Merry Christmas!

We wanted to wish you a very Merry Christmas from me, B and our crazy crew! This is just a little reminder to be silly, kick back and enjoy life even when it's not so great! 

This year hasn't been the best for us but we are looking forward to new adventures and new challenges of 2017. I have a few challenges of my own I would like to accomplish including blogging more often. This year I was looking back and have barely made any entries to this blog in 2016. Hopefully in the coming year and get back to writing more and remember why I enjoyed it in the first place.

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Peace. Love. Joy. and all that other good stuff
      Love,
           Brent & Cara Beth Buie

Oh Christmas Tree.

I really need to do better about blogging more regularly. These past few months have been like a whirlwind in my photography business and I am so thankful. When my husband and I moved down here, we stepped out on faith, moved down here, bought a house and my business has grown. This is our first Christmas in our new house and this is the first year Buie is not working is retail this holiday season. For the last 6 Thanksgivings and the last 6 Christmases, B has dealt with the holiday crowds and has worked the long hours and had little or no time off to be with family. This year, though, we are enjoying every second of the holidays. 

 This is our first year to buy a real tree. Buie bought a bunch of colored lights and we spent tonight watching Christmas movies and decorating it. In the last 5 years of marriage this was the first time I remember us actually decorating the tree together.

I love ornaments that have a special meaning. I love old ornaments from my grandparents and parents that have been passed down but I also love picking up new ornaments with my husband as we travel. 

Aren't the lights just mesmerizing? I seriously wish we could keep colorful lights in our house up all year round. I mean, I guess we can. Who's stopping us, right?

The best part of Christmas is turning out all the lights in the house except for the tree lights...

Christmas Highlights: Part 2

After the snow cleared in Arkansas we loaded up the doggies and headed down to Louisiana to celebrate Christmas with my side of the family. It is definitely a little more...um..what's the word... LIVELY at the Walker Christmas with four kiddos 2 years old and under. 99% of our time is spent watching the kids. We definitely aren't short on entertainment, that's for sure. 

Highlights of our Christmas in Minden: 

• being entertained by our 2 nieces and 2 nephews - It is an absolute joy to watch these children grow up, interact and explore the world around them! I also love watching my two big brothers be awesome dads! They definitely have their hands full! :)

• attempting to get a decent picture of all four kids. This is the best we got. 

 This one might be my favorite of the day. :) This is better than crying Santa pics, am I right?

Carson (8 months) and Landon (2 1/2 years)

Hannah (6 months) and Makaylan (20 months)

• eating gumbo with my family! In Louisiana, gumbo is always an appropriate dish to serve but especially on a cold rainy holiday that you are sharing with family. :)

my mom with her two oldest grandkids

Landon playing Peek-a-Boo with MeMe.

• seeing our (probable) future home again. We met with the inspection guy today and he gave us a full report on the house (35 pages to be exact). It needs some TLC but we are super excited that this might be our new home. Nothing is official yet but we are praying that God's will be done on this house. So far things have gone smoothly with the offer, acceptance and structural inspection... but of course I'll keep y'all posted! 

We are heading back to Arkansas tomorrow and it's a good thing because we are really missing our kitties, Hazel & Charlie. We are thankful for our pet sitter/house sitter with Rockin' Paws who makes leaving our cats a little easier. If you live in Central Arkansas I HIGHLY recommend giving them a call.

Christmas Highlights: Part 1

B and I are blessed to come from two pretty amazing families and luckily our parents only live about 2 1/2 hours away from each other. We spent the first part of this week in South Arkansas and the later part of the week will be spent in Northwest Louisiana. We had such a great time with Buie's mom, dad and brother the past few days. I didn't take that many pics but here's a glimpse of our Christmas with the Buies. 

Highlights of our time in Rison: 

• spending more than 24 hours with B's parents - Because of B's FORMER job, he only got Christmas Day off. Now that he is no longer working in retail we enjoyed three full days at his parents home, something B hasn't done in over 6 years! 

• wearing our matching pajamas - Yes, we have become one of THOSE couples! ha! 
• watching old Mr. Bean movies and laughing so hard I do the uncontrollable breathing and I literally sound like I dying walrus. It's rather embarrassing when I really get going. 

•  being entertained by our fur babies. On B's side of the family, the only grandbabies are the dogs so they get the royal treatment which really is no different than the way they are treated in their own home to be honest. :) But they do LOVE going to see their Granny & Pappy because they usually sneak them a little meat. Yum!

• the food is always a highlight as well. I swear I could eat a whole plate of Mrs. Carole's dressing & gravy and over the course of the three days, I'm pretty sure I did! 

