Happy Thursday everyone! Today is my kiddos first day back to school after Christmas break. While I’m ready to get back into our routine, I will miss those lazy pajama mornings hanging out with my crew. Thankfully it’s already Thursday, so I’m thinking we can make it through our short week. Maybe.

I’m linking up with Amanda from This Inspired Chick for her monthly Confessions link-up on the first Thursday of every month. You can find my November confessions here and my December confessions here. If you blog, you should join us! It’s so much fun to see what everyone has to share.

This month, I’m going to confess my secret nerdy hobby. I am a die-hard jigsaw puzzle fanatic. Seriously. Give me a Friday night, a glass of wine and a puzzle with my husband and I’m living my best life. 😉

I don’t remember doing very many puzzles when I was a kid, so it hasn’t been a lifelong thing for me. My degree is in Biochemistry and before I had my twins I worked in a research lab for 8 years. I love science and there are so many things I loved about working there.  Anyone who has worked in that kind of medical research for a long time can tell you that there are far more failures than there are successes. Research is SO, SO important and every day amazing strides are being made. However, meaningful discoveries take tons of hard work and years to find.

After a few years, I started to get a little discouraged. I felt like I was running into a lot of dead ends at work and not making much progress. My husband is in finance and his job is to make everything add up the way it is supposed to. He can see the end of projects, accomplish them and move on to something else. And I SO envied that! One day, I sat down with an old puzzle and I found it so incredibly satisfying! Everything fit together and everything had a place. Working on a puzzle started to be what I would look forward to after the really tough days in the lab.

Even after our twins were born and my days were so far out of my control, Josh and I had this gigantic puzzle on a table in the corner of our room. Every night I would fit a few pieces (because it was all I had time for before collapsing in a heap) and it made me feel accomplished. I know it’s probably crazy, but I still do it today.

I put puzzles on my older boys Christmas lists for our families this year. They love them too, especially my Eli. I will admit though- it was a little for them, a little for me! Haha! We spent a bunch of our break with 750 piece puzzles all over our kitchen island and it was the best!

My mom got Josh and I these super cute BRXLZ sets for Christmas and they may be my newest obsession. They are basically teeny, tiny Lego sets but they give you a small instruction book of how to put them together like a puzzle. They have so many different themed sets and I’m excited to break it out.

So, that’s my confession. I’m a crazy puzzle fanatic. Life with four boys is pretty chaotic but a puzzle is my calm. Everything has a place.

Except this Toy Story puzzle Eli got for Christmas whose last piece did NOT fit. I know it looks like it should fit but it did not. #apuzzleloversnightmare

Go ahead and make fun of me but I’ll be over here with my puzzle and my glass of wine. Not caring at all. Haha!

Any other puzzle lovers out there?

Thanks for stopping by! See you tomorrow for Friday Favorites!

I’m here linking up with Amanda from That Inspired Chick for this month’s Confessions post! (To see my Confessions from November click here.)

Today I thought I’d have a little holiday fun and do a Christmas confessions post. I’m answering a bunch of Christmas questions about me and I hope you will share some of your answers too!

Wrapping paper or gift bags?

#Teamwrappingpaper all the way! I love to wrap gifts and I especially love easy ways to make them pretty. Yesterday, I posted a set of free printable gift tags that I will be using on all our gifts this year! There are also some for gifts from Santa!

How do you do Santa with your kids?

Our Santa always brings one ‘large’ gift for each child and the rest are from Josh and me. They know it’s from Santa because they are wrapped in Santa’s special gold paper!

When do you open presents?

We always opened gifts on Christmas morning growing up and so did my husband. We continued that with our kids! I think it kind of builds the anticipation. 😉

What special traditions do you have for Christmas morning?

Just last year, we started the tradition of coming downstairs Christmas morning and immediately going into the kitchen (without looking at the gifts or Christmas tree!). We light candles on a birthday cake for Jesus and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him before we do anything. I heard this idea from a mom at our mom’s group last year and loved it! It’s so important to us to keep our kids focused on what is really important at Christmas time and celebrating Jesus first helps even our little ones understand. Especially because they ‘get’ the happy birthday song!

Do you like eggnog?

NO! My husband loves it. Like really loves it. He buys a carton every year and I gag.

Real tree or artificial?

