Merry Christmas!!

Enjoying a crisp walk at Cherry Springs

A Little Miss Sandwich!

 We had a wonderful holiday week and were joined by Grandpa and Grandma who took a train across the country.  We were blessed with decent snow this year and had fun playing games and hanging out.  Thank you for coming, G & G!!!  Love you!

Making a gingerbread house with Grandma.  See the box?
Why make the gingerbread when Costco does the trick?

More beauty from Cherry Springs

Grandma was so patient with such a messy project!

I love the coziness, the "clutter", from this season.  Come January
our house always feels so plain once again

Christmas Eve

Christmas morning in the wee hours
before the kids woke.  We'll get
in a few hours of sleep...kids will
be up before 5am!

Christmas Eve--Ready for church?  Hmmmm.....

Stockings were hung by the air vent with care.

Remote control helicopter....."sweet!"

In support of our Angry Birds love

Princess computer

We got some awesome new things for our tag readers.....maps
of the world, the US and the body!

From Kevin's work Christmas party....was fun to have
a night with grownups!

One of our many visits to Santa, this one at the library.

Nativity Play

The local homeschoolers recently put together a nativity play.  We had just 2 weeks and 3 rehearsals to get it done!  Little Man was the Angel Gabriel, and Little Miss was a shepherd.  Her one line was "let's go find this baby!"  And find it they did.  

May we all find Christ this season!

It's beginning to taste a lot like Christmas!

Frosting the gingerbread boy.....uh, wait a minute.... 

She insisted that if she didn't eat her gingerbread man right away,
he would run away as fast as he could!  

Stepping up in reading!

We decided since he loves to read, it was time for
his own card.  We'll see how long it lasts before we lose it.
He is coming along well with his reading, though still loves
to be read to.  And he is a master story-teller!

Henry

Our sneaky elf on the shelf, Henry,
playing a day-long game of
scrabble with the kids!

He also really loves chocolate!  And is not very good at
cleaning off his face, as he STILL has chocolate on his lips, days later.

Princess Tea Party

Thanks to Grandma we got to attend the Princess Tea 

Party this year.  Little Miss is at just the right age, and does she ever love to get

primped up like a real princess.  She was in heaven, along with about 100 other little princesses.  We were serenaded during our meal by several of the princesses, and got walk across stage with them at the end for the parade.  She had a ball, literally!

Getting ready to go!  After doing her hair and makeup once,
I had to do it a second time after some crazy somersaults and
some dramatic crying.  Not sure what the crying was about,
but do we ever really know?

Her sassy-self!

And a little bit crazy...

Belle was played by one of our babysitters!  This was
like personally knowing a celebrity.

Learning how to wave and blow kisses like a princess.

With the lovely Belle!

Birthday #3....whew!

A week after her first party, we celebrated yet again, this time with friends.  This past year on National Bowling Day, Little Miss entered a contest by painting a bowling pin.  The next day we found out she won a bowling birthday package, and she was so excited!  She loves to bowl.  She had a super-fab time!  Thanks to all who came out to celebrate!

Princess cake, picked out by Little Miss.....it didn't come
out just like the picture online but it was yummy!  Butter and
crisco yummy, that is!  Good thing her party was on my
cheat day.....

It's amazing how long it takes to make a cake, and how quickly
it will be devoured later.  Only, Little Miss never did eat it.
She is much more into ice cream!

She loves how it turned out!

A couple of her buds

There were lots of orange balls, which is the
lowest weight of ball.  You'd think that since we there were only
two kids bowling at any given time on our two lanes,
we could get away with only a couple orange balls,
but they all seemed to know which ball
was "theirs"!  

Probably waiting, waiting, waiting for Little Miss' ball to get
down the alley.  Her slowest speed was something like .8 miles
per hour.  

The girls sat at the table.....

....and the boys took over the bar.  Hey, with barstools and
a TV show about hunting down saskatchewan, what boy
wouldn't choose that?

Don't they look like little old men?

Being silly together!

Very hard to get a straight smile from the Birthday Girl these days....

These are "new-retro" phones, you can plug into
your smart phone.  

The whole gang!  And this pin was a gift to Little Miss,
it is not the one she painted.  The bowling alley also gave
her a weird Betty Boop doll dressed as a Chinese concubine--
she was very busty!  Well, Little Man wasted no time
running around with it and showing off her bust....Me?  I pretended
not to notice while I hid my red face in a piece of cake.