Our Christmas

We started Christmas Eve off by baking some peppernuts. Alison loves to help bake, but hates to get anything dirty, hence all the clothes off. If she gets a small speck of anything on her clothes she immediately takes it off. I loved spending time with her in the kitchen and I hope it's tradition that will always be in our family. After cleaning up, we attempted to curl Alison's hair. She thought it was a lot of fun, but the poor girl inherited her mommy's hair and after a morning in curlers her hair was still straight as a pencil.
We had lunch at the Boomer's before Ben and George had to get ready for the Christmas Eve service. After the awesome service, we headed home to read our Advent book and we let Alison open up her Christmas pj's.
I was so excited for Christmas morning I could barely sleep. Alison was up early and Ben took her out to get her stocking. We opened stockings on our bed and Alison was pretty excited about her candy and play dough.
I love how the simplist things can make life so fun. There's no where else I'd rather be than sitting next to the Christmas, by the fire, in my pjs sipping hot chocolate, with my little girl, playing with curlers (which she kept calling batteries).Pretending she's on the beach, reading Cinderella with her new umbrella
After some yummy tea pastries we spent the rest of the morning playing with Alison's new toys and we watched a Chipmunk Christmas movie.
Finger painting on her new Elmo table
I loved thinking about traditions we grew up with and which ones we wanted to carrying on with our kids. I love my family's tradition of doing a puzzle on Christmas and although Ben doesn't care for puzzles, I decided to carry it on with Alison. We started small this year and did a Barbie one together. Really it was me putting it together and teaching Alison the art of doing a "big" puzzle, but Alison loved it and maybe by next year she'll be able to participate more. Of course next year we'll have a baby brother to contend with who will probably be trying to chew on the pieces, but I'll take that as just a little more of a challenge.
We spent the afternoon at the William's house (the family that came over for Thanksgiving). We only had to make mashed potatoes and a pecan pie, which selfishly I was thankful for. It was nice to be able to relax, eat and enjoy good company. We still wanted to make a special dinner so tonight we're making a Smithfield ham, greenbean casserole, sweet potato casserole, zwiebach, and another pecan pie. Ben helped me make the zwiebach (our first joint attempt) and my mouth is savoring just waiting for them to come out of the oven. We invited some friends over to help us eat our feast and I hope they enjoy our traditions as much as we do.

Merry Christmas!

Shear Family Christmas Card

We've had a fantastic 2009; a year full of abundant blessings. We started the year by moving to Virginia and ended it with moving into a house with baby number two well on the way. These pictures of our family were taken in our back yard by Kent at Thanksgiving.

Ben is doing a fantastic job working at Hope Presbyterian as Director of Ministries. He just finished teaching a class over the 10 Commandments and continues to lead worship on Sunday mornings. I've been so impressed watching Ben juggle work, school and our family. He puts his all into everything and we are so blessed to have him as the head of this house.

I've become a full time mommy this year and I absolutely love it. From being involved in Church, to organizing play-dates, to teaching letters and playing dress up, my days are full. I've been blessed with an easy pregnancy and am trying to soak up all the rest I can before my babies are multiplied.

Alison is absolutely the best toddler. She was easy as pie to potty train (I'm hoping her brother catches on just as fast) and has moved into a big bed. She continues to amaze me how she learns things so quickly and her vibrance for life is contagious. She loves playing outside, reading books, taking pink bubble baths and anything that has to do with princesses. Truly she is the biggest blessing in our lives.


We love living in Virginia and are excited for what the new year will hold, especially meeting our son!

Merrry Christmas!

Definitely a Michigan baby

We had our first sprinkling of snow this Saturday night. Everywhere else in Virginia got slammed, but we just saw some flurries. Of course you can't underestimate the reaction a few flurries brings to a small town that rarely sees precipitation. You also shouldn't underestimate the reaction that a few flurries can bring to a kid. It was all I could do to keep this kid out of snow Sunday morning. Forget church, she just wanted to build a snowman!After nap time we all went out and built a tiny snowman so Alison could put a carrot on his face. A small snowball fight was started and Ben and I were done, but Alison would have stayed outside all day.

Christmas Time!

