Good Family Weekend

Part of keeping up with your well-being is to be sure you make time for family.  A loving family is one of life's precious gifts.  Make sure you nurture and teach your children how important they are to you.  Show them that no matter what you have going on, you are never too busy for them.  Let them see the love between you and your husband/wife (or your significant other). Being surrounded by loving relationships is very important for their development.  It teaches them how to maintain healthy relationships as adults and shows them what love looks like.

So this past weekend the hubby and I made sure to do just that. We made time to just relax and enjoy life. Our main goals were to finally get our tree up,  get my husband to relax a little (he has been working nonstop on his projects), plan little man's 1st birthday, and to just spend time with the kids.

Friday was a success. I finally got our tree up with the help of my mom and grandmother.  So basically it took 3 generations to put up one tree.  But I loved it.  We had a good laugh since I am so anal about decorating.  I have my own little procedures that I need to follow and everything has to be done the way I like to do them (I know. It's one of my many quirks). So here I am, bossing these two grown women around. But we all had a great time.  Not to mention little man crawling all around us trying to get hold of the decorations we were trying so hard to put up.  I have got to tell you. He absolutely loves the holidays.  He gets so mesmerized by all the lights and decorations.  All you hear is "ooohh. ooohhh". That's his new thing as he points to the tree. I don't blame him one bit.  Our tree is simple, but beautiful.  I love it.

Our tree during the day

Little man's birthday planning is coming along.  I was able to go to Party City and order some stuff on orientaltrading.com, so I am almost done with the decorations.  All that is left is for me to put the menu together and then just execute.  But I have about 2 more weeks left, so plenty of time to get it all ironed out. One of the most important ingredients of a successful party is a beautiful, over the top cake.  Thankfully, my aunt is an extremely talented cake decorator.  She is awesome and they taste great too.  So I cannot wait to see what she creates for little man.  Don't worry, pictures WILL be posted of the entire celebration.

Saturday's weather was beautiful.  The sun was shining, there was a warm breeze. The birds were chirping. My mother and I took the opportunity to take a nice walk with the kids.  I couldn't help but to stop and take in some of nature's beauty.

Great view from the walkway

Beautiful bush growing in our front garden

My youngest daughter had a project for school due today and she was very adamant on having Daddy help her out.  I have got to tell you, it came out great.  They had to decorate a unique gingerbread person. So collectively we put our heads together to come up with something different.  We were pretty sure that everyone was going to go the same route and do a Santa or elf gingerbread man.  So we came up with a Minion gingerbread man.  If you have ever seen Despicable Me, you know exactly what I am talking about. Here is what they created together:


Pretty good huh?  Our youngest daughter was so proud of their creation. It is so cute to see her and daddy working together on something.  They had their heads together working diligently.  The sight was too cute, I wish I had gotten a picture of it.

Sunday was all about rest.  One of our traditions is to sit around the tree and watch a movie while drinking hot cocoa.  We didn't do the hot cocoa, but we had another little surprise.  My oldest daughter (9 years old) prepared dinner for us!  Under my supervision of course. But she did everything herself.  She was so proud and it came out delicious.  Great job baby!

So that was our weekend.  The best part about it was being with the family.  We finally got into the Christmas mode and found time to sit back and enjoy each other.  It was perfect.