Grown Ups love Christmas too

I totally focused on Olive's Christmas but I thought it might be interesting to blog about my (and Scott's) Christmas too. I know, it seems like Christmas was forever ago now, so this might seem so last week.

I will say, we had a pretty great Christmas too. Scott totally faked me out about my present. I had only asked for one thing and it had been sold out for weeks. The only thing my heart desired was a set of knitting needles. My stomach would flutter at the thought of having every size of needle. So it stinks when specialty stores sell out of something because it takes awhile to get replaced. Scott and his tricky ways gave me an IOU coupon as one of my presents but then had wrapped my gift in a big box to throw me off. It totally worked and I was so surprised.

I got him a condenser microphone to record music on his computer and I have to say I think it was a home run gift. He has basically used it for 3 days straight.


The high light of my gifts was a stocking full of Cadbury mini eggs. These are my all time favorite candy and I wait in anticipation every year for Easter. Somehow Scott found them and bought out the whole bin. I was very happy.

We had a fabulous morning opening presents followed by our traditional Christmas breakfast of yummy crepes. This was the only family photo I got from the day but I think it says it all. Plus then we got great gifts from family like movie tickets that I can't wait to use! And I will say, I have already started a project on my new needles!

What a Christmas!

Was that a whirlwind weekend for anyone else? Olive had an amazing Christmas, mostly because it was full of love and family (and presents, which she actually understood this year. She was very excited to give her grandparents her homemade paintings).
We started off with the traditional outing to a movie. Olive saw Yogi Bear and was surprisingly interested in such a bad movie, but there was absolutely nothing else to see since she has seen Tangled twice already.
Then it was off to dinner with the Patterson's. Olive was the angel in the nativity which she was very excited about.

Of course we had to open the new Christmas JimJams (as we call them).

Olive might have gotten a little spoiled this year. I kinda figure, this will be the only year where she will be the only one, and understand what is going on. It was kinda fun getting her fun things.

Olive is very into some specific things right now, namely princesses and barbies. So she had a rather themed Christmas.

She also got a wallet to hold all her important things.

And the grand finale was a barbie car with some princess barbies to ride in it. Let's just say she was in heaven.

Oh, but that is not all. Her Christmas also included:

crowns,

Barbie accessories,

outfit changes,

multiple outfit changes,

hours of cousin time,

some fine music,

and the hoarding of all her loot. Let's just say, it was quite the Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

If you didn't get a version of our card, here it is (I couldn't decide which I liked better) I hope you have a wonderful holiday!
PS I ran out of stamps so some of your cards might still be on the way!

Our Family Christmas Traditions

We have been very busy around here. December has been full of family and fun. Here are some of the things we have been doing.
Christmas lights at Temple Square:

Although Olive loved riding Trax and seeing the lights it was pretty chilly and she was ready to leave.

But she still had fun pointing out all the sparkling things to look at.


Playing with cousins at the family party:

We ate way too much food, exchanged gifts, sang silly versions of Jingle bells, donated to the angel tree and had a blast. Here is Olive performing Pablo the Reindeer at the talent portion.


We decorated gingerbread houses:

Olive was fine watching while she ate a steady stream of sweets.

I think it turned out cute.

One new tradition we have done this year is a Christmas mailbox. Every evening before our bedtime routine, there is a special (small) surprise waiting in there. I am imagining that as our kids grow up they will also get the occasional treat, special message or letter, and be able to write notes or leave things for each other in there. Olive LOVES her mailbox.

We have also started a collection of Christmas books. We read one (or a few) every night before bed.


We have gotten a lot of our non extended family traditions already checked off but not all of them. The next 2 evenings are going to be extra busy so we thought we would try and squeeze most of them into one night. So this evening we are going to: deliver neighbor gifts, eat shepherd's dinner, have our family nativity night/lesson, drive to see Christmas lights, and open our new Christmas story. Then more family dinners with both extended families, acting out the nativity, a Christmas movie and new Christmas PJs. I am so excited for Christmas, but I feel like it is coming too fast!

We are SO decorated for Christmas

Christmas is in full swing around here. I started thinking about our decorations and realized that the majority of our decorations were homemade either by me or by someone else which we then inherited.

Here is our tree. It is the tree we bought when we were first married so it is a bit sad. I think this year we are going to buy a new one, hopefully we can find a good sale after Christmas.