I've really been enjoying this Christmas season. Alison and I have spent several afternoons baking together and listening to Christmas music. She loves listening to the Chipmunk's and thinks they're pretty funny when they crack jokes in the middle of songs. We learned very quickly this year that presents are a much bigger deal than we thought. Ben put the presents under the tree a couple of days ago because he said half the fun is anticipating opening them. We told Alison that we would open them Christmas morning and that morning would come when we had finished all the pages in our Advent book that we read every night. Well, one afternoon I was putting away some dishes in the kitchen when I heard some paper rip...Alison decided to make her own Christmas morning and dove into a present. After some contemplation on how to parent this offense, I prayed that she would quickly forget the present she just saw. Shortly after that she wondered into the baby's room, opened the closet, dug through all the boxes and miscellaneous things and discovered her "big" present I hadn't wrapped yet. She came and found me and said, "Mommy, may I please have my Elmo table?" Dumbfounded I tried to convince her that there wasn't such a thing and attempted to distract her. But she gave my hand a tug and said, "Come with me Mommy, I'll show you where it is." She has asked so sweetly and politely for that table every day. I'm hoping she'll forget before Christmas or at least be very excited when she can finally play with it.
Alison also learned a new Bible verse this week. It absolutely blows my mind how quickly she can memorize things. Throughout the week I've heard her saying James 4:12 over and over to herself. It is a huge blessing to me to hear my child say scripture to herself and know that she is hiding the word of God in her heart.

Half way there!

Our little guy is quite the cutie! So far everything is going great and our the baby is completely healthy. I'm so thankful this pregnancy has been so easy and I can't wait to meet this handsome guy...hopefully we'll have a name for him by then!

Christmas Parade-Video

Christmas Parade

Today's was Smithfield's Christmas parade. I had the brilliant plan of going to the Y for a workout and then walking over to the parade. I was pretty impressed with my parking plan...maybe I should have read the signs at the Y that said it was the starting place for the parade. My plan backfired and I was stuck in workout out clothes. Thankfully Daddy and a very nice couple from church saved the day. Ben was downtown at 7:00 this morning setting up to play in the gazebo after the parade and a couple from church who owns the downtown pharmacy was letting the band hang out there. Thankfully they let me break their "no one uses their restroom" policy and was able to get out of my tanktop and shorts.
Alison and I first reserved some front row seats on the street, but I learned very quickly that if you want to sit there you have to have absolutely no personal bubble and have to be very pushy...both of which are not me. Daddy came to the rescue again and got us exclusive seats in the gazebo.
Although it was a very cold morning, we really enjoyed the parade. Ben did an awesome job playing afterwards (videos will be up soon) and some members from Hope handed out hot chocolate. Nothing beats good music and hot chocolate if you ask me.

Doesn't she look different?

We decided this week to grow Alison's bangs out. I've always liked her better without bangs and she's finally willing to keep a clip in all day. The first day I pulled them back I didn't even recognize her when I went to pick her up from the Y.

Alison the Ballerina

A Video from Thanksgiving

It's a BOY!!!

20 weeks
We have a healthy baby boy coming in April! Alison is still convinced she's having a sister, but I think it's going to take us all some time to adjust to thinking boy. I'm excited and the smile I got to see on Ben's face was priceless. I'll take any name suggestions since we have no idea what to name this child.

"I am not a boring princess!"

Alison's current favorite princess is Gigi-God's little princess. Poppy gave her some Gigi books awhile ago and they're all the rage around here. She has the stories memorized. So much so that a couple of days ago she came up to me and said, "Mommy, I'm not a boring princess". It took me by surprised, when I quickly realized that's the first line of 'Gigi and the Purple Ponies'.

My friend Carolyn bought Alison her first painting project last week while we were moving. She had planned on doing it with her but instead helped me unpack the kitchen. Alison's been asking for a week to paint and I finally let her last night before bath time. I was pretty impressed with how well she did.

22° Halo

Last night we had a 22° halo visible from our house. It was unreal how bright it was. At 11:00 pm the moon cast enough light to cause some serious shadows. This shabby photo shows the halo and also the prism effect at the edge of the ring.

This is the moon!

Baby Poll

We find out if the baby is a boy or girl on December 7. I'm curious to see what our friends and family think we're having. So, if you have a minute take the poll and we'll see who's right a week from tomorrow. Alison's still set on having a baby sister and Ben and I just don't have any idea any more.

Finally Decorating!

