Our VERY Blessed Christmas ~ 2011

We let Joshua and Matthew open one present on Christmas Eve!

Joshua never really bothered about all the presents until we received 2 big boxes from all my family back in Ontario...then he asked everyday (more than once) to open "just one present." :) So, knowing what these presents were, we let them open these from Uncle Ben, Aunt Alicia, Eric, Alaina, and Aaron.

Joshua - "Its a blue jammy shirt!"

Joshua - "Hafme got a green jammy shirt too!"

(Joshua call Matthew 'Hafme')

Little Brother

Big Brother

Christmas morning!!!

"The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...." ;)

Look at all those presents! The Lord certainly blessed us with many presents this year!

Matthew just woke up :) we woke the boys up at 6:30am to start opening presents (with my parents on skype) before church. Matthew was all smiles when I brought him out!

1st Christmas 2011

The first thing Joshua saw was this Thomas set :) he was very excited!!!! "Wow, is that mine Thomas?"

Joshua was so happy that he was finally able to dig into those presents!

Stocking time!

Matthew didn't need much help digging into his stocking, as soon as I handed it to him, he dumped it out :)

'Santa' bag! Growing up my parents always made up little bags for us with little things in it like tooth brushes, tooth paste, ornaments and stuff like that. The boys was stuffed :)

What a better way to start your day that to eat a nice real fruit snack....to bad he's to young to have it, he just got to enjoy the wrapper ;)

Matthew opening his trumpet from Auntie Holly and Uncle Joel (to be)!

Joshua opening his tool set from Auntie Holly and Uncle Joel (to be)

They both wanted to open up the toys right away...I think they forgot about all the other presents for a minute :)

See, there is Dad, Mum, and Holly on the computer...it was really neat to use skype!

Its a......office chair, repeat office chair! Surprise!

This chair was my big black Friday grab!

A Thomas pillow!!!! We let both the boys open up these gifts at the same time (knowing they were the same). I poked a whole in Matthew's to help him get started and Joshua saw the 'Thomas' colors and grabbed Matthews and wanted to open it. He said, "Oh Thomas, my have that, I see it!" So I quickly poked a whole in his so he saw that his was the same and he was very pleased!! :)

They LOVE their Thomas pillows!

Matthew's 2011 Christmas bear! It has a tux on :)

Fireman Joshua

Matthew's 1st remote control car :) We had a hard time trying to figure out what to buy for Matthew. Since he is our second son, he already has all the 'boy' toys he needs from Joshua, be we still wanted to buy him something....

I found this at walmart two days before Christmas! As soon as I saw it I knew it would be perfect! He loves it! All he as to do is shake the rattle and the cars zooms off :)

Fire truck little people

the mess has begun...

We had to take the toys away from Matthew so he could open the next one...he was so excited to play with the new toy as he opened it. We could have just bought him one and he would have been satisfied.

Joshua was getting right into after opening the first couple of presents. After opened it, he would sit and look at it for a few minutes and if he could play with it he would, the he would put it aside and say, "Ok open more now please!"

Power tools with an interchangeable battery...just like Daddy!!! :)

This is his tool cart!

Messy...

messy...

messy! It's all part of Christmas :) and we LOVE everything about Christmas :)

Joshua's new horse and cowboy hat :) he's so cute!

Matthew's 1st Christmas outfit!

Merry Christmas to everyone!!!

p.s. Matthew started crawling yesterday!!!! January 1 2012 :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU FROM US!

Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful day celebrating Jesus' birthday!

Here are a couple picures of our fun!...

Joshua and his new horse and cowboy hat, Christmas tree tie and all.... he looks like an old fashion preacher :)

Matthew's first Christmas outfit! He was loving every minute of the day!

Our day was full of many blessings, memories, laughter, and fun!

I hope the rest of your Christmas time is a wonderful time, full of blessings from above!more pictures to come...... ;)

Christmas Boys

Joshua didn't want his picture taken with his hat on :)

Matthew has been wearing Joshua's Christmas hat from Joshua's 1st Christmas, so we bought Joshua a new Christmas hat from walmart last week for .95 cents :)

I don't usually have a problem getting this little man to smile though! See his 2 teeth :)

I love this shot!! I can't believe that Matthew is already 8 months!

Big eyes and chubby cheeks ;)

"CHEESE!!!" There we go... I only had to tickle him a few times!


Merry Christmas!!!!!!
5 more sleeps until Christmas!

Blessings Keep Falling!!

It is AMAZING how the LORD works when you sit back and let HIM lead! Like I mentioned a previous post, the Lord has been teaching us to trust HIM and not our own income....

well, today Nathan came home with a smile on his face (with the work that he has been doing these last couple of weeks, I was not expecting it), he was given a $2/hr raise!!! Praise the Lord!! Yet again, HE has proven to us that when we sit back and let HIM lead, He will provide :) It is amazing to see the hand of the Lord at work! What an AWESOME GOD we are privileged to serve!


We are going to get are Christmas family pictures done tonight!!!! :) a bit late, but oh well!

We Have been Blessed!

