Keeping in Teutsch

I wanted to show off our birth announcement/Christmas card to those of you who I was unable to send it to. (I wish I could have sent it to everyone I know, but that would have been expensive.) I also decided it would be nice to take a little walk down memory lane of our past Christmas cards since Juliette has been born. Enjoy and Merry Christmas!!

Then for Easter weekend, it was our year to go to my parents. Since the other kids weren't going to be there on Easter Sunday (but were there on Friday), we hunted eggs that day that my sister had filled. All the kids had overflowing baskets (and can I say, my sister hooked us up with some awesome candy in those eggs...oh, and some money too!).



Here is Juliette's Easter basket. It's kinda hard to see what is in it, but she got a movie, a CD, some candy, a nightgown, and other things I can't remember now that it has been almost two months since Easter.


 And Easter Sunday wouldn't be complete without a family picture before church that Sunday, complete with an overturned play house in the background. (The girls had been playing "tornado"...I guess they were working on conquering their fears.) We didn't notice it was behind us when we hurriedly sat down on the swing and said, "Quick, take our picture before we leave for church." Easter Sunday Picture Fail.

Merry belated Christmas everyone! I hope you all had a great day with your families. I'll tell you all about our Christmas in just a minute, but first I want to show you Juliette's "Polar Express train ride" at school and our Christmas decorations.

Each year the kindergarteners at Juliette's school have a Polar Express Day where they wear their pajamas, watch the movie, eat popcorn and drink hot chocolate, and then take a train ride. They also had their Christmas party in the middle of all of this, so Matt and I went last Tuesday to help. Matt and I were in charge of helping the kids put together their reindeer food bags. The kids were crazy! Once they got on the "train" they squealed the entire time they rode it. It didn't even bother them that it wasn't an actual train! They had a lot of fun.


Here are our Christmas decorations this year. Pretty much the same as last year except I added two Pinterest-inspired projects: the rag garland and the clothespin card display.




On Saturday, everyone showed up at my parents around Noon and we had our Christmas gathering. Matt and I had decided to not leave town until after we went to Christmas Eve services with my parents at their church. It was a candlelight service and was very nice (Juliette even lit and held her own candle). After that we swung by McDonalds and picked up dinner and Juliette was asleep as soon as she ate. We got home about 10:30 or so because we had to stop a few times for Juliette to throw up...yep, you read that right. Thankfully, it wasn't much and she was fine once I gave her a bath...we think it might have been because of sinus drainage.

Here's what the tree looked like Christmas morning. (The unwrapped stuff is what Santa bought. It looks kinda pitiful, but it's because she got little things that were more expensive, like the Crayola stylus for the Ipad and the Disneyland game for the Xbox.)

Running in to see what Santa bought her.

Matt checking out his stocking.

Juliette digging into her stocking.

Matt being way too excited over slippers.

Juliette showing off her pile o' stuff, which included a Justin Bieber toothbrush that the Tooth Fairy sent via Santa (he left a note saying so).

Juliette modeling her new owl purse. Isn't it so cute?

Juliette, later Christmas morning, playing with the Barbie pool that she got from my sister and her family.

This was the first Christmas that we spent by ourselves and it felt kinda strange (and somewhat unlike Christmas) to be at home. It was kinda nice too, though. Juliette played with all her toys and I cooked lunch (a chicken stuffed with broccoli cheese and rice--from a meat market in town--hashbrown casserole, green bean casserole, and rolls; we brought sweets back from my parents' house) and we just hung out at home all day. Most years on Christmas day, Matt and I have gone to the movies, but we didn't do anything this year. Juliette kept asking why we weren't going anywhere!

Matt's parents were in Florida this year for Christmas so we'll be going back up to North Louisiana this weekend to have Christmas with his family.

Check back later for a 2011 recap and this year, I'm making some New Year's Resolutions and I'm going to share them with you too!

What day is it? Seriously...not kidding...it's been CRAZY busy around here and I blinked and now it's November. What happened to October? October, though, is always the month that flies by because it never fails to be one of the busiest months we have. This year, I have a feeling October thru December is going to end up being a blur.

Since I haven't been blogging much, I'll just make this post even longer and give a little recap of what we've been up to. For the most part for the past few months, Matt has had his nose stuck in a book and we've grown accustomed to him being holed up in the bedroom, but the light at the end of the tunnel FINALLY appeared and he is done taking his comps (short for comprehensive exams)! Yay! Now we're praying that he passed them so he can move on to the final step in this four-year gig. (Even Juliette is praying that "Daddy passes his tests" at every meal time and bed time!) Matt will find out in a week or two if he passed.

I'm in the middle of a busy work season. Last weekend I worked the UL Press booth at the Louisiana Book Festival and tomorrow I'm headed to New Orleans until late Saturday to make sales calls and work our table at the New Orleans Book Fair. I'm looking forward to having my weekends back!