Last year it was a constant battle with Olive to get her to leave our tree decorations alone. As I thought more about it I figured this is probably going to be a problem for quite a while since she is only our first child. So I decided to make our decorations. I am pretty happy with them, mostly because I don't worry about them at all. I like that Olive can take them off the tree and examine them and it's no sweat. Also, Scott's family had homemade ornaments similar to these ones while he was growing up and they have so many memories attached to them. But, I kinda got the scale wrong for our tiny tree. Maybe next year they wont seem so huge on a normal sized tree.

These stars turned out to be much more difficult than I had anticipated. So I ended up just sewing them on the exterior and I really like how they look.

Since our homemade decorations turned out so big we didn't have as much room for our other decorations. I improvised and hung them in front of our window.

I saw this gift box garland in a Pottery Barn magazine a while ago. I thought it looked so festive and Christmas-y. But it also seemed like an inexpensive way to decorate. So I thought I would give it a try. I think it would look really great on an awesome staircase or something, but this kinda works (for now).

I chose silver with different red/white ribbon. I just used whatever I had. That set me on a silver binge so almost all my decorations are silver. I have to laugh at myself because I must like it more than I knew (guess what my wedding colors were (but minus the red and add in hydrangea blue)).

Here is our fireplace. Remember those Pottery Barn copied stockings? I am kinda proud because they passed as really PB ones when my friend came over. Although, I better get busy because I didn't plan ahead at all and only made three.

So that ends my homemade decorations, but I think I like these next ones even more. My great aunt loved to make and decorate Christmas villages. She had a huge village that took up multiple rooms in her house. When she passed away we inherited part of it.

Ours are not all homemade but I really love the ones she did paint. My mom's whole village is this cute. Isn't it awesome?

Finally, Scott's grandma made everyone a cute nativity scene. Unfortunately she passed before ours was finished. We are missing a Mary and Jesus, which are kinda important players. My plan is to finish them by next year.

Arent' they so cute? I love them!

So, as you can see we are very ready for Christmas. Good thing it is only a week away!

Then There Were 4

When choosing a name for this blog we were days away from meeting Olive. I hadn't felt a reason to blog before her. But then once she came I wanted to show her off to the world. I thought she was the most amazing thing on earth. I didn't think twice about calling our blog the pattersonthree. We weren't just Scott and Maren anymore, we were the Patterson Three! It felt momentous. It felt huge. It was such a life change to go from just two to 3!
And over these past 2 years it has felt like we were the 3. Like three musketeers or something. Everything in Olive's world is mom, dad, and her. It felt cozy and comfortable and in lots of ways easy.
But now I laugh that we chose the Patterson Three. I knew even then that we weren't always going to be three but it was so overshadowed that I didn't think anything of it. It seemed like so far in the future.
Well apparently, the future is here:


Because we are no longer the Patterson Three. Now we are 4! We are so happy and excited to be adding on to our family. The 3 musketeers were fun, but now it time to grow up a bit. A family of 4 seems like a real family.

We found out that it is a boy. Scott is elated and I am still coming to terms a bit, but happy. Everything looked great at our sonogram and he is growing perfectly.

We debated quite a bit about whether or not to share the name we have chosen. We tried not to tell with Olive's name but slipped and then told anyway. I am almost positive we are going to do the same thing this time because we call him by his name around the house. We chose it immediately and had no question. We really love it!

We have decided to name him Milo Scott Patterson.
(if you are not in love with the name maybe you can come to terms with it by the next time I see you!)

Homemade Christmas Gifts

As Christmas is fast approaching it seems like a rush to get everyone presents. Scott's family has the tradition that all the grandchildren give to each other. That is really fun, but also means we have to figure out how to give gifts to 11 kids. This year I decided to do some homemade gifts in a effort to keep it affordable. So I made these:

They are homemade knit necklaces. The girls are all preteens so I thought this was the perfect gift. Besides I have been seeing these chunky necklaces everywhere so they seem rather trendy and if I know anything, it is that preteens like trends.

My inspiration came from one of my favorite blogs (that I have mentioned and copied before) that you can see here. I decided to make the crochet flowers instead of using silk and I think they turned out great.

There are six girls all in a row so it was quite a project. I think it is cute that they will all match!

For the littlest girl I made a matching headband.

I, of course, had to make one for Olive. She idolizes these girls and tries to be just like them so I knew she would insist on having a necklace like them. I ran out of yarn though so her flower is purple. It really warmed my heart when they seemed so excited about them. Today we all got together to make gingerbread houses and most of them were wearing their new necklaces. It was pretty great!