Five Boys and a Girl

Christmas Eve

We had such a fun Christmas this year. For the first time in 6 years Aaron got to take the whole week off and spend time with us. It was so fun to all be home together for so long. It's nice being back to our regular schedules now, but I wish we got to have time like that more often.

On Christmas Eve my Mom came and stayed the night with us and Christmas day. We loved having her here with us. I love that we live so close and can spend as much time together as we do.

We also had our very good friends the Biggs over for dinner and the kids were all nuts. Too much excitement pent up for so long was all unleashed at once and it really was crazy. But it was still fun and we love spending time with them.

The kids decorated cookies for santa and the adults tried to visit and not yell too much. We had a yummy dinner, lots of desert, tried to read a few Christmas stories - ya this was a fail - and then we sang carols and sent the kids off to bed.

A recital

This boy plays the piano. I love it, and so far he loves it.
I have a recording of his recital that I was going to post, but then I remembered all our fabulous home videos of recitals and band concerts and decided it might be more fun for me to see than any of you. So if you really have a strong desire to see it, and your heart is broken with disappointment, don't worry, I'll send you a copy.
But he did GREAT. He played his songs perfectly and was so proud of himself. He even learned a few more songs in the days following and played all of them for us to sing along on Christmas Eve. I love this boy.

O Christmas Tree

We love the Charlie Brown trees, mostly because they have so much character and you can see all the ornaments when you put them on. And I love that. I love all the cute goofy ones the kids have made at school, and the ones from when Aaron and I were kids. And I love all the ones we've collected along the way to remember special occasions or new babies. And this year our naughty little elf Holly Jolly made us a popcorn string to hang on the tree. I'm sure she stayed up all night doing it and I think we might have to ask her to do it again next year. Of course the tree skirt was never flat and neat, there was always one little boy or another climbing under the tree to either plug in the lights, water the tree, or retrieve fallen ornaments that had found their way into the hands of a certain baby who we will not name, however his name starts with Qu and ends with inn. And of course his accomplice who visits often from the down the street. In fact said accomplice might have started it.

Then since we don't have a fireplace we needed a place to hang the stockings. I had seem a few ideas on pinterest that I liked using branches so I just expanded on it and used the left over limbs from our tree to make this.

Parker took his job very seriously as you can see :-)

And what Christmas is complete without snow? We spent a day cutting, glittering, and hanging snowflakes in our kitchen to make up for what wasn't outside. Although we soon had more than enough real snow and the kids have had a blast out playing in it.

Introducing.....

SCOTTIE

And I know what you're thinking, wow Scottie, how original. But he is named in honor of the dog Grandpa Ken wanted to get when we was sick. He did get one, but it was stuffed and so of course we had to name our cute little dog Scottie for Grandpa.

He's a Miniature Schnauzer one year old, and completely house trained. Love it. He likes to run away if he gets outside so we'll have to work on that though. We even got to have one of our own Dad vs. Jimi chase through the neighborhood. Be sad that you missed it, it was pretty great.

But he's such a sweetheart and we sure love him.