Happy Tuesday everyone! There is only 5 days until Christmas! And I’m just going to pretend that I’m 100% joyful and 0% stressed about that fact. It’s for the best. 😉

I’m linking up with Erika and Fancy Ashley today for a little ‘everything goes’ Tuesday Talk.

Since we are nearing the end of the year, I always start thinking about resolutions. I feel like mine almost always follow a similar pattern: pray more, exercise more, read more, etc. Which are always things I need to work on and although I consistently do a little better each year they are still at the top of my list. I read a book by Matthew Kelly with a small group this year called Resisting Happiness. He talks a lot about habits. Changing your habits is what makes you a better version of yourself. Whether it’s starting better habits or getting rid of bad ones, your habits make you who you are. I’m really focusing on that when I think about 2018.

So, along with that theme I’ve been thinking a lot about better habits I can develop. One of those is getting rid of ‘clutter’ in my life. I’m very conscious of the need to get rid of toy clutter, counter clutter, closet clutter, etc. but I tend to ignore the little stuff which in the end make me crazy! For example, I’m a person who doesn’t deal with annoying promotional emails as they come in, so they build up until I have an inbox of over 3,000. It’s ridiculous and a BAD habit.

I also struggle with photo organization. I have all of our photos backed up for sure, but I have never taken the time to organize them with a better method than just by date. Some photos are for sure on there multiple times which is probably just a waste of file space. When I want to look for photos, it takes me a long time to find what I am looking for! I have all our photos backed up on our external hard drive and found out the other day at my mom’s group that external hard drives can just fail without warning. Especially those older than 5 years. This was me.

So. This brings me to my Tuesday Talk question – how do you organize your photos and how do you store them?

Do you ever print photos or arrange them into physical albums you have printed? Another mom at my meeting said that she uses the Groovebook app and prints a small book of photos every month to store. She said her kids love to look at them which is such a good idea! I have thousands of photos stored but they aren’t available to my kiddos to look at when they are just in storage.

I need all the advice. Help a momma out!

Hi everyone! We made it through Monday!

This week instead of my usual Twin Tuesday, I’m linking up with Erika and Fancy Ashley for Tuesday Talk! I love Tuesday Talk because we can chat about anything and everything.

In July, we chatted about my favorite shows to binge watch with my husband

In August, I shared some random fun facts about myself.

And today, I’m chatting about holiday traditions. Maybe it’s because I’m the kind of person that likes to plan and hates change but there’s something about family traditions that make me feel all happy and cozy. Josh and I had very different traditions with our families growing up. After Caleb was born, we tried to keep the ones we loved and also create some new ones together. I hope that we can make traditions that create the same feelings for our children as they do for us. My momma heart hopes when they grow up, move away and someday have families of their own they will either continue some of these or come back and celebrate them with us!

Please comment and share with me some of your family traditions! We’d love to find new ones to add!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday and always has been! I love gathering with our family and taking an extra moment to thank God and reflect on all our blessings. Plus, it’s a holiday mainly about food so obviously I’m all about that. 😉

A few years ago, we started a tradition with our 3 year old Caleb and baby Eli. At dinner each night, we write down something that we are each thankful for every day in November until Thanksgiving Day. I cut this silly little turkey out of construction paper that we have used every year and we write one thing for each of us every day on a feather. I hang the turkey in our main hallway so we can all see it and be reminded of it daily.

Here’s our turkey from 2016.

And our turkey from 2015. I know we had one for 2014, but can’t for anything find a picture of it. I love to look back on things we were thankful for in this season of life. (2015 is also known as the year our thankful turkey was slacking – because we had one month old twins.)

This is a silly tradition just for Josh and I but every year I insist on rewatching all the Friends Thanksgiving episodes during the week leading up to Thanksgiving. Those episodes are some of my very favorites and they just get me in the holiday mood!

Thanksgiving morning, Josh and I wake up pretty early, drink coffee together and I make pies to take to my parents later in the day. When the kids wake up, I usually make homemade cinnamon rolls or breakfast casserole and we hang out all morning watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I love that time with my little family.

After we get back from my parents, we watch a Christmas movie together and let the kids stay up late. I usually do a little Black Friday shopping with my sister crazy early the next day and then we always put our Christmas tree up that evening. Since I love Thanksgiving so much, it’s a tradition in our family that we ‘respect the turkey’ and not get our Christmas decorations out until Friday. (I’ve caved on Christmas music though every year!) We spend all Friday afternoon and evening decorating and getting into the Christmas Spirit.

Christmas Traditions

Leading up to Christmas we do pretty typical family fun things. We see Santa, we drive around and look at Christmas lights as a family and try to jam pack in all the holiday family fun we can.

