Christmas Break

We may be having a break from school but we are most definitely not having a break from having fun. Our days have been filled with cousins. Cati and Karen came to stay and the kids played so extremely well. I love having extra kids around (most of the time) because everyone seems to play well together. And these 5 play very well together.
We also had friends over. One day the whole afternoon was spent making up plays. The kids covered every subject from beauty shoppes to slavery. Yes, I said slavery. Yes, its weird. Move on...I have.
Games, games games were played. New ones, old ones and made-up ones.

For New Year's we celebrated east coast style and partied from 7-10pm. Totally wild, right?

The guys played poker, the girls played Apples to Apple (and talked) and Visual Eyes (and talked), the kids ruled the upstairs. We love having a full house of friends.

To help the kids ring in the New Year we did Sparklers...

...banged pots and pans.

Bring on 2011!

Artist, Chef, Archaeologist

My little artist.

He got his own easel for Christmas and he has logged many hours in front of it drawing, drawing, drawing.
See the tongue?
Whenever he is working hard the tongue is sticking out.

I will buy any piece of art from this Picasso.
An Easy-Bake oven was top on Braley's list and Santa complied.
Today she baked her first creation: sugar cookies.

My little Chef.

I will defiantly kiss this cook!

"I want to dig up dinosaurs when I grow up"

Sounds good to me. Today Kahau excavated a T-Rex. She was so gentle and excited as she found each bone.

My little Archaeologist.

My little scientist captures my heart.

Christmas Morning

The kids slept til 8 am.

Can you believe it? Us either. We were up before them. Thennnnn they had to eat because they were hungry. Who raised these kids? They were happy to just go through their stockings til we gave them the green light. This year we were fortunate to have Grandma and Grandpa Widing, Harley and our niece Cecilia with us Christmas morning. It was fun. Here are some of our candids from today.

And then we all (well, mostly Harley and Rammy) took naps.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas

Last night we watched the story of Christ's life with the children. We ALL just soaked in the beauty of the life of the Savior. I feel a renewed tenderness for this sleeping child. I find peace in his life and love in His earthly ministry. We decided to do things a bit different this year. Instead of reading Luke 2 tonight we are going to read it tomorrow morning before presents. I have high hopes that it will start our morning off beautifully.

Merry Christmas to you and your family.

The kids

Winter break is fun. Especially when you get to play all day. The kids played parachute this morning. Each of them got corner.

All four of them.

Rammy has no idea he is a dog.

No idea at all. This big boy only has 2 feet and he is a superhero.
The rain boots, dino underwear, tights and cape make a super awesome, super hero outfit. We like to call him Super Pierre (said: Su-PEAR Pi-AIR...get it? Cause he has his Eiffel Tower shirt on? Clever, oui?)

We still have two weeks of playing to go.

I just may have to rock a cape and tights too!

It's begining to look a lot

like Christmas. Our tree is complete. When you have 5 sets of hands decorations it's a pretty quick process to make the tree all pretty.

ALL the decorations in the decorations box made it on the tree this year.

I love that.

We also put on about 700 lights.
My motto:
"If there aren't 2 decorations on each limb...the tree's not done."

This year, for the very 1st time, we put on candy canes on our tree. There are quite a few on our lovely evergreen-any bets on how long they will last?

So here she is. The skirt has been laid and a few gift placed under.

I love having a Christmas Tree!

*Sniffle*

The news wasn't what we were hoping for today. He did grow and he did gain weight but he actually slipped under his own growth curve which is not good. There are some things to be researched (by the doctor) and decisions to be made (by us) so until then lets just pray Ansen grows some more.

Endocrinologist

Ansen is back to the Endocrinologist today. The doctor is going to measure legs, arms, torso, and head. We are hoping for good news. He has grown in the last few months so we are very excited to see what the doctor has to say. Cross your fingers for us.....more so for Ansen.

Christmas tree hunting

Really, there was no "hunting" this year.

Usually we pack the kids in the car all bundled in their hats, gloves, scarves, boots, and big poofy coats whilst wearing 2 pairs of pants, 2 shirts and 3 pairs of socks. Then we drive way up in the hills, wander through snow and/or mud, pick out a tree (after looking at every. single. one......because of me-i will admit that), cut it down, spend 30 minutes attaching it to the top of the car and drive home a bit frozen and a lot hungry. We typically stop and have cookies and hot coco somewhere and thaw out. We have been doing that for years. This year we put on our sweats and hoodies, hopped in the truck, drove 8 minutes away to a lot, saw a tree, bought said tree and threw it in the back of the truck all in the time it usually takes me to locate everybody's snow boots.

Then we took pictures of the kids in front of a flocked tree just to make it look like we went up in the hills......oh, hold up. I should probably photo shop the walls and windows out of this picture.

Here's our beautiful, full, cheap, non-muddy tree.
We were practically starving after that exhausting 20 minute excursion so we ate. No coco or cookies though. Our delish lunch consisted of the most authentic dollar tacos in town. Yum!
Our tree has great color and it smells wonderful. So we may have strayed away from tradition this year. It's okay. Shaking things up is nice every once and a while.
Usually I put the lights on the tree.
I wonder if we can shake that up this year too...

The "tween" years

I have heard about them.

I have listened to other mother's stories of their daughters in the tween years and I will be honest with you. I fear having a tween but, alas, I do have a tween and so hang on folks this could get very interesting.

On our way home from Orlando Kahau found a magazine she haaaaaad to have.

Twist.

All teeny bopper info, all the time. So I caved and she got her precious magazine. She read it cover to cover on the airplane, pulled out all the posters and has threatened her sister and brother with bodily harm if they touch them.

Oh yea, the Biebs was on the front.

Girlfriend was on Cloud 9.

Ansen does not approve of Kahau's reading material and insisted on showing his disdain for Justin Bieber.

Gotta love them both!

Thissssss...

is what you look like after a week of thissssss.....

We are home. We are tired and we are ready to celebrate Christmas!