Leftovers

Here are a few leftover pictures of our Christmas trip to the farm.

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A little play time with Grandpa.

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And cranberry sauce! Boo LOVED it! As evidenced by the pictures below. :)

We had to go straight to the tub after her Christmas dinner. She got the fun idea to put cranberry sauce in her hair. It tasted so good she wanted to share with her hair.

And here's a little video of the babies. I'm afraid to say our baby is well on her way to becoming a bully! Guess we're going to have to start working on sharing!

And here is a short video of a snowstorm. We were outside and felt a few little drops of rain, literally seconds later we were hit with this crazy wind and a blizzard of snow. By the time we made it the 50 feet back to the house we were soaked! I tried to get a video b/c some of the flakes were golf ball size, but it didn't really show up. It was also changing really fast back and forth between rain and snow. But you get the idea.

Okay, now I'm done with the first set of Christmas pictures. We'll be having our New Year's Christmas with my parents this weekend so more will be coming. Now I'm going to go bundle up and clear off our 6 inches of snow we got last night! Yay for fresh snow!

Christmas Day

On Christmas morning our first order of business was to light the candles and sing Happy Birthday to Jesus!

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And then blow them out.

Then we got to go see the "big" presents. Daddy made Bug an easel! It turned out so well! I need to get a better picture of it. On one side we painted a chalkboard.

And on the other side a whiteboard, with attachments for a huge pad of paper to paint on.

Boo got the new Weeble Wobble Playhouse.

But she was more interested in the tag.

All the big kids loved her present though! It was arguably the most played with present of the weekend!

All five of them played with it for days!

Cheese!

Boo wanted a hug from Waylon.

And then her competitive side came out and she challenged him to a race.

But then she decided to have a pity party when she fell behind.

Just kidding. :)

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The big kids took on the job of passing out all the gifts, but with only one accomplished reader it was slow going.

We all waited patiently.

I think Boo's teeth were bothering her b/c she hardly smiled all morning. This was about as good as it got.

And it was only b/c of Daddy's tickle fest.

Then we took turns opening presents.

Notice Grandma's five Christmas trees...yes five! And she has ornaments to fill out every one! It's a Christmas extravaganza in her living room!

This picture got kind of blurry, but here is the table that T made for his sister for Christmas. Didn't he do a great job?

Boo is our climber. Bug never did climb on stuff as a baby, but with this one, no such luck. She climbs onto anything she can reach. She watched us open presents from this little perch.

Bug has really gotten into dressing up ever since we went to Disney on Ice, so we thought this would be a fun present. She didn't take it off all day so I guess it was a hit.

This was one of T's favorite books as a child so I found it on Amazon and the girls gave it to him.

And I love this picture! It is SOO hard to surprise my husband with gifts. He has an uncanny ability to guess what is in a box/bag/whatever. One Christmas morning he popped straight up at about 3:00am and said, "You got me a router bit set!" Grrr. I was not very happy. :)

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So I was thrilled to have completely thrown him off this year. I normally hate all his video/computer game playing so a PS3 was definitely not on his radar, but we needed a new DVD player anyway and I figured with the Netflix streaming we would get plenty of use out of it. And I knew it would make him happy so I went for it. :)

He gave me a full sized Cricut! I am so excited! I have been wanting one for years! I can't wait to get it out and start playing with it. We got lots of other great gifts. Boots, books, juice glasses, and movies for me; dress shoes, a battery charger, some small tools for T, games, toys, puzzles and books for the girls. All sorts of great stuff! But best of all, we got to spend the day with family and remember that Jesus is the best gift we could ever get!

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And that was our Christmas!

We hope you all had a great one as well!

Christmas Eve

We have had a wonderful Christmas! We have been at the farm for several days, enjoying time with cousins and Aunts and Uncles and Grandma and Grandpa. The first order of business once arrived was to check out Grandpa's progress on his train layout. He has been working hard on it and it looks so good! He re-plastered and painted, and set up the little town with animals and people. It's quite the layout!

