First Christmas!

Today was Christmas morning in the Huber house! We will be heading to South Dakota on Tuesday for Christmas with the Huber's so Brett and I decided to have a little family Christmas of our own first. We cuddled in bed last night watching "Elf", said Merry Christmas Eve to each other and quickly fell asleep before even making it a fourth of the way through the movie. We awoke this morning, rubbed our tired eyes and sprinted down the stairs to our stockings. Ok so the sprinting down the stairs didn't exactly happen like that...it might have been more of a walk rather than a sprint but none the less we made it to the tree where Santa (aka Brett and I) left each other sweet goodies in our new stockings.

myself looking a bit on the prego chubby side! gotta love it!



brett looking beyond excited to dig into his stocking!



us and our stockings still with tired eyes!

We were so excited about the combined traditions we can now continue with our family. Waking up and digging into the stockings was first on the list followed by our combined traditional breakfast. Brett's family always has grapefruit with their Christmas breakfast and my family always made pancakes with the first pancake for each person as the first letter of their name. We also always had sparkling grape juice to accompany our breakfast!

Brett did a wonderful job carrying on the tradition of the pancakes!

Our Christmas breakfast!

After filling our bellies full of Christmas breakfast goodness we headed back over the couch where Brett read us the Christmas story from Luke 2. We took in the beauty of our Saviors birth and cuddled on the couch talking about how next year we will have a little guy cuddling with us. Eventually we will get a nativity set and follow the Huber tradition of reading the Christmas story while each member of the family gets to move around their assigned person or animal. Our last tradition that we kept was to open gifts...although this year we decided to do a combined gift for each other which is yet to be decided what that is going to be so we saved one of our stocking gifts (that didn't fit in the stocking anyway) and we opened our gifts! It was such a beautiful morning with my husband...the best Christmas we've ever had.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night...at least for now!

Here are a few pictures of our recent ice storm as well...

Ginger Bread Houses and Ugly Christmas Sweaters!

I had a few of my small group girls over this weekend to make ginger bread houses! Neither of them had ever made one and it has been a few years since I have made one myself but a great tradition I grew up with. I had asked Brett awhile back if he wanted to make one with me but he seemed to think it was a "lame idea" so I asked my small group girls to do it with me instead! We had a blast building and of course...eating!

Me, Chelsea, and Kirsten with our sweet houses!



my ginger bread house

We also went to the Second Annual Ugly Christmas Sweater Party this weekend! Neither Brett or I won the ugliest sweater contest but we enjoyed a lot of really good food and enjoyed being with friends!

What a cute family!



Mike and Brett

Decorating for Christmas!!!

I have been anxiously awaiting for December to come so I could decorate for Christmas. I've never been so excited to put up lights, pick out a tree, and decorate the house as I was this year! Maybe it's because this is our first year in a house together...our first Christmas as a married couple! It was strange to think that not only is this our first Christmas as a married couple but it is also our last Christmas as just the two of us...it feels a bit bitter-sweet right now but I know after our little boy is born we will never look back. We spent the last few days soaking up the holiday spirit going to a parade of lights with good friends, hanging our lights outside, going to a tree lot and picking out a tree, and of course getting the tree home and decorating it! All that's left is a bit of shopping and most importantly soaking in the goodness of the birth of Christ, our Savior!

Parade of Lights!
It's a two mile long stretch of Christmas lights built into different things.



Brett putting up lights outside!
(I was a bit too cold so I watched from our front door)



Picking out our Christmas tree!



Bringing our tree inside!



Our decorated tree!



Our first and last Christmas as a family of two!

the sixth!

We've been tagged by Shannon!

Our mission...to find the sixth folder of pictures and then find the sixth picture in that folder and post it.

Here it is...

(click on the picture to enlarge it...you have to see the look on his face)

This was this past summer at Ben Miller's going away party. We went to Jubilee State Park and grilled out and then some of us camped. A group of the boys played a game of wiffle ball and it just so happens that the sixth picture was of Brett making the weirdest face and standing in a really awkward position...so funny! I laughed pretty hard when I saw what picture it was we had to use. Brett on the other hand said, "you have got to be kidding me...what's the next picture...oh of course it couldn't have been that picture". He is a little disappointed and has now threatened to post a very embarrassing picture of me...ha yeah right. He is yet to post on here so I don't think it will happen :) Hope everyone enjoyed this! I know I did!

The instructions are for me to tag 4 other people now so I am tagging...

Jenny Fugler
Sondra Harcey
Heidi Shearer
Ashley Tawfik


Here are the instructions:
1. Go to your sixth picture folder and find the sixth picture.
2. Pray you remember the details!
3. Post it on your blog.
4. Tag four others and leave a comment on their blog to let them know they've been tagged.

