Sticks and Stones

"Sticks and Stones may break my bones but words will never harm me."  Hmm....whoever made this the famous statement obliviously lived in a bubble!  The words that we say to others will leave a lasting impression that you can never take back (we can say I am sorry but sometimes it doesn't work).  And let me add our actions also leave that same impression.  As parents and adults we usually talk to other adults about our problems.  And sadly so we often think that our children are not listening but they are.  At least 2 times a week our oldest daughter tells me that someone hurt her feelings by saying something ugly to her, laughing at her when she fell down, pushed her to see if she would fall, or simply tell her I cant play with you because you are too sassy and bossy and my mom told me not to.  Now let me step back and say that I know some of this is just 6 year old girls and she can over dramatize events and yes my little girl is bossy and sassy at times but all women are at some point!  But I also know that some of this is just plain out mean little kids.  Let's step back and take a long look in the mirror.  Where did these children see and hear this?  Us, the parents.  Sad isn't it.  And if you are sitting here thinking that your child has never "picked" on a child or said intentionally ugly comments sadly you are wrong.  My daughters are guilty of doing this to other kids but until they are treated the same way it just doesn't click with them.  Anytime I have any conflict with anyone hours and days later I always think "I wish I would have said this instead of that".  But its too late.  My jagged 2 headed sword as known as my tongue has already said it.  The bullying is only getting worse in today's society.  Turn on the news and you hear of school shooting where a young man wanted revenge on his teacher because  the teacher bullied him.  Or you hear of a teenage girl that took her life because she couldn't stand the torture for her classmates anymore because she simply wasn't like them or wasn't good enough.  When is it enough?  As a parent I am suppose to set the example of how to act and what kind of example am I setting if I am judging people because they aren't like me and my family.  Or because I don't agree with every decision they have made.  But who am I to judge because I am on the outside looking in. So the next time you think you should judge someone, speak unkind words, or treat someone badly think about what your child is seeing.  Think about how this will affect your testimony, your current walk with the Lord.  Its a lot to think about. 

Easily Forgettable........

I had a job interview where I was told that I had great qualifications but I was easily forgotten.  As I sat there listening to the words come out of his mouth I couldn't speak.  I was speechless.  Forgettable?  Really?  Well to my surprise I was offer the job on the spot because as soon as I walked out I was to be "forgotten".

 So what brings me to my title?  How often do we forget about the TRUE meaning of Christmas?  Is it all about the presents? Santa? Food? Hmmmm...........Nope not about that at all.  Christmas is the celebration of our Lord Jesus Christ!  But let me tell you our family has Santa come and visit.  His elf named Elf (don't think Abigail understood when she named him) comes yearly to watch over our girls.  I rush around on Black Friday finding the best deals, mark everything off my list, make sure that all the Christmas gifts are bought and wrapped.  Our living room is decked out with a Christmas tree, garland, wreath, bright red ornaments and big red bows!  Our Stockings are hung by the chimney with care!

We have presents under the tree, presents hidden away, outside is trimmed with lights.  so you can easily see we are ready for Christmas!  But this year my most prized outside decoration is..... 

 

I love the piece of decoration this year!  Its says it all!!!  JOY!  Look at the O.  Do you see the manager scene inside?  When you add the spotlight you will see the manager scene shining on the wall.  Or at least you are suppose to.  I didn't have a solid area on my house but I still love it.  :) 

 

With all the hustle and bustle of Christmas parties, family outings, Hallmark movies, Classic cartoons, shopping, baking, wrapping, HOHOHO'S we can easily forget Christ.  Take away Santa, take away the presents, take a away the tree and what do you have?  The reason for the season. We wont take away Santa or the gifts or the fun memories we make and cherish with our silly Nawlin Family Fun BUT we will remember the reason we celebrate.   So you see I am easily "forgettable".  But CHRISTmas will never be forgotten in my house!

 

Merry Christmas! 

lights, Lights, LIGhts and more LIGHTS!!!!

