Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....

Only 5 days until Christmas! I can hardly believe it. I love preparing for Christmas and the older my girls get the more I like to do because they are so excited about it and ready to help. So the stockings are hung, the trees adorned, presents are bought and the cards are sent. Now we are ready to celebrate Christ's birth with our family and friends.

I thought I'd give you a tour of some of our decorations around the house this year:

We have a "family tree" which houses all of our fun, memorable ornaments. Lots of ornaments made by the girls or ones given to us or ones that use to be mine growing up.

Then we have our "formal tree" which is only red and gold ornaments. I've also got bows and holly berry branches in there. And the tree topper is an angel that use to sit on my parents tree when I was growing up.

And we have to have a princess tree!

 

Our elf Charlie, who likes to hang around in a new spot every day.

My new project this year: A hanging wreath chandelier. I'll share later exactly how I made it.

I tried a new "style" of addressing my Christmas cards this year.

And we are so blessed with so many amazing friends and family that I filled up 3 ribbons of cards this year!

 

What I would tell my 16 year old self

What would I tell my 16 year old self if I could go back? There are so many things, where do I even begin?
1. Everything you think is important right now won't even matter in 10 years. Wait, who am I kidding. It won't matter in 2 years!
2. Put God and your family first. There are the only people who will love you unconditionally and always.
3. What you think you want to do with your life will change 180 degrees.
4. Love yourself.
5. You are so much stronger than you think.
6. STAY OUT OF THE SUN or CONTINUOUSLY APPLY SUNSCREEN!!!!!

Ok, so these are just a few of the important things but this last one became very important to me last week. Back in November I went to see my dermatologist for my regularly scheduled appointment to help clear up some sun spots, old acne scars and those pesky fine lines. When I mentioned a mole on my head that my sister had seen and told me to get checked out, she quickly said it was fine but asked if I had any on my back. I thought it was kind of strange she would jump from my head to my back but told her I probably did. (I had a total body check for irregular moles when I started seeing my dermatologist about a year ago so I really didn't expect her to find anything alarming). She looked at my back and immediately said "I see one here that I don't like. I want to take a biopsy of it." So as I sat there talking to my 3 year old and trying to distract her from the needle they were poking into my back (remember, I thought I was just going in to get a refill of my Retin-A to clear up my wrinkles) I was wondering what all of this meant. Surely it was nothing.
 They took the mole out and about 10 days later I got a phone call from the nurse. She said that the cells from my biopsy were VERY abnormal and they wanted to take a larger margin from the area to make sure they got it all. Then she said it wasn't cancerous but very close. Just hearing that ugly c word jolted me a little.
As a teen I was always laying out, going to the beach, "working on my tan", hitting up the tanning beds......whatever I could to get that golden color on my skin. But at that moment when I heard "not cancerous, but very close," being tan didn't seem that important.
So now I'm healing from a large incision on my back with 8 outside stitches and an unknown number of inside stitches and I'm thinking sunscreen is a little more appealing these days! I will constantly be applying it to myself and my daughters and make sure I'm out of the sun as much as possible. It's just not worth it.