Artificial. I know this is a heated topic. 😉 Neither of us grew up with a real tree so we’ve never really known anything different. I was actually talking to one of my friends about this the other day. We were saying that the whole idea of going out as a family to find and cut down a real tree sounds like Christmas magic. But cleaning up fallen needles, making sure it’s watered and not bringing in outside creatures is just stressful to me. I’m just not sure I’m a real tree person.

When do you take the Christmas tree down?

Well before we had twins, we would leave it up until after the new year. Last year though I could NOT handle another day with our one year old twins terrorizing it so we took it down the day after Christmas and I was not sorry about it. I hope we can leave it up longer this year but if you follow me on Instagram… you will see that may not be possible.

What is one of your favorite adult Christmas memories?

Obviously I love the magic of Christmas with our young children, but our first married Christmas was one of my very favorites. Josh and I chose to spend Christmas Eve just the two of us. We went to Church and then made lasagna together at home. We had decided not to get each other anything for Christmas that year (we were saving for a new car) but on a whim we went to Target and separately shopped for each other. We set a budget of $50 each and had the best time buying random stuff at Target. Josh rocked that challenge and got me some of my very favorite gifts to date. It was just a quiet, peaceful Christmas Eve together.

Favorite Christmas movie?

I really love The Santa Clause because it’s a classic. I also love 12 Dates of Christmas. It was one of those ABC family original movies a few years ago and it’s adorable. It’s actually on Netflix this year if you haven’t seen it. I seriously recommend it. Mark Paul Gosselaar at his best. #justsaying

What is your favorite Christmas gift you remember receiving?

When I was a teenager, I remember it was black corduroy overalls that all my friends had that I was dying to have. It’s fine.. you can laugh. They were seriously super stylish then. Recently though I think it was the necklace that Josh got me for the first Christmas after our twins were born. He completely surprised me and I absolutely cried.

What is your favorite Christmas decoration you own?

This plate. I found it at Hobby Lobby maybe 5 years ago and I loved it. I don’t know why it’s on a plate- it was all they had and I couldn’t pass it up. I’ve looked for this image in wall décor forever and have never been able to find anything else. I think it’s so powerful and I just love it. If you’ve seen this somewhere (perhaps not on a plate), please let me know!

I’m always keeping my eye out for a good kid friendly nativity too! We have a Little People nativity that our kids love to play with but I wish I had one that was fancier and didn’t look so much like a toy. It has to be pretty hardy though – I live with 5 boys. Haha!

A little fun holiday confessions post for your Thursday. Thanks for stopping by! Comment with some of your answers to these!

I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the posts!

Happy Thursday everyone! I’m here to join in with an awesome brand new link-up with Amanda from That Inspired Chick. This is the first week for Confessions where we can confess anything (and perhaps look for fellow understanding offenders?)! 😉

So here we go. I’m about to confess something that is a serious problem and drives my husband CRAZY. I’ve tried to stop but nothing has worked for me. I’m honestly embarrassed to admit this but I have an addiction to….

MY SNOOZE BUTTON.

You’re probably laughing at me or judging me (or both?) but really… it’s so bad you guys. When I was in high school, I used to have to wake up at 4:45 for swim practice before school. I would stay up late working on homework and then when my alarm would go off, I just could not do it. I started setting my alarm for 4:30 so I could press snooze a few times before getting up.

It became a terrible habit that I haven’t been able to break since. I kind of thought that everybody did it until I met my best friend and college roommate who not only bounds out of bed super early every single morning (to EXERCISE even!) but does all this on her first alarm. And then I met my husband who also is an anti-snoozer.

Once I’m up and awake, I can be a morning person with the best of them but it’s that initial wake up I cannot handle. Every night I tell myself I have GOT to get it together, use that extra time in the morning and stop with the snooze… but I don’t.

I saw this hysterical alarm clock on my facebook feed a few weeks ago and I thought to myself that I NEEDED to have it. The alarm doesn’t turn off until your feet hit the floor! I felt differently after I saw the price tag but seriously… still considering it. Haha!

I know it’s bad for me. I know I don’t get any real sleep during those 9 minutes of snoozing. I know it’s horribly annoying for my husband but I just can’t stop. Maybe I need some sort of 12 step program?

Tell me I’m not alone. Are there any other snooze button addicts out there? Or better yet, someone with some snooze button wisdom?

So now you know my dark secret. Looking forward reading all the other confessions!