Christmas Wishes!!

Merry Christmas everyone!! As many of you are probably accustomed to, I am a big time slacker when it comes to Christmas cards. So, consider this your card! :) We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and wonderful Season spending time with family and enjoying traditions, and perhaps making some new ones!

Brooke has been saying what we call Christmas prayers (see previous post). She will randomly throw in the whole Nativity scene to bless, including Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, the Wisemen, Shepherds, cows, donkey, camels, horses, sheep and then every now and then Santa and Santa's wife get in there. It is so cute.

We have been asking Brooke why we celebrate Christmas. Every time the answer varies a little, but it still holds the same sweet message:

“Because Jesus was born in a manger. There was no room for Mary so they went to the stable. There was a barn for the animals. The Wisemen and horses and cows and camel and donkey were there. There were shepherds and presents. The day that Jesus was born was a special day.”

We hope that the magic and spirit of the Season live on throughout the year!

Love,
The Workmans - Tyler, Jenny, Brooke (almost 3), and Brody (almost 8 months)

Brooke as Mary at the family Christmas party. She was honored to play the role!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year....

Right now I am sitting here trying to get some work done since Brooke is refusing to go to bed. Oh no, she would rather play with Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus. You see, I just set up our Nativity sets and she sits there peering at them just wanting to touch them but knowing that mama has said no. So, she goes back to her plastic Nativity that is left out all year long and talks with Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus.

This year at family Christmas party she had the honor of being Mary - and she treated it just as that, an honor. She sat there with her hands together, didn't say a word except to peer into the manger and ask where the baby was. After all, that was the most important part.

She loves anything that has to do with Baby Jesus. Grandma Gayle took her to the dollar store to pick out a special surprise. Out of everything in that store she could have chosen she chose a little ceramic figure of a woman and baby, whom is OBVIOUSLY Mary and Baby Jesus. Then they spent some time searching throughout the whole store trying to find Joseph. Unfortunately, "he was at work" :)

Often times when I am sitting down feeding Brody she will come and put her pink blanket over my head and tell me that I am Mary, Brody is Baby Jesus and she is Joseph.

Last Christmas I wasn't allowed to put away her little Nativity set, a plastic one from Avon that my mom gave her. They have been drug all over the house. Since then she has been given another ceramic set that she was allowed to paint herself and actually did a wonderful job on. Then there's the finger puppet set that Grandma Carling figured she would get more of a thrill out of, which she has. She also has a felt set that she takes to church, that one she calls the "new Baby Jesus". Most recent is a paper cut out of the whole Nativity glued onto a file folder (thanks, Grandma). Occasionally, a couple of the Josephs will get together. I see two of them next to each other right now.

I have decided to make this little obsession into a tradition and get her a new Nativity set each year. It has been fun to have the Nativity up all year since last year at Christmas I wasn't allowed to put it away. It has it's "home" in one of the cubbies on the entertainment center. I sure hope this is one thing she never grows out of!

I Need This.....

Britax car seat that is being given away here. The only thing is if I post about it then you will want it to....so disregard this! :)

In the meantime, check out some cute pictures of little (or not so little - 16 1/2 lb) Brody. It was so fun to take him to have his pictures taken because he just laughed and smiled the whole time. Unlike Miss Brooke whom we had to take back for a second photo shoot because she would not smile for us when she was a baby! BTW, he has teeth # 5 and 6 making their grand entrance! Poor little kid is going to have a whole mouth full before too long! He has also had ANOTHER hair cut since these pictures were taken. His hair has an interesting growth pattern, it really likes to concentrate in a row down the middle (unlike his dad! j/k, love you honey!) and when Brooke told me he looked like a rooster, we knew it was time for a hair cut!

Here he is, out little man at 6 months:

I'll Make You a Deal!

It can be scary sometimes to see the wheels turning in little Brooke's head! She was at Grandma's one day and our cousins were there too. She had her little horse that she absolutely loves (his name is Joe, after the boy on Black Beauty). She didn't want to share the horse with Landon so Mallory decided to step in and be the peace-maker.

