday, I met up with Lee and Shannon and miss Avery for a family shoot. Shannon was the first person to really reach out to me in Houston. She invited to me to her house and listened to me complain about how much I hated Houston and how I just wanted to go home. Then she watched my tiny apartment for a whole two weeks, while we went home. HAHA... I look back now and think, "Why did she want to be my friend?" All I did was whine and put her to work. She is super sweet (Lee is great too... don't want you to think I don't like him or something). Now they have sweet little Avery and I think that they need to have another one soon ;)

A Day in the Life of.... US!

I am not going to lie, our day to day business is not very exciting.  I typically don't budget a lot of money for gas for my car which means we pretty much stay at home for most of the week. I used to be kinda annoyed with that fact, but I have decided that my time alone with these babies is very limited. I get five years, only a short five years, with them and then they are off to school. Once school starts, life gets crazy and I KNOW that I will look back and miss the days where all I had to do was smooch on their cheeks, change their diapers, and take naps with them. 

So, I realize that most people don't care what we do during the day, but I need to document it for me. I want to  look back in 15 years and remember what it was like. However, these pictures make it look a lot better than it really is. It is really easy to grab the camera when somebody is being cute, it's not so easy to snap pictures when you are dealing with a little girl who threw her fork at your head. Just remember THAT when you read blogs and think, " Their life is perfect". It's probably not.... it's probably more like this burnt piece of toast .

  Some parts look really good, but some look pretty ugly. We could even cut off the black part and only show the nicely toasted part, but it doesn't change that there are still areas that aren't so pretty.

Yea, I burnt my breakfast. We opted to just go straight for the peanut butter with our spoons.

 It's so lovely seeing bread crumbs in your pb. I can't be blamed for that...

This is called being real people. Yes, I wear Christmas pj's and yes, it has to match. It takes me until 11:00am to get OUT of my pjs and into real clothes. This is not by choice.. I have to wait until one kid is either sleeping or content enough to be happy on their own.

 This was our advent for the day. It passed a good two hours until Daddy got home. I am planning to show you the whole advent tree soon, but for now this is all you get:) So, I don't know where the rest of the pictures went??I spent all day getting this far on this post and I have no more energy to retrieve more photos.. I guess this is all we get. haha oh well!

Patrick/McCadden Family

Not going to lie.. I was nervous about taking these pictures. My friend, Kellie, was kind enough to suggest me for her family pictures (well, let's not make it sound better than it was. I had sent out an email to my small group at the same time her mom was thinking about family pictures). 10 people! It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought... they pretty much placed themselves and I just moved them around a bit. I was also nervous because Kellie knows a lot about cameras and taking pictures... probably more than I do. Overall they turned out well. I learned, however, that just because I don't like a picture, doesn't mean that they won't. :)

Ok,  loved the little boy on the left! He had a strange face in almost every picture. I laughed so hard looking through the pictures :)

In The Bleak Midwinter

First, scroll down to the bottom and stop the music :)

James Taylor's Christmas cd is one of my favorites. I had never heard the song, In The Bleak Midwinter before listening to his cd. Although I have had this cd for awhile, this is the first year that I really LISTENED to the words of this song.

As I grow older, I continually search to find the deeper meaning in Christmas. The "magic" of Santa and presents lost it's appeal long ago and with it some of that feeling disappeared too. Honestly, I am thankful that all those things are fading; Christmas has so much to offer then the superficial spark that our culture tends to focus on. Now a days, I simply want to bask in the fact that Christ came down to this earth, to be born to a virgin, with the simple purpose of saving us... with his own life. I feel so deeply the weight of that action and just as this song says.... "I must give my heart". I have nothing, nothing else of value to give him. The thing that is so beautiful is my heart is all he wants. There is nothing on this earth that is as precious to our Savior than our hearts. So, this Christmas, I am laying it before him. My WHOLE heart, all of it.

My prayer is that my children realize the weight of that action. I am striving to create a Christmas in our home that is not centered around stuff. I feel that it will be no easy task when everything around us at Christmas screams superficial. It will probably take us a couple of years to really hammer it out. I have no problem with Santa being apart of Christmas and the kids receiving gifts, I just want it to be a cherry on top or a nice after thought. If anybody has any good suggestions, please let me know :)

Merry Christmas

The Allemans

Once again, more Christmas photos to share of some friends. I guess I should let you know that all these pictures I have taken have been of couples in our small group. They were all kind enough to be my guinea pigs (which I am very thankful for).

Lindsay and Thomas