Last year our pre lit tree died.  Dustin worked and worked to get the lights to work but after hours and days of trying we put strands of lights on the tree and moved on to decorating.  This year we decided to buy a plain jane no pre lit tree because in the past 9 years I can not tell you how many pre lit trees we have bought.  They just don't last and they are hard to replace.  And I am a picky Christmas tree person.  I Love Big, Fat, Full Trees!!!  Don't give me a skinny tree!  :) hahaha!!!  The saying "Go Big or Go Home" always plays in my mind when I look for trees.  I was shopping for a new tree and found not one but two!  And so I bought both.  One was on clearance for $15.  And that tree was the 1st one I put together and let the girls decorate.  And lets just say it doesn't meet the "Go Big or Go Home"! Its 6ft tall alright but about 2 feet is the metal rod and 4 feet is the tree.  :)  But my girls love it and it has found a home in their living room or as Abigail calls it "the gold room"!  Haahaa!  The other one is a beautiful (for an artificial), fluffy, fat, tree!  Once I got the trees in I wanted to get busy decorating but we have no lights.  So off to Wal Mart we go.  And I have forgotten all the choices of lights to choose from.  I think more now than 9 years ago.  LED lights, rope lights, colored lights, white lights, old time big bulb lights, etc.   There is a lot of choices for lights!  I am a white lights on the tree gal.  Its beautiful and bright!  Love it!!  My girls and hubby like colored.  I like the colored but when you sit in your living room with the lights off and the tree on nothing is prettier than the glowing white lights!  I love white lights, like colored and HATE runner/chaser lights!  They make me nervous!  Now once you figure out the kind of lights you get to choose the amount of lights!  20, 50, 100, 150, 300 Oh My!!!  Now remember we have had pre lit trees for the past 9 years.  So how many lights do need!!!  I go out to the lawn and garden center and look at the pre lit tree boxes to see how many lights are on the trees I have.  The 6ft tree had a little of 400 and the big one had 600.  All I kept thinking was no no no that just simply want do!!  So our little 6ft but really 4 ft tree has 600 colored lights and our 7 1/2 for tree has 900 white lights (so far)!  :)  I am thinking of adding more!  Remember Go Big and Bright!!  And during the process of adding lights to the tree I now remember why I Like pre-lit trees!  No ornaments are on our big tree now because we love to put them on as a family.  And our family will not be all together until next week!  I cant wait to get our ornaments out and remember when we got this ornament or that ornament.  Sweet memories!  Abigail will ask is this my ornament? How old was I?  I put names and year on their ornament of the year.  They each get one ornament from Hallmark each year.  And the ornaments are usually what they love that year.  Anabeth picked out Minnie Mouse and Sophia the 1st this year and when you play or talk to her its all about those two.  Abigail has not picked one out yet but we haven't went to the actual store to look either.  That day is on our Nawlin Family Fun calendar for next week!  :)  Happy Decorating! Keep it Merry and Bright!

Its Beginning to Look Alot Like Christmas!!!

Christmas!!!!!   Its the most Wonderful time of the year!  To me it is!!!  It does not take a lot to put me in the Christmas Spirit!  Simply because I love, love, love, love, love, (OK you get it) Love Christmas!!!  I really don't know why I love the season so much but I do!  Is it because this time of the year some people are more generous, fun loving, full of life, grateful or it might be that a part of me simply still believes in Santa!  You know you get underwear when you stop believing!  Hahaha!!! And notice I said "some" people.  Some people Christmas does the opposite effect on their  attitudes.  They cant stand a Christmas Song/carol, movies, decorations and they are usually in the worst mood.  I hope I never become one of the scrooges of Christmas (no offense to anyone who doesn't love Christmas as much as I do!)   I think I get more excited every year and I am more excited than my kids!  I am that Christmas Nut that starts counting and planning on December 26th.  I could listen to Christmas music all day every day.  It simply puts me in a good mood. 

While the Christmas Mood is jingling around in me I wanted to share some of our Christmas Traditions with you!  Today I have been working on our "Nawlin Family Fun" Calendar.  You really should try this because you put everything on the calendar starting on your time frame which ours is the Thanksgiving weekend.  I look at the activities we did last year and remember the fun times or the lets not do that again! Haha!!  With anything you do you will have the "what was I thinking" or "we really need to do this again" or "its almost there but still needs some work".  Planning is right up my alley so I take my time and organize each activities by the days of the week, church events, etc.  Its a lot of work in planning but if it simply puts a smile on my child's face it is worth every minute!  And some of you may be like "oh well money is tight this year so we will skip".  I encourage you not to do that!  90% of what I do is free or cost very little!!  Check out ABC Family's website for some great Traditions Christmas Movies, Ride around town to look at Christmas lights (or go to another town like we do to see the neighborhood display that is absolutely outstanding!), Elf usually brings us lots of Christmas crafts to do, take it back old school and make your Christmas cards, we roast marshmallows outside by the fire and watch a Christmas movie under the stars, game nights, baking cookies, Christmas caroling (I haven't convinced anyone to do this with yet but I am still trying!!), check your local church's for Christmas programs because this is truly the MAIN reason for Christmas!  This year since I can bake a little more I plan on taking some goodies to our neighbors.  You just never know when someone might need a little Christmas Cheer!  We do Christmas Shoe boxes to simply teach our girls their is more to Christmas than Santa and getting presents.  One year I want to adopt a child and have my girls provide Christmas for them.  There is soo much I want to do and such short season to do it in!!! 