Now, on to the main attraction: Halloween! First up, Juliette's Pumpkin Patch field trip. Comically, Matt and I actually fought over who was going to chaperone it. He wanted to; I wanted to; and I have issues and thought it would look "overbearing" for both of us to go. In the end, I won out. One of the kids' in Juliette's class had both of their parents there, and it didn't seem awkward or weird (or like they were hovering over their child), so I suppose next time we can both go.


On Monday, for Halloween, students were allowed to dress up as something they wanted to be when they grow up. Juliette has not one, but FIVE, future professions she would like to have: mommy, teacher, checker-out (her words; i.e. cashier), food-er (i.e. waitress), and doctor. I saw this doctor's vest in the dollar section at Target, and so that is what she went as. Easy, peasy to put together, since doctors usually just wear khakis and whatever top!

And then, of course, on Halloween night, we took her trick-or-treating. The Housing Department at UL provided candy to the students in the student apartments who wanted to "host" the kids from the family housing apartments for trick-or-treating, so we went over there and literally racked up. Not a lot of the kids from family housing went over there, so they were giving Juliette huge handfuls (or two) of candy and it was all the really good stuff. Her bag got so heavy that we had to carry it home for her. She decided, though, that it just wasn't going to be "right" if we didn't go to some actual houses, so we took her over to our old neighborhood and went to a few houses over there.

We've now made the rounds when it comes to the Toy Story characters, however, Juliette says she wants to be Bullseye next year. Since those aren't sold in stores, I think it's safe to say that won't happen. It was good run, though! :)

I walked in the door from work the Wednesday before last to find Matt sitting on the couch with his feet propped up watching TV and Juliette lying across his chest asleep. At first I thought she was pretending to be asleep, but when I got closer, I realized she really had fallen asleep like that. I asked Matt why he didn't move her and he said something along the lines of "I just wanted to cuddle with her." He then proudly pointed out that he had put her earrings back in (I had removed them for her dance revue the night before) and I found my heart melting a little more for this guy who is clearly succeeding at being a girl daddy!
It's no secret that we both were a little unsure of how Matt would be as a daddy, especially a girl daddy. Here is something I wrote back in 2007 two days before Juliette's first birthday:

We headed to Bossier this past weekend to spend the Easter holidays with Matt's family. Before I show the usual Easter pics, though, I wanted to share a picture of what Juliette wore on Friday. I saw this fabric at Hobby Lobby when I went to get some stabilizer (in order to monogram a baby gift) and I couldn't resist buying it. However, knowing that I just made her three dresses using this same pattern, I figured a shirt would be better (and cheaper, since I only needed half a yard to make it) and paired with jeans, I thought it turned out adorable! Not bad for something that took me about an hour and only cost $4.00!

We had our Easter lunch on Saturday with Matt's parents and grandma and then Matt and I went on a little date that evening while his mom took Juliette to see "African Cats," which Juliette has been wanting to see. (She actually chose that over "Rio" and "Hop"!) Matt and I saw "Hanna" (pretty good movie, not nearly as weird or all-action as I thought it would be) and had dinner at Smashburger. This was our first time to try it and I went out on a limb (which is not normal for me at all when it comes to food...I usually play it safe!) and ordered my burger with their smash sauce and their smash fries, which were tossed in olive oil and garlic and rosemary. Who knew rosemary would make you feel like you are eating gourmet fries? They were good...Matt kept stealing mine since he just got the regular ones! Oh, and that smash sauce? I had asked when I ordered it what exactly the smash sauce was and the girl told me it was a mixture of lemon juice, relish, mustard, and mayo. I figured the mustard and mayo would probably be the predominant flavor and went ahead and ordered it. That smash sauce tasted very similiar to the Big Mac secret sauce. My mouth kept thinking I was at McDonalds! Because I'm a nerd, I googled the Big Mac secret sauce to see what ingredients the copycat recipes have in them (since the actual recipe is a secret and Mickey D's isn't telling!) and they all list Thousand Island dressing with mayo and quite a few other things. Since Smashburger so nicely told me what was in their sauce and it tastes almost the same, next time we grill burgers, I'm going to give theirs a try! (If you are trying this at home, I did have ketchup on my burger as well, and it may have blended with the sauce to create that taste, so you might want to keep that in mind if you decide to experiment with it.)


Before leaving town yesterday, we ran by the hospital to see what the Easter Bunny brought to Matt's cousin and his wife. A tiny, adorable, little baby boy! Baby Corbin was precious!

Hope you all had a great Easter weekend! I, for one, am looking forward to this next weekend--free of any plans--and I'm itching to sew some more things for Juliette. I've got my eye on some new patterns. I'll post pictures if I'm successful!

Since Easter is this weekend, I thought I'd take a little look back at some of our Easter pictures from the past four years (since Matt and I never took pictures at Easter until after Juliette was born).





We're heading to Matt's parents this weekend to spend Easter with them. I'm color coordinating us in pink and green (Juliette in pink and green plaid; Matt in green; me in pink) but hopefully, Matt doesn't catch on to what I'm doing and rebel on me! We've NEVER color coordinated at Easter and I just want us to at least this one time! (I know...I'm a dork!) I'll be back next week with pictures! Hope you all have a great Easter weekend!