Mallory: "Brooke, how about I make you a deal. If you give your horse to Landon you can have some lip gloss" (because nothing is better than lip gloss when you're a girly girl!)

Brooke thinks for a moment, then: "How about I make YOU a deal, you give me the lip gloss and I keep my horse."

Oh boy......what are we in for?

Catching Up....

I've got all these pictures on my camera that I need to catch up on. So here goes....a Reader's Digest version of our summer.

June - Canada. We went up there for Tyler's cousin Mike's wedding. It was fun to go there, and at least this time I had a much better eating experience considering the last time we were there I was pregnant with Brooke and threw up the whole trip. After that time I came home absolutely convinced that Canadian food was disgusting!

It was so good to see Great Grandma Marie and the rest of the family there. It was a beautiful wedding ceremony and Brooke slept through the entire thing which made things quiet for us!
Looking at these pictures I can't believe how much Brody has grown!
In July we went to Idaho to see my family for the 4th. Our camera was lost at that time so no pics but it was great to see the family and enjoy a good ol' country party!!

In August we went back to Idaho for my sister's wedding. It was beautiful! My sister is the last of my siblings to get married, and all the girls married guys whose name starts with a "T"!

Before the wedding we stopped in to see my Grandma and Grandpa Steadman. It was so good to see and talk with them!
Here's my cute preggo sister. Can you tell we're related?

The kids have just been growing and developing like crazy!! I can't believe all the things Brooke is picking up on, it's pretty amazing! Brooke continues to amaze me at how much of a girly-girl she is! Everywhere we go she has to have a dolly and she always tells me about them, whether they like or don't like this or that, who their mommy and daddy are, etc. She's quite entertaining!

Brody is still such a sweetheart! He will pretty much smile at anything with that cute little dimple. We took him in last week for his 4 month check and here are his stats:
weight: 14 lb 6 oz (39%)
length: 25 in (55%)
head: 16.5 in (41%)

Did I mention he has his 2 bottom teeth?!? Yep, he's had them for just over a month! He's such a good baby that we really didn't even know he was teething other than he kept drooling and trying to eat his fist.

Stinkin' Cute!

What was once lost is now found! I got a phone call from Tyler's aunt telling me that they found my camera in their couch. Hallelujah! Now I won't have to hear Tyler tell me once again how the pictures we had on there are priceless and that we won't have any pictures of Brody with his Great Grandma Workman.

So, now we've got to go into picture overdrive so the little guy forgets that we went a whole month without taking a picture of him!

Oh, and by the way, I noticed Tuesday his 2 bottom teeth have come in. What?!? Nonetheless (I pretty much just wrote that because I think it's the only word where you can squish 3 words together and get away with it! Yeah, it's late) he has still just been the sweetest, happiest, most content little thing ever. I never would have known he was teething!

I have an excuse....

for not keeping up on this blog - I have created another blog! I have been wanting to do this for some time now and finally I just decided to stop putting it off. It's a blog about deals and coupons and saving money! You can click on it here, I named it Born2Save. (It occurred to me a few days after I chose the name that it may be mistaken as some sort of evangelical blog! :)

My goal for this new blog is to be able to post any great deals that I find but to also keep track of my savings and such as well as inspire savings in my readers. I am working to make it all that I want it to be, unfortunately there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I would like but I will do my best!

Please feel free to come on over and check it out, pass it on to friends, CLICK ON THE ADS, ask questions, share your own experiences, etc. Hopefully it is something you will find useful and want to share.

Keep checking back as I will be having my first GIVEAWAY shortly and starting my $40 weekly challenge!!


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In other news, Brody is just growing like crazy! He is smiling and laughing a lot and is so fun. Brooke is still just a little sponge and is so fun to be around (most of the time). She is such a young lady already. The other day she told me "Oh no you didn't" and kind of did a little attitude with her head. Mal, you're going down for that one!

Tyler and her were going to watch a movie and she told me to come sit down. I told her I would when I was done with my work. She said "Oh mom, don't worry about the house and come watch the movie."