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There has also been some hot-tubbing.

Playing games, playing pool, working puzzles, and just enjoying each other.

On Christmas Eve we made Jesus a birthday cake.

(I'm checking for shells after Bug cracked the eggs)

Love this girl!

Cousin E came over to help make the cake and they were being so sweet to each other. They hugged and then started taking turns stirring.

So cute.

Both of our girls like men better than women...at least as babies. I think it's b/c women are more touchy with babies and Bug especially has always had a big "bubble". Whatever the case, Boo loves her Uncle Wade!

Boo, Bug, and Waylon

The kiddos listening to Grandpa read the Christmas story.

Time for presents! Instead of stockings we do baskets b/c we discovered long ago that we couldn't fit all our stocking stuffers into stockings!

We take turns going around and opening presents so we can all see what everyone got.

My girls.

Grandma had one more surprise for the kiddos before bed...matching jammies that she made herself! They are so cute! The kids were excited!

A picture of all five! We may have a few frowns but at least they are all there and not screaming. It's surprisingly hard to get a picture of five mobile kids at the same time!

I'll post pictures of Christmas day soon!

Merry Christmas!

Auntie K

Normally Bug takes a while to warm up to people so I was a little worried that she wouldn't have much time to have fun with Auntie K since her trip was a mere 45 hours, and Bug hadn't seen her since she was 15 months old.

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Auntie K is officially going to be Dr. Auntie K in May! Okay, maybe that won't be her "official" title. :) She was up in the Northwest doing some interviewing for her residency and had a 2 day break between them so she flew over to see us. We are SO very proud of her...and the main reason isn't that she is soon to be a surgeon, it's that she has grown into a beautiful woman with a heart for God that is apparent in everything she does. You are amazing Auntie K and we love you very much!

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Sorry, got a little off track there...I just love my cousin. :) To make a long story short I didn't need to worry about Bug. It took all of an hour for Auntie K to become her new best friend.

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And it's no wonder. Auntie K is SO much fun!

We wanted to do some fun stuff in the short time that Auntie K was here, and one of my friends mentioned a drive-thru nativity that was open this weekend so we decided to go for it. It was a bit of a drive, but it was fun to see all the people and animals. I felt sorry for them though b/c it looked like they were freezing!

These kids were playing games to keep themselves warm while bustling around the "busy streets of Bethlehem".

Bug has been so into the nativity lately...she has been pretending to be Mary, Joseph, a shepard or an angel for weeks now, and making us pretend as well. So it was fun for her to see everyone all dressed up.

We spent the night at Noni's b/c two more Auntie's flew in for Christmas!

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Some playtime with Auntie K.

So fun!

Bug was pulling her Koala around in a little wagon thing and Papa thought it would be fun to put Boo in it. Boy was he right! She LOVED it!

When he stopped she leaned over, picked up the string, held it up to him and said, "Ahh?"

And then Bug needed a turn. Hopefully they forget this game before we spend a few nights there next week or his back is going to be sore! :)

Picture time with our other Aunties. Auntie W!

And Auntie N!

They had to leave to drive up to see more family so we took Auntie K to one of the malls. Bug loved this three story Christmas tree. It is quite impressive! (It doesn't look like she loves it from her expression, but she loved it so much she didn't want to turn around and look at the camera!) haha:)

And then we went to paint pottery! Boo didn't get a nap so she was a little fussy at the pottery place, but she eventually found some things to play with while waiting in her stroller.

I painted an ornament and let each of the girls do one too (just a hand print on Boo's:). I think we'll have to make that a tradition. It was really fun!

After a quick nap at Noni's it was time to take Auntie K back to the airport. Bug was not too happy about that.

I wasn't too happy to drop her off either but I am very thankful for the time we did get to spend together.

We love you Auntie K! We hope to see you again very soon!