We weren't able to decorate the house last year because we were in the middle of moving to Virginia. I was afraid the same would happen this year since we were yet again moving. So I was so thankful we were able to move early and asked to set up the tree as soon as possible. Kent and I worked on the tree while Ben made his world famous pizza and then we all watched Ben put the ornaments after dinner. Ben taught Alison the secret art of putting up ornaments and even helped her put the topper on.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm so thankful that Elizabeth and Kent are here! This is our 3rd year to spend Thanksgiving together and I love the traditions we've started. Each year we add things and I think it's only going to get more fun as the years go on. We started the day watching the Macy's Day Parade. For some reason Alison absolutely would not keep her clothes on today. My favorite part of the morning was when she asked Granddad to get her one of the balloons from the parade.Then she asked Granddad to come play and she suckered him into play dress up. She even got him to get in her tiny little play house. I spared Kent the picture but it was one of the best things I've ever seen.We cooked all day long. I made a couple of things yesterday but we had so many dishes that needed to be cooked at different temps for different times, it just took a lot of time.
Nana took a little break to color with Alison on the kitchen floor. We had appetizers for lunch and then the guys played some Wii.
We had a family from church over for dinner. They have 3 really sweet kids and it was fun to see Alison playing with them. They took her outside for awhile and "explored the woods" and had their own little parade.
I was curious to see what Alison would like and dislike at dinner. She devoured the ham and left everything else untouched. We picked up a ham last minute when we invited the Williams' over just to ensure we had enough food. If anyone's wondering, Smithfield ham is amazing and all it's cracked up to be. I don't even really care for ham and I loved it. Her second favorite was the ice cream we had with the pie...she had 3 bowls just to let us know how much she really liked it.
We had a great day and I have so much to be thankful for. One thing I'm thankful for a the moment is that I get to keep enjoying the wonderful food we made today for days to come. I thought everything would be gone with having an extra 5 people here, but I was very wrong. We sent food home with the Williams' and still have a refrigerator full of food. I guess next year we'll have to invite more families over.


Did I mention we moved a couple of days ago? The move went smoothly and we were blessed with lots of help. Alison is completely in love with our backyard. The cats are pretty excited about being able to watch the birds and squirrels too.
We're thankful the Lord provided us with this house and we were able to move in so quickly. I'm also very thankful that we can decorate for Christmas this year and enjoy the advent season.

Our new home

Today's moving day! I was up early thinking of all the things that needed to be done today and I'm hoping things go smoothly. When we moved here I packed every last detail in our house, but for this move I left a lot of things out that I figured I can just throw in the car and drive over. I'm just hoping I didn't do that with too many things. I spent the day in the house yesterday cleaning and we moved over our clothes. Alison can't get over the yard. She keeps asking to go out and garden-she really just wants to go roll around in the leaves. I really love this house and I can't wait to get settled in.

Baby Maggie!

I finally got to see my new niece! I think she's beautiful and I can't wait to meet her!

A little housing update

We are going to be moving into a house! It's been amazing to see God's hand in our housing journey and his provisions for our family never end. Once we found out we were expecting baby #2 we started searching for a 3 bedroom house to rent. We have plenty of space where we are now, but only 2 bedrooms. While it's completely do-able, I was worried about my little light sleeper having to share a room with a teething baby. I found this house
online awhile ago and fell in love with it. There are only a few options to choose from here in Smithfield and everything we were finding was way out in the country, too small or too expensive. This house was a rare find and is perfect for us. It's in a nice neighborhood (actually it's right behind where we are now), it has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a 2 car garage with lots of storage, an extra room for Ben's music stuff and our favorite part: a large yard on a cul-de-sac. When we initially called on the house they told us they wouldn't allow pets and that we had to make a certain amount of money to qualify (Ben was like $50 away from the cut off). When the door closed on our face to the house we moved on and kept looking, but nothing was coming up. Last week Ben found the same house on another website that had it listed at a lower price and they had dropped all of their stipulations. When Ben called again they were now eager for us to apply and asked when we could come look at the property. We finally heard this morning that our application was accepted out of a compition of 3 other people. That in itself is a miracle. Considering what our credit currently looks like because all of our Michigan house stuff just hit it, it really is amazing that they chose us. We are really excited to be in a house again and I can't wait to set up the nursery for the baby. A family from church just asked us if they could give us their daughter's old furniture, so Alison will also get a new room. It's going to be a stressful month, trying to figure out timing of moving and the holiday's but I think it's going to be worth it.

This is a little video of Alison singing. The first "song" is the end of the song we sing to her before bedtime and then the ABC's. I love the way she says 'w'.

Chef Alison

Daddy let Chef Alison help make dinner tonight. Helping cook has become one of her favorite things to do and she always asks to break the eggs. I'm not brave enough to let her try, but stirring and dumping ingredients in a bowl are usually safe.
This is just a cute photo from a couple of days ago. I find eating shirtless is much easier than cleaning bibs that she won't keep on anyway. She insisted on wearing her sunglasses upside down all afternoon. I don't think she could really see anything, but she thought she was pretty funny.

Happy Halloween!

