My 7 Year Old Got A Kindle Before I Did

and I'm sure it won't be the last time one of my children get the next new electronic gadget before I do!

St. Nick was here

The kiddos slept later than we thought they would on Christmas morning. I think they made it until almost 7 am!

After presents we had a big family breakfast, then most went back to bed! In the afternoon, we took the kiddos to see Yogi Bear. It was really cute..well...what I saw of it. I was so tired that I napped through the middle part :)

After dinner, we had one last present exchange with Daddy B and Grandma. At this point. C's mystery illness was returning and he had a fever. You can tell in the picture that he was just sort of staring at his presents. Poor guy :(

AP could have kept opening presents all night!

We had a wonderful Christmas! I am so thankful that we were surrounded by so much family this year. The kiddos loved having Nanna, Daddy B, and Grandma here at our house. Yesterday all the grandparents left within about an hour and it was sooooooooo quiet. We miss them already!

Play-off Videos

We Are The Champions

A new tradition was born this year. The Christmas Play-Offs. My aunt came up with crazy games. We competed as couples. There were 5 teams.


The first game was to sort 6 tins of jingle bells by weight. Then we had to get an ornament into a marked square using a present, but without touching the ornament in any way.

Next up was moving a gingerbread man from your forehead to your mouth only using your facial muscles. No hands allowed. This was hilarious to watch!

But it was not quite as funny as this! This is my mom and my uncle. They were first up to try and move an ornament that was hanging on a string in the kitchen to a pickle jar in the floor in the living room only using the force of your faces together!

Yep. 2 grown men. Not related.

This was the race that moved Hubs and I into first place! I'm not sure, but I think we did it in 11 seconds! The prizes were awesome. Our grand prize was 2 tickets to see Shrek the musical at TPAC in January! And I do have the video of our winning race, but I have to figure out how to move it from our Flip.

As soon as we got home, it was time for Pj's and putting the reindeer food in the yard. Our yard was covered in snow so the kiddos just threw the food from our front steps :)

Birthday cake for Jesus

Christmas Eve morning the kiddos helped me make our birthday cake for Jesus. This year it was cinnamon swirl cake with cream cheese icing. Red/green sprinkles added by AP :)

Mid-day C started not feeling well, then it became abundantly clear that he was not well (I'll spare the details). I was sad for him that he would miss our Christmas Eve festivities at my aunt and uncle's house. But, he and I stayed home from church and he improved by the minute. By the time everyone got home from church he was ready to go! AP sat them down at their table and told C "Let's have a meeting about this!" She cracks me up. She was giving C a lecture about what to do if he felt sick again. She repeats everything I say.

The hardest part about Christmas Eve as a kid is waiting for the grown-ups to finish eating and talking so that the present opening can begin.There is now a running joke about the doll that my uncle brought home from somewhere for AP that looked really scary. Hubs snuck in my aunt's room once as we were leaving their house and left it laying on her pillow. Then a few weeks later I found it in my bed after my aunt and uncle had been at our house. AP then ended up leaving it on our deck in the rain and it got even nastier than it was. Hubs threw the body away and wrapped the head up and gave it to my aunt for Christmas! I'm sure it won't be the last time we see that doll head.




After all the gifts were opened. We held the first annual Christmas Play-off!

Family Fun and Feasting

We have been enjoying all the family time this week. The kiddos have been in super hyper drive. I guess they are just so excited to have so many grandparents staying with them :)

One thing we have been doing too much of is eating. I feel like I have been cooking non-stop. And it's not even close to being over yet. There are 2 big pans of chicken and dressing in the oven right now and I just finished icing our birthday cake for Jesus.

Hubs and I have loved having babysitters at the house all the time! We snuck away Wednesday night and went to the last in a series of 9 Garth Brooks concerts that he did to benefit the rebuilding after the Nashville flood. We stayed out way too late and had too much fun!

Christmas for Cousins Comes Early

My sister and fam came in town for the weekend to celebrate Christmas early. My sister and bro-in-law both have brand new jobs so they are low on the totem pole when it comes to taking off on the holidays. The kiddos didn't mind opening presents early at all!

Saturday night before dinner we loaded up two cars full and drove through the dancing lights at Yogi Bear's campground. It was really neat for the first ten minutes or so, but then the songs started over and we all got a little bored of it, even the kids. C kept asking if it was almost over :)

Can't you just feel the excitement on some of the faces? (insert sarcasm) I forced everyone to come sit together for a picture and some people, I won't name any names, would rather have gone straight to the meal.

How did you know just what I wanted ?!?

C was super stoked about this marshmallow gun. It's a good thing my aunt and uncle have dogs because there were marshmallows EVERYWHERE.

The cousins packed up and headed back north this morning. They left Nanna here to visit with us for the week. Hubs' parents are coming to spend most of the week as well. Lots of good family time in our future!

T-man

Guess who brought his family to my house for the weekend?


I just love taking pictures of this little guy. Even if he is picking his nose!

Firefox shout out

I have been frustrated with how difficult it has become to post pictures and navigate blogger. I thought it was a blogger issue. However, last week we made the switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox and it has been awesome!! I can now upload 4 pictures at a time again. It has been over a year since I could do that with IE. Just thought I'd share in case anyone else was having issues and hadn't switched.

PJ Day and a Mexican Farewell

Thursday was Christmas PJ Day and Christmas party at AP's preschool. Friday was a half day for her and her last day before the holiday break. Hubs picked her up early Friday, took her on a lunch date, then she spent the rest of the day at his office with him. She was ooohed and aaahed over by all his coworkers and she loved it :) She has been telling anyone who will listen about getting to go to work with daddy.Thursday night we met our friends for a Mexican dinner. It was an impromptu squeeze-in-one-last-visit dinner before they really and truly left on Friday.

We have had almost 6 months to deal with the fact that one of C's very best friends was moving. I think that because we had so long to continue to play with them, C never really understood what it meant that they were leaving. He knew they were moving, but yet we still saw them all the time and J was still in class every day. But, just before we left the house to meet them for dinner, C came to me very upset. He said he just didn't think school would be fun anymore because J wouldn't be there :( I agreed with him that it was very sad, but then we talked about how fun it was going to be to go visit their new city! Now it has only been 3 days since they left and the kiddos are already asking if we can get on an airplane!!

Third Annual First Snow Day Playdate

Last Monday was our annual first snow day of the year play date.


I think there were over 20 kiddos running through the house. Our host is braver than I am!

This year we broke out the face paints and the kiddos loved it.

The first snow day couldn't have come at a better time because our host was the same friend who was moving to Texas. And actually, as I type, they are on the road somewhere between here and there. She was really excited to get to have all the kiddos together one more time. She jokingly asked who was hosting next year and I told her we were all driving to Texas!

When we got back home there was barely enough snow to play in, but the kiddos enjoyed riding their bikes in it. It was too cold for me!

I think we ended up getting a little over three inches of snow, at least that's what we measured with our ruler on our patio table. Our schools were closed Monday and Tuesday. I know our friends up north think that is ridiculous! We also got out of school an hour early on Wednesday because the weatherman said it might rain and it might get below freezing. It ended up doing neither!