Minnesota Thanksgiving!

We had the most wonderful thanksgiving this year, full of time with both of our families and friends! I'll do a little recap of each day we were in Minnesota.

*Disclaimer - this post is kind of long so if you don't feel like reading it all you can get a good idea of what we did from the pictures.

Thursday:

Thanksgiving Day! We spent the night at my Aunt's house in Stillwater and had our first Thanksgiving meal with all of my immediate family and extended family on my mom's side. It was pure craziness with so many young kids running around and screaming, but we loved every min of it. Of course we got a game of hand-and-foot in as well. Brett's family came up for Thanksgiving day as well so we headed over to Dan and Heidi's (brett's sister and brother-in-law) for round two of our Thanksgiving meal. Both meals were excellent! We got to meet the newest little additions to the Shearer family...our new neices.

Shearer Family
Dan, Heidi, Evelyn, and Anna

Grandpa Huber and Anna sleeping



So precious!

Friday:

We stayed in Stillwater again and woke up to my Mom, neices and nephews, and Grandma still at my Aunt's. It was a pleasant surprise to be able to just relax and chat with all of them a bit more. We headed over to Bloomington to visit Dan and Heidi and the girls again but first we had to make a stop at REI. We didn't buy a single thing but we sure did dream a lot of all the things we would like to have...we love that store! After we were done dreaming at REI we headed over to the Shearer's and had the most relaxing time there just chatting and holding Anna and Evelyn. We loved every min of it.

Uncle Brett getting some practice before our little guy comes!

Whenever Brett and I go back to Minnesota it always seems so...not relaxing. There are so many people that we want to be able to see while we are home in Minnesota but time usually does not permit to see everyone and it requires a lot more driving on our part so this time we decided why not get everyone together for an evening...great idea right? It was so wonderful! We met everyone at Broadway Pizza and then some of us went to the Macy's Christmas Display.

The girls at Broadway Pizza (minus Heidi and the babies)
Naomi, Becky, Me, Julie, Sondra, Courtney

The guys (minus Dan)
Luke, Brett, EJ



The five of us at the Macy's Christmas Display
Brett, Me, Julie, Becky, and EJ

Saturday:

We drove up to Cambridge after the Macy's display and stayed with my Mom. Brett is not much of a sleeping in kind of a guy and I think it has rubbed off onto me because neither of us tend to sleep in. Although we had our first exception on Sat. morning...we woke up to my Mom cooking waffles, eggs, and bacon. I thought...it can't be past 7:00am why is she making all that noise already. We deicided to get up only to find out it was 10:15am...the latest we have ever slept together and it was wonderful and so refreshing. My Mom is fixing up the downstairs where she rents out the house and so Brett went down there to help fix things up while Mom and I looked through the many, many, many boxes of Christmas decorations that Mom has. My Mom is one of those decorate in a new theme each year for Christmas kind of a person so needless to say she has accumulated a lot of Christmas decorations over the years. The best part...we went through every box and she let me take whatever I wanted to start our own Christmas collection. It was wonderful and such a blessing to be given so much stuff and not having to buy it all or wait years and years to accumulate decorations.

Some of my favorite decorations...some are ones I remember as a kid
and others I just thought were fun. Brett's favorite it the one on the
far right that is Santa made out of a shotgun shell.

Sat. evening we went to the Lundgren's house to visit Luke and Naomi Perman. Naomi, Bear, and I got in a sweet game of hand-and-foot! We visited with them for awhile before heading over to Dan and Heidi's for the evening. I was telling Brett as we were driving over to their house that it is so nice being able to see Heidi and Dan so much this time and how I wished we all lived closer to each other. We had another relaxing evening with them and the babies.

Sunday:

We saw our first bit of snow of the year! Beautiful! We got up in the morning and had breakfast with Dan and Heidi, hung out for a bit, got a little last min. baby holding time, said our goodbyes until Christmas and then made our way to St.Paul to go to the Muellers church (Bob Mueller married Brett and I and both him and Lisa have made a huge impact on my life - they are like my second set of parents!) It was great to be able to see them since haven't seen them since the wedding. We went out to eat with them after church, had a great meal and great fellowship and then started to make our way back home to Peoria. We had some pretty bad roads on the way home but by the grace of God we made it home safely. I was so proud of Brett...he is such a great driver and I feel so safe with him even when there are bad roads. In the past few years I have really started to hate driving when the roads are bad...I get a really uneasy feeling but thanks to my wonderful husband he drove the whole 7 hours from the cities to Peoria so I wouldn't have to drive in the bad weather...what a man!

Sorry the post was so long but I wanted to get everything in from our trip back to Minnesota...every part of it was just so wonderful that I didn't want to leave anything out. Thanks for sticking it out and reading it all!