Well, yet again our day didn't go as planned, but we still had a great time. We planned on heading back to the pumpkin patch to finally get our pumpkin to carve and roast the seeds. They were only open during Alison's nap time, so when it looked like rain as we were walking out the door we decided to forgo the patch.
We rested up and then headed out to do some trick-or-treating. Our sweet neighbor asked us to come by so she could see Alison and then we headed downtown. All of the stores set up stands and passed out candy. We were shocked how many people were there. It was a dreary, but hot (in the 80's) day and Ben had read that a lot of parents were panicked about flu spreading through the candy. We need to learn that people in this town really participate in things going on. We made one last stop on the way home to our friends the Mitzel's house.
The night didn't end as planned either. Ben said he felt like Alison was warm, but I kept brushing it off. She's cutting her 2 year molars and for goodness sakes, she was wearing an Elmo costume all evening in 80 degree weather. It ended up that she did have a fever and it kept going up even after medicine. She slept great and acted fine, but I was up all night checking on her and giving her more medicine. Apparently we needed to be one of those freaked out parents. She woke up this morning, still with a fever, but asking for candy out of her Elmo basket.

Just another Monday

We had plans to go to the pumpkin patch this morning, but found that they are only open on the weekends. So, the real pumpkin patch post will be coming next weekend. After our venture out to the closed pumpkin patch, we came home to crawl back into comfy clothes and curled up with some books.

Y Fall Festival

Elmo (aka Alison) headed to the Y for the fall festival last night. This was Alison's first trick-or-treating experience and she was pretty excited about all the candy we told her was coming. Unfortunately, the festival was pretty low key and she only scored a sucker, a bracelet, a necklace, a cookie and a tattoo. But for her, she didn't know any different and was still pretty excited.Daddy and Alison decorating a cookie
Alison was pretty overwhelmed by all of the other kids dressed up and pretty much just walked around with her eyes as big as her cookie and was very quiet. We have more fall festivities coming up this week and hopefully she'll be a little less overwhelmed.

Family Date

We had family date day on Saturday. First we headed to Target to find Alison some much needed pants and she picked out her Halloween costume. Then we headed over to the theater for her very first movie. We had talked about going to the IMax/3-D showing of 'Cloudy with a chance of meatballs' while in Tennessee, but decided that might be a little overwhelming for little eyes. We decided it would be smarter to take her to a matinee showing at a small theater. The theater was full of other kids and it was nice that no one seemed to mind Alison talking extremely loud during the whole movie. She did pretty well for her first experience, but we both agreed it will be awhile before we do that again.We headed to Red Robin afterwards for a big juicy burger...just what this momma needed! It seems like every picture I get of Ben, he looks kinda goofy. He said he doesn't mind since the focus is really on Alison. Well, he got me back on Monday and I thought it was only fair to post it. Not only can I not cook while pregnant, apparently I can't pour either. During lunch on Monday I spilled half a jar of expensive honey on my plate. I only needed a spoonfull for my 5 chicken nuggets, but I instead I had honey soup. So while I was pleading for a napkin and some help, Ben seized the opportunity to snap a shot. He could have also got a good shot of me cooking dinner tonight. I was making simple spaghetti, but when I put the sauce on the stove I put it on high instead of low. Sauce very quickly started exploding all over the kitchen. I'm sure there are many more adventures headed my way.

Hello 2nd Trimester

Ben and I still don't believe I'm really pregnant, so the thought of actually being in the second trimester is kind of frightening. I'm wondering when reality is going to sink in...hopefully before the baby gets here! I still feel great and don't have any complaints. I'm pretty excited that I can still workout and am definitely curious to see how long it lasts. Alison still consistently says it's a baby sister, but now if you ask her what baby sister's name is, she'll tell you, "baby brother". So in Alison's world we're having a little girl named baby brother. Don't worry, we have a good girl name. If it's a boy, he's still very nameless.
We've had a very lazy Saturday. When Alison and I got up we lit the fire place, snuggled under my favorite blanket and put in a movie. For some reason Alison really wanted to lay on my legs and lounged there for a long time. Even Smoochie joined in on the relaxation.The only thing that got me motivated to get out of comfy mode was food, so I whipped up some pancakes and bacon for us all. Alison devoured 3 pancakes and 2 pieces of bacon! She was one happy camper after that.This video should have gone on yesterday's post with playing in the rain. It's been cold and rainy the last several days and we can't seem to keep Alison inside. I wish we had more for her to do outside, but she doesn't seem to mind just jumping in puddles. As I mentioned, Alison's been eating a lot. All I've heard the last few days is, "I want some food mommy". Apparently she's going through a growth spurt. Just look at her pants in this video and you'll see what I mean. Literally in one day, all of her pants are too short, but the waists are too big. I guess she did get some Yoder in her.
Ben says this video proves that Smoochie is the best cat ever. When Alison got up from her nap yesterday we were snuggling on the couch and Smoochie came and crawled in our lap. He is actually purring while she "pets" him.