Finished Products

 I'm thinking I never showed the finished products?  Here they are - the two houses!!

 Wonder if you can guess which one my mathematician husband worked on...

Yep.  he is totally that cute!

Working on someone's birthday cake :) (Carrot cake - from scratch!)

Oh, I am so blessed and oh so grateful.

Hi-Wire Family Night!

 We've been anxiously awaiting the opening of our new trampoline park here in town.  They run a special "family night" on Monday nights where the whole family can jump for an hour at a discounted price.  That was right up our alley - however, when we got there (and it's CLEAR across town), it was super crowded and we had to wait 1.5 hours for an available time slot.  So we went across the street and walked around a sporting goods store.  This crew could totally burn some money in a store like that!

When we finally DID get to jump, everyone had a BLAST!!  All these pictures are blurry - my little phone just isn't cut out to take action shots like this!

Made me a LITTLE nervous for Caleb to be running around a place like this with a CAST on his arm!!

We were a tired, sweaty crew when we were done!

These two...

We were making a few returns at the mall and stopped to have some lunch after all our hard work.  These two found this adorable little table in the food court and were happy as clams to have some time by themselves.  They are SO close and I know Caleb is happy to have her home for break!  :)

Happy Birthday Cole!

 Caleb's buddy Cole turned 4 and had his party at Chuck E Cheese!  Caleb was THRILLED to get to celebrate with him!!

 Cole was a little freaked out about this "birthday ticket chamber" thing, but Caleb was MORE than happy to take his spot and collect tickets for him!  :)

Happy Birthday Cole!  We love you!!

Fun Zoo Day with Friends!

There's nothing more fun than bringing friends with us to the zoo!  Jack & Emmeline's mom came along so that we could chat as well - double bonus!!

The birds were happy to see us this morning!

I was shocked that Judah was as calm as he was to feed this big old giraffe!

Jack and Emmeline mustered up enough courage to attempt the rope course with the kids!  :)  Success!

David was a HUGE help for the girls :)

 The girls brought their "girls", and had SO many comments!  We saw several other little girls their with their dolls as well..I'm guessing Christmas presents :)

Super fun day with our friends!

Christmas Vacation in SC

The wonderful thing about living in SC is that we are OUTSIDE for so much of the year - notice Caleb's shorts?? Aahhh...so nice to be able to just take a little walk down to the park and get some fresh air!

Sleepover with friends - just what Christmas Break is for!!  Jack came over with his new Coke pillow :)

And Emmeline came with her new American Doll Sadie :)

Gingerbread Houses

I have finally realized that in order to really ENJOY the season, some of the Christmas traditions need to wait until AFTER Christmas, when we are on break, not still working on Christmas Eve service stuff - but when we actually have the time off to ENJOY doing it and not just rushing to get it finished!  So what if we make the gingerbread houses AFTER Christmas!!

Judah had his own "house" to keep him happy

Daddy, Callie, and Caleb worked on one house

Josiah and Jacob worked on another house

Callie REALLY wanted it to look JUST like the box.  I think that's actually impossible, but they came pretty close!

Really Kelli??

So Kelli's gifts for Jacob shipped separately...and one arrived by Christmas Day and the other did not.  Kelli is BIG about gifts -she spends so much time and energy in picking JUST the right gift for people - and always totally nails it. So Jacob's second present finally arrived and he was excited to open it...until he saw this black case.  He looked up at me with this strange look on his face...the other kids said "hmm.  she got you a haircut case."  I about died laughing.  She actually got him a really cool tool set, but the case it came in looks JUST like the one that my clippers are in for when I cut the boys hair!  It was hilarious.  He was trying so hard to be gracious about getting hair clippers for Christmas, but he was SO relieved once he realized what it ACTUALLY was!  :)

Daddy showing Jacob what all the tools are...time to plan the first project!

Christmas 2013

These two came down first.  At 6:01 AM I believe (because we told them it couldn't be before 6 AM).  They have two totally different styles of going through their stockings.  Jacob dumps his whole stocking out and looks at it all.  Josiah goes through one item at a time....looking at each individual thing.  Any guesses which way I do it?  :)

She came down next...still QUITE sleepy but not wanting to miss out on the fun.  She is the MOST fun to watch open her stocking.  She gets so excited over every.single.thing.  And I LOVE that!  :)

Krispy Kreme failed us this year...they ran out of Christmas donuts by noon!  So we had to get some from Dunkin Donuts instead.  We HAVE to have our Christmas donuts!  It's what buys us time to leisurely wake up through stockings!

David's stocking

I'm not sure why Callie and Caleb look like they were saying the pledge of allegiance...they were getting ready to act out the nativity story :)

This little guy caught on VERY quickly to all the fun!

Trying hard to master one of his new games from his stocking

LOVE watching the kids act out the Nativity Story while David reads it from Scripture.

Okay! Code is cracked, now it's time to sort the presents!

Judah really messed up the "order" that I like to go through presents...he just wanted to keep opening!  A far cry from last year where he opened one present every few hours!!  We let him do his own little "order" to keep him occupied so the rest of us could enjoy :).  He got this puppy from my Dad and he thought it was hilarious to watch it sit, bark, and do flips!!

"Watch Judah! It's going to flip over!"

We got David a leaf blower...and the BIG thing about this is that Caleb was with me when i bought it over a month ago...and he kept the secret the WHOLE time!  I was astounded! :)

More fun to come...