It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Christmas 2013 and we couldn't be more ecstatic.









Day after Thanksgiving, we let the kids decorate their little tree.  We let them go to town on it and have free reign (so when I get my tree they will be burned out and let me do it myself :)).




Little squirt decided he didn't like me to be behind that curious black camera.  He wanted it out of my hands, and himself to be IN the hands.
























Cute, though.  Christmas 2013 season isn't a fond memory for me, we had waay too many stressors.  But we made it through.  Lost our job in November and the interviews and decisions and changes flowing back and forth-- emotions were high for me.  A few months prior, I could feel that life was going to change for us, so we were preparing.  We saved money, tried to stock up on things we needed, and tried to be overall ready for whatever was coming.  Over the next few months, we would have a newborn baby, lose our job over the holidays, interview all over the place, be 100% certain that there were no jobs for us here in our town, get a few job offers from different locations, go in to accept one (which then told us they wanted us to stay here in this town with the same job), landlord selling our house from under us, accept a job offer, shop for a house, Corban shatters my new iMac, get a calling in the Young Women, buy a house on the other side of town (30 minutes away and a bit of a gamble), start a new job, move, pull the kids out of one school and into a new) and try to get unloaded.  The stress was much for me.  All this happens about the same time as the pictures in these posts, so it is all such a blur.  So glad to have these photos to bring back my memories of this time. It's amazing to see that no matter what parents are going through, kids just keep plugging away.  And prayers are heard and answered and the winds of change, though painful, almost always seem to bring us to a better place.  I hope to get caught up soon on this blog to the point of our move in February, so hang in there!  Still behind but catching up!