We always go to a local event with hundreds of beautifully decorated trees up for display. They have activities for kids, live music and a great parade with giant balloons. It’s freezing cold but so worth it! Especially because Santa brings up the end of the parade. 😉

We had a brand new tradition last year when we moved to our new house. One of our neighbors puts on a pretty spectacular Christmas lights show every evening that our kids LOVE to watch. We are constantly outside every night watching it. It’s one of our very favorite new traditions.

We get together with my family and have a Christmas cookie baking marathon day every year. The littlest child always gets to help make the thumb print cookies and I love seeing how that child has changed in photos over the years. It was my teenage cousin for so long, then Caleb, then Eli and now probably Reid and Luke and my niece.

On Christmas Eve, we go to Church and have lasagna afterward. Growing up my family had my mom’s famous lasagna for Christmas Eve dinner every year that I can remember. The first year that Josh came to Christmas with my family he told us that his family always had lasagna every year on Christmas Eve too! Literally the one tradition we share, so of course we had to continue it. 😉 I tried to use my mom’s recipe one year and it was just not the same. So now we go over to her house for dinner after Church instead. Haha!

When we get home on Christmas Eve, all our kids always spread ‘magic reindeer food’ all over our front walkway and yard. Our ‘magic reindeer food’ is oatmeal mixed with glitter that is a treat for the reindeer and guides them to our house. This is a fun tradition my mother-in-law started with Caleb his first Christmas and we have done it every year since!

Finally, we always make sure that all our Christmas celebrations are over by the 26th. We usually can’t celebrate with all of my family and Josh’s family on the 25th but plan to celebrate with them before Christmas instead. We have a Christmas season baby in our house so as of midnight on the 26th, our house turns into birthday zone and Christmas is over. I never, ever want Eli’s birthday to get lumped into our Christmas festivities so we keep this tradition in our house to make sure that doesn’t happen.

That’s it for our traditions. Now I want to hear yours! Comment with any holiday traditions you love to keep with your family!

Thanks for joining me for Tuesday Talk!

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Today I’m linking up with Erika and Ashley for Tuesday Talk! I love Tuesday Talk because anything and everything goes. Last month, I talked about my favorite shows to binge watch as a couple and this month I decided to have a little bit of fun. I have some new readers lately so I thought I would share some random facts about me. Join me in the comments and share something random about yourself! These kind of posts are always some of my favorites to read!

• I have never, never (not ever) met a donut I didn’t like. I’m not really a fan of coconut things or nuts but when you put them on a donut, I’m totally down for that. 😉 When I was in grade school and we were allowed to bring a birthday treat to school for the class, I always brought donuts. Every year. We have an old fashioned donut place in our city that makes the very, very best and that’s all I ever want for my birthday/Mother’s Day.

• I’m a terrible public speaker because it gives me such crazy anxiety that I shake like a leaf. My high school speech class was one of the most stressful experiences in my life and I tried everything to get out of taking it in college even though it was required of all freshmen. I love the fact that THAT class was where I met my husband. We were partnered together by the professor on a group speaking project and I found myself drawn to him partially because he is kind and amazing and partially because he can speak confidently in front of anyone and rocked our project for the both of us.

• I am a crazy huge Friends fan and speak in show quotes whenever I can. I became friends with someone who would later become my life-long bestie and maid of honor because of our mutual love of the show. Our freshmen year of college we stayed past finals in our dorm rooms so we could watch the series finale together and eat pizza. One of my favorite memories to date.

• Speaking of Friends, (fellow fans will understand this) I have this terrible habit of ‘Chandlering’ (as we have come call it) when I am in social situations that make me uncomfortable. It’s this horrible compulsion to make repeated bad jokes to ease the awkwardness for myself. “Hi. I’m Chandler and I make jokes when I’m uncomfortable.” Totally me.

• I have a degree in Biochemistry and worked in that field for 9 years before I quit my job to stay home after my twins were born.

• You know that we have twins. But my husband is a twin and his twin brother also just had twins. That part is weird and cool but the really weird part is that all three sets of twins are fraternal not identical. Identical twins can run in families on the either side but fraternal twins run in families only on the female side (because hyperovulation can be an inherited trait you receive from your mother). How this all even happened fascinates the science side of me.

• If you asked me when I was 7 what my dream job was I would have said a cheerleader. 😉 If you asked me at 19 I would have said a doctor. At 27 I would have said a stay at home mom and now I would probably say an author.

• Ever since I was little, my leg would hurt before it rained or snowed. My grandma used to have the same thing happen in her thigh and my dad in his knee.

• I had four jobs at one time in college. I worked in admissions at a hospital, at a nursing home as a nurse assistant, a lifeguard and at a summer camp.

• I worked at Subway in high school but now hate to eat there because no one knows how to make my sandwiches as good as I did.

• Before I met my husband, I hated avocados, beans and steak and he has somehow gotten me to like them all. (Only black beans though.. I can’t even think about the others.)