In the last few months the Lord has been teaching us that trusting Him for our needs is more important than trusting our own income. We praise the Lord for His patience and faithfulness! He is such an amazing, loving Lord! We had been stretching our food (I mean ssstttrrreeetttccchhhiiinnnggg) for a while and just when we thought we couldn't make it we received a phone call. Through a special someone, the Lord gave us sooooooo much! The night following the phone call we received 6 bags of bagels, 2 loaves of bread, 2 huge bags of dinner rolls, a package of cheese bread sticks, a package of croissants, and a package of muffins (yes, all breads...bad for the diet, but...the Lord knew exactly what we needed and when!) When I was first told that we were going to be getting some bread, it was just a couple bags of dinner rolls. When it was all dropped off, I felt like it was Christmas morning :) The Lord not only knows when we need things, but He knows how to give A LOT!!

The part that makes this blessing amazing is the morning before we received our bread blessing, the Lord gave that 'special someone' a verse while they were reading their Bible that morning. I am so glad they shared.....

"I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread."

Psalm 37:25

This verse has become so real to us. Thank the Lord for His abundant blessings!

Lil worker man

I mentioned in the previous post about Nathan's personal little helper; Joshua! Well, he also has a Lil helper in training :)

Who wouldn't want this Lil helper?! :)

"Lil helper for hire...as long as you don't mind drool!" ;D

"Lil helper will work for cookies!!!"

Mr. Mouse! Joshua 'made' this mouse with his cousin Eric at a Wal-mart version of Build a Bear, in 2009, he still Loves him :)

"C is for Cookie!!!!"

YUMMY! Matthew LOVES his arrowroots! All I have to do is ask him if you wants a cookie and his face lights right up :) just like his Mommy LOL!

23 sleeps until Christmas!!!!

Tuesday was Christmas Tree Day!!!!

I spent the day cleaning, rearranging, and cleaning and rearranging some more.... :D We had to move a few things around in the living room to make space for our Christmas tree. I took the coffee table apart and put that away for the time being, we moved our bedroom around to fit our massive TV in there. Now our beautiful Christmas tree has taken its place in our living room! It is so beautiful! Enjoy some pictures from our Christmas tree day :)

Matthew Alexander - reindeer #2

Yes, reindeer's have bubbas too... haha!

Sorry, I didn't realize that this picture was so bright until I uploaded it.

The vacuum was used a lot that day :)

Joshua Alan - Reindeer #1

Joshua still LOVES all his stuffed animals! He chose his Christmas doggy to come with us to pick out our tree ;D

Matthew's 1st Christmas tree hunt....yes, as you can tell from the picture, we went to Lowe's to get our tree. It get so dark so early here so we were not able to go to a tree farm to cut our own this year. We all had fun looking through all the trees anyways ;)

Nathan and Joshua...Nathan's personal little helper! Wherever Nathan goes....Joshua goes!! I love it :)

"CHEESE!!!" for a while Joshua wouldn't let me take his picture...now he gets quite into it! Thankfully, because I love to take pictures!!!

Joshua and Mommy!

Matthew and Mommy!

I love you!

Our 5th Christmas together!!!

Nathan and our boys...we found our perfect tree! I forgot to take a picture of the tree while we were there, but its the one sitting beside Joshua.

Our boys and myself :)

Waiting for Daddy to get the van to load our tree!

Joshua is really Nathan's personal little helper. While Nathan was setting up the tree and making sure that it was standing up straight, Joshua ran and grabbed his worker man hat, a saw (Nathan was clipping some strangling branches), and he stole one of Nathans gloves :) to... " I help Daddy fix the Christmas tree!"

It was getting pretty late by the time we got back home and set the tree up in the stand and cleaned up all the needles, so we put the boys to bed and decided to decorate the next day. I just put the lights and ribbon on that night so I didn't have to worry about it the next day when Joshua wanted to help.

This picture is of Joshua's 1st Christmas ball! He hung that one all by himself :) and loved every second of it!

Just about to hang up his Frosty ball!

Hard at work decorating the Christmas tree with Mommy!

Matthew was in awe of the tree! He sat and watched us almost the entire time! ...probably trying to figure out how to get over to the tree and play with all the decorations we were hanging!

Taking a break from all the tree excitement and watching a baby Einstein movie :) He LOVES them too! :)

These next couple of pictures are some of my favorite decorations.... this one has 'snow' inside!

this one is sooooooooo sparkly! Love it :)

I have a blue, white, silver and snowflake theme on our tree...I got the inspiration from these balls!

still working hard!

Matthew working on getting to the tree... :)

almost there.......!!!!!!

Mommy intervened and gave him a box instead :) which in his eyes was a pretty good trade!!!

Ta-Da!!!! Here it is! Our PERFECT Christmas Tree!!! This Christmas is going to be very special! This will be Nathan and my 5th Christmas, Joshua's 3rd, but first that he really understands, and Matthew's 1st Christmas!!! We always love and look farward to celebrating our Saviours birth!!

Only 23 more sleeps until Christmas...

Merry Christmas!

Here a couple shots from the end of November.

These boys, they just LOVE each other! If you know Joshua, you know that he loves this blanket and doesn't usually share it very well, but with Matthew he didn't even think twice! I wrapped them up so tight that they couldn't move! Hmmm, maybe that's why he didn't complain? Nah! ;D

They liked it so much they watched part of a Christmas movie like that :)