Family Advent Camp

The second weekend of December, we attended our first Family Advent Camp at Camp Chrysalis with several families from our church. We left Austin Friday afternoon. When it started getting dark, Lil' Bro started crying. It seems he does not like traveling in the dark. After an exhausting drive, we finally arrived at Camp Chrysalis just in time for orientation.

We stayed in a cabin with four "rooms" and a common space, but no one else in the cabin was from Shepherd of the Hills. Saturday morning we awoke and enjoyed our first Family camp breakfast...pancakes and sausage. 

After Bible study, we enjoyed constructing our very own gingerbread house.

While our gingerbread houses dried, so they could be structurally sound, we enjoyed lots of camp activities. Big Bro was a big fan of archery!

Then we went back to decorate our gingerbread houses.

And we enjoyed making some ornaments and doing some other Christmas crafts.

Our first family of four canoe ride!

We enjoyed roasting marshmallows and eating yummy s'mores! 

What a wonderful, relaxing weekend before an insanely busy couple of weeks. We hope this becomes a wonderful family tradition.

Nursery Reveal

Now that Lil' Bro is 7 months old, here is his nursery reveal! Unlike Big Bro, who did not even have a crib until he was 5 months old, Lil' Bro's nursery was mostly complete before he was born. We just had a few finishing touches to complete.

Here is a view of the IKEA hacked china hutch I turned into a changing table/dresser.

Some of the details of the room. The "Bless This Child" banner was a gift from the Sprout family for Big Bro when he was baptized. It hung at Big Bro and Lil' Bro's baptismal parties and now lives in Lil' Bro's room. Also, you will notice the boys baptismal gown displayed on the wall, too!

The bear painting used to hang in my room when I was a little girl. My grandmother painted it for me, and it is really special that I can share it with Lil' Bro.

I folded the stars on this mobile. It was a fun little project to complete in my final days of pregnancy, and Lil' Bro loves looking at it.

Dallas Trip

Mommy and Lil' Bro took our first solo road trip to Dallas the first weekend in December while Daddy and Big Bro were on their first solo road trip to Santa Fe. More on that later. Back to our Dallas trip. We left Friday afternoon. Lil' Bro was cooperative for a short while. Then he pretty much cried the rest of the way, except when I stopped and pulled him out of his car seat. Then he was happy. We stopped at Brenna's house and spent the night there so Mommy and Brenna could spend some quality time together. 

On Saturday we went to Grandmom's house.

And we met the Reynolds at the park.