Christmas at Home

Sorry for the late posting on Christmas.  Life hasn't slowed down yet until right now.  Etsy business has been good, holidays with our families were great, and then this past week I threw my back out.  Not sure what happened but today seems to be a better day.  I'm going to try and get some stuff done around the house but not over do it.

Christmas this year we spent at our own house.  All of our families were a bunch of different places so we got to enjoy the day at our house.  Henry had a pretty nasty cold so we were glad to keep him at home.  My mom did end up coming up and spending some time with us and helped me with a new sewing project.  

Christmas Eve we made sure to get everything ready for Santa's arrival and telling Joe our elf see you next year.  We of course did most of this after Henry went to bed as he was so sleepy.

Picking out cookies is serious work

Everything is ready to go.

Paige wanted to write a letter to Santa

Christmas morning was very exciting this year.  Henry had finally got the hang of everything after having a few Christmases already.  He grabbed his presents and started opening right away.   

Once everything was open it's Rob's turn to put it all together.

We spent the rest of the day pretty much in our basement.  We watched the new movies that Santa brought, we played duck hunt on nintendo and we did crafts.  It was a great day to just relax and enjoy my little family.

Christmas with My Family

Thought I would catch up on a blog before I take a million pictures tonight and tomorrow.

Last Saturday we had Christmas with my mom and my sisters family.  We did it at our house this year and then went to a basketball game afterward.  Henry did much better this time around and didn't cry while opening presents.  Paige and HEather's kids are always so exciting.  I wish my camera could keep up with their expressions as we are all usually cracking up laughing.  It's always so fun to get together with our nieces and nephew, my sister and tony and my mom.  Enjoy all of the pictures.

Carly excited about the books we got her

Colin was so happy about all of his gifts but this one the most.

The girls jumping up and down for a foot spa they received.

Paige got new boots from Grandma

Henry took a break

Carly was so excited Rob and I gave her the new Taylor Swift CD

After the kids took naps.  Gail (Rob's mom) came up and babysat Henry so that we could all go out to the game.  Paige did great with the long walk through the skywalks to get to the venue from our parking spot.  She made it through a game and a half w/out complaining except for cotton candy.  She cheered on our cyclones really loud and made her to let Uncle Tony know she as not a fan of the Hawkeyes.

Uncle Rob and Colin

Tony and Elise in the Suites visiting my Uncle Dennis

Dennis and I are so happy about our cyclones winning!!

Stayed tuned for all of the Christmas craziness we have coming up!!  Our kids are getting ready for Santa to come.  Paige and I have been tracking Santa just so that she knows where he's at.

Hartz Family in a Video

The Hartz family was all in a Scheels video together!  Check out this link!

Etsy Fun

So as most of you know I love to craft and have recently learned how to sew.  I went to work one day and started showing people things I have made and people wanted to start buying them.  Now Rob has always told me I should sell some of the things I make and I have always told him he's crazy.  But then to have more people at work asking me if they could buy things and why I don't sell them I decided to give it a shot.  I opened an Etsy shop, for those of you who don't know what Etsy is it's a place on the internet where people can sell their handmade items to people all over.  So I opened my store and named it William & Noelle (Paige and Henry's middle name)  My friend Meghan and Erin have been a HUGE help in getting this started.  Erin designed all my logo for me!  My friend Chris who is a photographer that I work with took all the photos of my products so that I have really nice listings.  All of these are perks of working where I work.  It's so nice to be around creative people all day who encourage you to also be creative.

I've sold a TON of plates.  Here are some of my first shipments going out the door.  Also some of the plates I have done.  I'm excited about this new adventure in my life.  It is something that if it gets too overwhelming I can just put the store on hold and take a break.  Right now it's a great stress relief and a great way for me to take a moment for myself.  Paige is my helper and loves watching and being involved when I make everything.  Rob is so supportive I couldn't be more thankful.  

So if you want to see my shop go to this link.  I have some new products I'm going to be adding.  I have a facebook page to keep everyone up to date on the new things going on.  Thanks Everyone!!

Quick Update

So this is going to be a random blog.  Things have been crazy at our house.  

Our elf Joe is back.  Paige couldn't be more excited and Henry is starting to love finding him in the morning.  Though he doesn't understand why he's there.  Gail (Rob's mom) made Joe some pajamas for Paige to give him.  Paige was so excited!!  This is a letter Rob helped Paige write to Joe so he would know about the pajamas.  The second pictures Paige tried to rewrite the letter but decided it would take too long.  So we put the pajamas and the letters out for the night.  When she woke up she found Joe wearing his pajamas with the letters sitting next to him, she also found that he typed a letter on the laptop.  She was so pumped up, it's funny to watch her.

Thought I would include this picture of Henry.  This is his obsession right now.  He plays this fishing game so much!!

Also good news!  We took Henry back to be retested for his egg allergy.  HE PASSED!!  He is no longer allergic to eggs.  Rob and I were so excited.  This time we did a skin test and when he passed that we brought eggs with us to the doctors office for him to do an oral test.  Well we found out Henry does NOT like hard boiled eggs, and he refused to eat them by basically puking it back up in the office.  Thankfully our allergist has a 2 year old and knows the struggle of getting a toddler to do things they don't want to do.  He was still happy with his results and told us that we need to keep eggs in his diet pretty regularly so that his body doesn't forget that it tolerated it.

We had Christmas with my Dad and Step-Mom a couple weekends ago.  It's always fun to get all of the kids together and let them just run around, it reminds me of my Grandma's house when I was growing up.  I took pictures on my camera but none of them are good.  Rob and I were a little distracted with Henry crying through most of Christmas.  But here are some pictures below.  Henry was watching football with my dad, so cute!!

This pretty much sums up how the night was.  Rob was helping Henry open presents.

Here are all 8 of my Dad and Pat's grandkids.  They all just keep getting older.  So fun to hear the interests change.

I just realized more of the pictures in this blog are of Henry.  Paige is here and around she just wont take pictures very much anymore.  I knew that day would come.  Also I guess Henry is hitting so many milestones.  The newest one is he's officially out of his crib and into his big boy bed.  We put up his mattress yesterday and he took a nap and slept in it last night.  He thinks he's pretty cool.  Sad that all of the baby things are leaving our house but at the same time so very excited about it.  My kids are great and have been learning to play together.  It's so nice.  But if you've been around us lately you know Henry has already creeping towards age 2 with tantrums and fits.  That is always so much fun.  He is very interested in the potty as well.  I'm not forcing the issue but if I didn't have to tackle him to change a diaper I would be ok with that.

We hope everyone is having a great holiday season so far.  Ours continues with all of the busy things going on.  We host Christmas for my Mom and sisters family this weekend.  Paige gets to go to her first ISU Basketball game and then it's actually the week of Christmas!  So fun!!  Love to all!