Holiday Letter

This year I was blessed with a great Tiny Prints credit for a blog entry I did about their holiday cards. I of course used this to cover the entire cost of our holiday cards this year (yup, I'm frugal like that). Of course, that meant choosing a less expensive layout that didn't have room for our holiday letter. Yes, I suppose I could have typed out a letter on paper and slipped in into the envelope, but really, I'd love it if more of our friends and family occasionally visited my blog. Then they could be updated on what we're doing and see recent photos of the boys any time throughout the year! So, I'm posting our short holiday letter here for 2012.

Happy Holidays 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

We hope 2012 has treated you well! We have had a wonderful, although not super exciting year. Honestly, "not super exciting" has been quite nice. There were no job changes, moves, babies, health issues, or anything else to consider truly exciting. Instead, we just enjoyed our year together and spent our time doing things we love.

We spent the beginning of the year waiting for the weather to dry up enough to work on the backyard. Then spring was spent preparing the backyard flower bed for the fruit and veggie garden. By late spring the plants were thriving and we'd be looking at gorgeous crops of zucchini, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, herbs, and squashes. We spent a lot of the summer tending to the garden and swimming as well as finally tending to the front yard. Long gone is the hill of dirt and field of weeds. We now have a wonderful bordering flower bed and a full hill and yard of green grass (still speckled with quite a few weeds, but we're working on it).

The boys started homeschool preschool with mom in the fall and have been thriving in all aspects. We took a break to take a vacation to Disneyland (yup, vacations these days are to Disneyland instead of somewhere exotic). We had a blast as a family. I took the boys out to Arkansas for a family reunion and met a ton of wonderful relatives. The boys had a blast playing in the mud and meeting the family, so that was fantastic.

There are still plenty of house projects to work on, but we feel like we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! This house really feels like home now and we are so much more content than we were at our previous location (although we miss our dear friends in the old neighborhood!).

We look forward to seeing what adventures 2013 brings our way, and we hope you have a fantastic and safe holiday season!

The Baby Gizmo's $500 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway

Want to win a $500 Amazon gift card? I know I would love to! Since I've already bought all of our Christmas and birthday gifts (it's an expensive time of year when 3/4 of our family has a birthday within 2 weeks of Christmas), a $500 gift card would help offset costs by letting me buy other items we need in the future (laundry detergent, diapers, wipes, Plum Organics pouches, etc...). I'd probably use some of that gift to me to gift to a friend's kids too who are experiencing a tough year and will be having a lean Christmas. Christmas is not about gifts of course, but every kid deserves to have something new and fun this time of year the same as all their friends and peers.

The $500 Amazon Gift card Giveaway is coming thanks to the great site The Baby Gizmo Company in partner with a new site called Sunny Bump. This Baby Gizmo has some wonderful posts including reviews, giveaways, news, recipes and more. I've really enjoyed reading her blog and of course entering all the giveaways! I haven't won anything yet, but I still enjoy entering. Right now she is doing a 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway. A new product is being given away each day! Right now you can enter for a Britax Carseat and some very cool crib bedding (I won't be entering that one since Baby Monkey will be moving to the toddler bed in the next 6 months and already has bedding we love). Check it out!