Steve, Jami, Cooper and Cameron: Makin' my list and checkin' it twice

Before I start this post about all of our happenings, I wanted to direct you to another blog. Colin & Noelle are friends from church who are in the process of adopting a little boy from Ethiopia. They just received their referral about 2 months ago. They were in our small group when they first mentioned the idea of adopting, it's wonderful to watch their whole experience. They are currently making Christmas ornaments for a fundraiser. I have a picture of mine below but you can click on their name above to see the other one as well. Each one is hand painted by Noelle and attached is the year and hand written thank you. It is beautiful in person. If you are interested in purchasing an ornament, all their info can be found on their blog.

When we left CBS leader's council on Tuesday, Cameron's teachers had what I thought was a gift for him wrapped up in his bag. Turned out to be this adorable ornament they had made in class. I love it! We have so many of Cooper's ornaments on the tree after two years of preschool and now kindergarten, I love it that Cameron is finally getting in on the action.

Somehow we have gotten around to having 4 Christmas countdown calendars of some sort. It can be draining getting them all changed, but fun nonetheless. This first one I got way before we had kids.

I think this is the third year for Cooper and I to do Santa's beard. We are now on the last row, which makes things super exciting.

I picked this up last year after Christmas.

And finally, they made this at school. Cooper cut off the 20th this morning, which is awesome for him cause he knows we are celebrating at my mom's on the 21st.

We tried to go to see Santa at Bass Pro on Sunday after church but it was a mad house. We tried again on Wednesday, it looked like a long line but moved much quicker than it looked. To top it off, Cameron's isn't afraid!!! They were both so cute. Cameron said he wanted Art or Sully from Monsters University and Cooper wanted a Captain America Shield.

We had our carriage ride in the Charlestown Park last night. It was such a perfect night to go.

The boys got some play time in before our reservation.

He sure does love his Uncle Scott.

Check out Cooper's scarf, that was a gift from the PTO to all the students in the school. He loves that thing. Probably cause he sees me wear some sort of scarf just about everyday.

I want to give a shout out to this man right here! A few months back things got really slow at work. He's hourly so if you don't have patients, you don't work, if you don't work, you don't get paid. It was looking bad at one point. So he stepped up and signed up for a few weekends at his PRN job. One of those happened to fall the weekend of our snow storm. He worked like 13 days straight or something crazy. Then, his buddy Russell who started his own home health company finally got all his paperwork so he can be reimbursed through Medicare. Steve now has 2 patients he sees twice a week each after his regular job. Possibly a third. Oh.. and did I mention his hours picked back up? He's been busy. In the end though, all the extra income has put a lot less strain during this busy time of year.

I tried to get a picture on the carriage ride but I guess you can't use your flash and Steve put his hand up as I was taking. It had the potential to be adorable. Any good Photoshop people out there?