Enjoying the Winter Season!

There is something about the winter that even gives Cole the bug to create. He began on this rug almost a year ago and has picked it back up to finish. He had me hunt down jersey sheets for this one in blues, whites, greens and black. He has now finished the rug and it is in his room. I will have to post a picture later. It is the thickest, softest rug my feet have ever felt!

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Many of you have followed along the adventure we have had fitting 7 of us into a tiny old ranch style house. We have struggled with fitting in a dining space for us and I am always rearranging attempting to find a way to make it work! Having company is always difficult ad usually lands us moving furniture into the garage to fit everyone. Well this year, like every year, we moved our dining table out to the garage to put up a Christmas tree. We end up sitting on the couch for dinner, there is nowhere to have friends over, and we are squeezing past one another everyday in our normal activities. After a good friend and her kiddos left one afternoon, I was struggling with this again but came back to a promise. The Lord knows our needs and has given us all that we have, so I just need to figure out the best way to use it! So I worked a few things out on paper and shared the idea with Matt, and got to work. We decided after 6 years in this house, to let go of the idea that our living room has to be upstairs. I purged and rearranged the basement to prepare it for bring down our living room. With Matt's help then, we moved our entertainment center downstairs and brought the dining room table into what has always been our living room. We split up our couch and loveseat set-moving one of them downstairs. We had always hesitated in this because our basement is not finished-but we let go of the idea that it had to be "just right". This change and the comfort it has brought has been just about as exciting as a new house. The table is always ready for meals-there is plenty of room for all of us to sit and watch a movie together, and when friends come over, we are not crawling over each other to get from one place to another! We left a little TV upstairs for school and weather etc, but it is a new place for us to gather around a table now-so fun.
This is how the "living room" looks now.
This is how the "living room" looks now. And when the tree comes down, I am looking forward to creating a whole new little cozy corner in it's place!

This is our new family room in the basement-we love it!!

The girls and Noah slept downstairs around the tree to celebrate their first night of Christmas break.

We had a beautiful snow last night!
Bell fell asleep watching the snow last night.
The girls and I worked on the Christmas village under the tree and getting the train running more smoothly. Noah is loving it!
We went sledding last night in the crazy snow! The hill was pure ice under the snow which made us all a comedy act attempting to make our way up the hill!