Join me! Comment with a random fun fact about yourself!

Hope you have a happy Tuesday!

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Today I’m linking up with Erika and Fancy Ashley for Tuesday Talk!

Even though it’s summer right now, with swim lessons, working on our house after the kids go to bed most nights and just the fact of keeping 4 kiddos happy and alive, Josh and I have been completely exhausted lately! One thing that gets me through is knowing that I can hang out with my husband and watch a really good episode or two of a show together at the end of each day. It gives us something to look forward to together and sometimes sparks conversations that we probably never would have had!

Here are a list of our top shows we love to watch together and are husband-approved. Plus! All these shows are available to stream on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video!

White Collar

This is our very favorite show probably ever. We love LOVE White Collar. It’s about a convict convicted of bond forgery (and accused of about a million other white collar crimes) who is released from jail to wear a tracking anklet and become a consultant for the FBI. The writing of this show is amazing and the cases are often suspenseful and keep us watching more and more episodes until too late in the night. Matt Bomer (who I love!) plays the FBI consultant and his chemistry with Tim DeKay who is his FBI handler makes the entire show. If you’re not sold yet, just watch the Pilot episode. It’s one of the best pilots I’ve ever seen. I’m not ashamed to say that we have watched this entire series multiple times!

All 6 seasons of White Collar are available to stream on Netflix.

Survivor

Josh and I are serious Survivor Junkies. We found Survivor about 9 years ago when it was airing on CBS and have watched every season they have aired since and caught up on all the old seasons we missed. It is a reality competition show but it’s so much more than that. A group of people are put on an island and have to survive (make their own shelter, catch food, etc) while also competing in physical competitions. The group votes someone out every week and the best part is that at the end of the game the last batch of people voted out actually become the jury who votes for the person who wins the game and a million dollars. We love watching the strategy, psychological games, and unpredictability of human behavior.  All the seasons are good but a lot of them are GREAT. Season 1 when the game had just begun is such a classic but is a little different than the rest of the series because it’s filmed a bit more documentary style. My advice if you have never seen the show is to start with Survivor Micronesia (season 16) or Survivor Tocantins (Season 18).

19 of their 34 seasons are streaming on Amazon Prime Video. (If you love it like we do, pay the small monthly fee for CBS All Access and you will have access to stream all 34 seasons!)

Suits

Suits is another one of our very favorites. It’s similar to White Collar in that there are two very likeable male leads who have amazing chemistry together and the supporting cast is full of some strong, badass female characters. It’s about a man with a photographic memory who was hired to work at a top law firm as a lawyer under one of the best in the country, except he isn’t actually a lawyer. The show is about different law cases, love triangles and eventually about how to contain Mike’s secret that he is working as a lawyer without actually being one. The show is suspenseful and cleverly written by writers who aren’t afraid to throw some curve balls at the characters. Especially as the show goes on and more and more people inevitably find out. Watch the pilot of this one too and tell me you aren’t hooked!

Suits is still airing on USA but has the rest of the series available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.

Parenthood

Parenthood is an amazingly well-written and acted show about families. It’s completely relatable as a parent and as a child and full of real everyday problems. It has a huge cast full of some big names and we loved every minute of it. I never watched it while it was airing on NBC because I heard it was sad and I can’t do sad shows that bring me down. We binge watched this on Netflix and I have to say I completely and totally disagree. It’s not sad at all, for sure thought-provoking and sometimes pulls at your emotions-  but not sad! So if you are holding out because of that, I promise you won’t feel that way. I loved watching this one with Josh because it that stimulated so much conversation about how we were raised and how we wanted to raise our own kids.

Parenthood is streaming all episodes on Netflix.

The West Wing

The West Wing is a fast-paced show about life in the White House and the outside lives of the staffers who work there. I loved Martin Sheen as president and even if you aren’t a lover of political talk (like I’m not!) you will like this show for the drama that comes along with it. Even though The West Wing aired in the early 2000’s, it’s amazing how many of the issues, political and otherwise, are still relevant today. It has won a ton of awards and has some amazing actors. This is a show that always gets us thinking and talking because it’s so well written.

All episodes of The West Wing are streaming on Netflix.

A little extra bonus tip – we watched The People vs. OJ Simpson when it aired on FX last year and loved it.  There is only 1 season of 10 episodes and even though we obviously knew the ending it was suspenseful and drew us in every week. I thought I knew the basic story line of the famous trial but since I was still in grade school when it happened, there apparently was so much I forgot or didn’t know. We found it fascinating. It is streaming on Netflix too.

Okay, those are my picks for series to watch with your spouse. What are we missing? We would love to find some new good ones. Comment with some of your favorites that are husband friendly! (Gilmore Girls and One Tree Hill were already vetoed… surprise, surprise.) 😉

Happy Tuesday to all!

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