The random phone photos from December that tell a story about us

In a lot of ways, I am still old school. I still often carry my camera and I prefer to use my camera. However, since April, we've had smartphones and it's fun to take a quick photo if my camera isn't handy. Here are some photos that I took on my phone, and the story that they tell about what was important to us this past month.

This is the Shepardson "Giving Tree" that I helped to assemble. It's great to be part of a school that wants to ensure that all of the students have a great Christmas.

This is one brave squirrel

This is from Tree Day: The one Harper Family tradition that pretty much goes off whether we want to or not.

This is from the Advent workshop: it's called "The Broccoli Tree" How cute, right? My friend Stephanie put it together and asked me to take a photo of it.

Both of the girls rocked some falsies for a while. Ruby even wore hers to school several days and demanded that I tell everyone that hers were "REAL"

This is how we did her hair for the dance recital. 

 We had a snow day on Tuesday Dec. 15th. The kids were ELATED! We watched movies, crafted, played outside (even had some neighbor friends over) and I baked some banana bread.

Grandma & Papa gave Scout a blanket gift for St. Nick's Day. Here she is with the finished product!

My little helper

You can't really see it, but she's using a green sand shovel to help clear the driveway. 

Here is Ruby holding up the awesome wall hanging that Grandma Margie sent to them (handmade, of course!)

This was a photo that I took in the grocery store parking lot: A Lamborghini and a snow bank.

Here is Ruby's cute photo frame craft project (a gift from Aunt Lexie and Uncle Jon for Christmas). Now it's adorned with some Hawaii photos and it sits atop her dresser

We had a houseguest for Christmas: Penny Lane joined us

Here are my girls seated in the balcony at church for the 3 pm Children's Service

 On Christmas morning, we woke up and unwrapped the wonders of our gifts. As always, we were very spoiled. The kids got lots of amazing goodies from their family. One of the gifts was a few bathroom essentials, so I took a photo to send to Grandma Karen so that she could see the makeover.

Christmas day was the BEST DAY EVER. I'm not just saying that because we were spoiled. True, we were spoiled, but actually our family was super sweet and honored our request to not go "overboard." This year, Santa followed a rhyme: Something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read. Our kids had 4 wrapped Santa gifts each this year.  Mom & Dad provided a few others, including the news that we'll be getting a pug puppy sometime in January. But really, the photo below shows just what Christmas day was all about. Cory kept the fire going all day long, and the girls and Cory worked diligently on the Lego sets that they received from Grandma Margie & Papa Alan. I sat in the rocking chair and read my book and sipped tea. It was a glorious day of family togetherness and relaxation.

One of Cory's gifts for Christmas: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

Since Cory got the aforementioned book, we have both read it and have committed ourselves to the Kon-Mari method. This is a great resolution for us, and we're all about simplifying our space.