Go outside the box this year and provide an one of a kind Christmas that your kids will talk about 20 years from now!!!  Last year was the first time I let Abigail make our Christmas cards.  She loved it!!!  and with our Christmas card list she took the time to think about that person and decorate, draw and color a card especially for them.  We, I tend to get so into our Christmas that everything has to be perfect and we lose the sight of the real meaning of Christmas.  Our girls decorate our tree.  And yes when you come to my house you will see areas of our tree that has no ornaments and some areas that are covered with tons of ornaments.  (Drives me nuts at times!)  Its not perfect but to our girls its perfect to them!  I will have years of "perfect" trees when the kids are out of the house but the ones they decorate will always be my favorite.  The Christmas cards Abigail did last year are my favorite!  Simplify your Christmas by not being "perfect" and Enjoy the special time and bond with your love ones!  (And I learned this last year through a devotion I did!) :)

So what are your Christmas Traditions?

The Last of Texas!

The last few days of Texas were a little of the same of stuff except Memaw and Pops came and visited!  And man oh man were we all excited to see familiar faces from home!  We decided to take them to the Texas State Aquarium, and it was wonderful!!!  The girls loved it all!!  Anabeth loved the dolphin until......"he splashed me in my face"!

Abigail petted the Sting Rays!

Must be good!!!

Watching the Dolphins before the show starts!

Playing Dress Up!

At the Aquarium and Anabeth just was not in a picture taking mood.  :(  And my pictures are out of order for some reason but oh well!  :)

Last time at the Splash Park!

And this little pig stole my whole bowl of peaches! 

Getting our Smurfs On!  :)

And Hollywood looking at the water fall!

 

Bags are packed and ready to go!  Alabama Here We Come!!!



Texas Again........

First of all I am sorry so late!  For some reason I was only able to upload 1 picture.  :( 
I hate the internet down here.  Super Super SLOW!!  Finally got home and was able to upload all the pictures!

The girls have a great week!  We went to IHOP and lets say that my Hollywood girls were the topic of conversation.  Anabeth walks in with her sunglasses on and says "door momma!"  and "chair momma"!  Talk about Diva!  She was pointing and demanding to every command she order me!  The girls loved it! 

Abigail was really excited about her pancakes, eggs, bacon and sausage!!

 

After the Hollywood Divas were done eating we went to the Movies!! 

 

 

Turbo was a cute movie but in Abigail's words "well that is one I don't want to watch again!"  Hahaha!!  Anabeth slept through it so all in all not a favorite of this Family.

 

 

We went to Target a few days ago and I was on a mission for party supplies.  Abigial wants a Pool Party so I was searching for pool stuff since Target marked down the summer stuff.  I found a really cool sno cone machine.  And get this....$8!!  Yep a $30 machine for $8!  I bought it and all the sno cone supplies they had!  And the girls absolutely loved it!!! 

 

 

I had to go to the post office so we stopped by the playground.  Yep its rocks AGAIN!  What is it about Texas and rocks everywhere!!!  Anabeth could barely walk and kept screaming "NO" to the rocks!  Hahahaha!!  She tickles me to death!  They had a great time but it got really hot really fast!  So we came home to cool down!!! 

 

 

And these girls are getting spoiled with breakfast!!  And coffee is there best friend in the mornings! 

 

 

 

 

 

Memaw and Pops are coming down and the girls are beyond excited!!!  We are going back to school shopping (please pray for me!!) and to the Texas Aquarium! 

 

Stay tune for another exciting episode of "The Days of the Nawlin's"! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Movies, Hurricane Alley, and More!

Little Adventures here and there!

First I took the girls to so Despicable Me 2.  This was Anabeth's 1st movie at a theater! 

They both were really excited!  And Anabeth made it 3/4 of the way through the movie before passing out!  It was nap time and she was exhausted! 

 

Next we went on a golf outing with Dustin.  Abigail couldn't wait to drive the cart and man she is a crazy driver!!!  I just hope she improves before she turns 16!!  We would tell her to stay on the cement!  Well I guess to her the grass looked like cement!  Hahahaha!!  That was an adventure to say the least!

 

If you are noticing the glasses on Anabeth.......it doesn't hurt her ears like that!  hahahaha!

And yes a deer in the middle of the golf course!  And deer tracks in the sand pits!  And she was just as calm as she could prancing off the course and jumping over a fence to eat.  That was pretty awesome to see!

Abigail decided that she wanted to play golf.  And she did pretty good!

 

I have got ahead of myself on the next few pictures.  We visited Hurricane Alley and Chuck E Cheese and Funtrackers.  We all enjoyed it!!

This is just too cute not to share!  The Doc is in!

Anabeth looks really terrified but she really had a good time!!  She just wanted to go back to the water! 

Abigail driving the go cart all by herself!!!

Bumper Boat War!

And since Anabeth is just too stinking short to do anything she enjoyed snacking!  :)

Pure Sweetness!!

 

That pretty much wraps up the last couple of days!  Looking back we have been busy!

We are school shopping next week with Dustin's Mom and I cant wait to see some family!! 

 

And the Countdown to Alabama begins!!!

18 Days!!