• Another favorite thing to do when we go to Rison....absolutely nothing. There is no pressure to be anywhere or go see anyone. We put on our (matching) pajamas and lay around. We might even drift off to sleep once or twice throughout the course of the evening before getting up and going to get in bed. Ahhh... so nice.

• SNOW! This year we had a white Christmas all over Arkansas! In most parts of Central Arkansas, where we live, they had as much as 12 inches! Rison only got about an inch or two. But that was still plenty for Conner & Scooter to play in.

which brings me to my last highlight of our time in Rison...

• watching Conner & Scooter play in the snow - I swear if we moved to Colorado tomorrow they would be the happiest dogs ever. They LOVE the snow! Scooter eats it and Conner, well, he just makes it a goal to get as dirty as possible. 

This was taken about 2 minutes before we threw him into the bath tub. But I think it was well worth it...at least I think Conner would say it was. ;) 

You might be a crazy dog mom if...

you buy matching pajamas for you, your husband and your two dogs for Christmas. 

That's right, Pajama Gram offers pjs for you & your partner as well as for your fur babies. You can even get your name monogrammed on them. :)  Call me cheesy but I was *really* excited when these came in. I immediately put the dogs in theirs and snapped a few pics. Conner's fit him really well while Scooter's was a little big on him. But both look pretty darn cute! :) 

We'll all be wearing our pajamas from Pajama Gram this holiday season. 

* Pajama Gram didn't pay me for this post. I just like them! :) 

Update on Life!

One week til Christmas! How's everyone doing? I keep thinking, "Oh, I need to blog about that!" But who has the time? Am I right? So much has been going on here this last week. I'll do a quick run down to get you all caught up!

• I still have not gone through all of my Nicaragua pictures. I kind of over did it this year with pictures. If you would like to see any of my images, head on over to my Facebook page. 
• There is a huge PODS storage unit sitting in our driveway and we have slowly been filling it up. This moving thing is actually happening! 
• We made an offer on a house in Louisiana! Yup. You read that right. We made an offer! Woo hoo! 
• Oh, and it was accepted! All we need now is to go through the inspection period. Fingers crossed that everything with our future home is structurally in tact and everything look okay. I keep praying that if God doesn't want us to live here then He would close a door. So far everything has been super easy with this move. In fact, this is the first house we saw online that we loved and the only house we went and looked at in person. 
• One week til Christmas! B & I are actually headed to do some last minute shopping. I do all of my shopping early but then there's always last minute items that need to be done. And once again, I am reminded why I ALWAYS do my running around early - I HATE holiday traffic! Be nice out there on the streets! 

Hope y'all are having a great week! 

Christmas at the Zoo!

Christmas at the Buie's is all about our animals, naturally, since we are outnumbered 4 to 2. They rule in our house. Yes, they are all reasonably well trained (as well as you can trains cats), and they know who their masters are, but let's be honest... the own us. They even have their own Christmas tree.
I even waited until Christmas eve to decorate my mantel because Hazel likes to get on the mantel and perch. She likes to be up high and look over the whole room. I think it makes her feel important.
Christmas for the cats is like a wonderland of all things cats love: shiny things, lights, bells, paper, ornaments and a huge tree in the living room to climb. It's like a cat's dream come true.

This was Charlie's first Christmas so he was especially amazed by the vintage silver strand of beads I pulled out of the magical box. In fact, the strand of beads never even made it on the tree.

Mostly they stayed on the dining room table which became the cats play room for most of the month of December.

Scooter and Conner look a little less thrilled about Christmas this year. They're old hats at this. They've been around the block a time or two. "Just give us the treats and let's be done with this." Their stockings were filled with new toys, bones, and treats to last for months...but in reality will last about 2 weeks.
This was our first year without George. We had a brief moment of sadness when we came across his stocking. Not sure what to do with his old stocking, we just left it in the box. We'll deal with it next year.
But we are super excited to have added one more stocking, Charlie, to the holder. We order these stockings from Pottery Barn several years ago and of course they are no longer available. I ordered a similar one for Charlie but it ended up being super tiny compared to the other three. Honestly, I love it because Charlie is so small and is the youngest member. It's perfect! :)
And yes, even the cats get treats in their stockings. Here is Charlie being introduced to catnip for the first time. Wow! He loved it. He got toy shrimp filled with catnip and was in little kitty heaven. :)
Merry Christmas from the Buie's Zoo! We sincerely hope that you and your furry friends had a wonderful Christmas!