Christmas in Pictures

Making Jesus’ birthday cupcakes:

Ready for the oven. Gluten free this year and they tasted pretty good.

Decorating cupcakes after Candlelight service and dinner:

Reading Luke 2 by the fire:

And another one just because it was so sweet to see these kids stare at the fire in awe:

Reading various children’s books about Jesus’ birth; here we are with the cloth book made by great grandma Saddler:

Roasting s’mores:

Ruth too busy filling her grocery cart to look at the camera:

Isaiah spent the day firing cannons at anything and anybody from his new pirate ship:

Emelyn and her new set of princesses:

Making the nativity scene out of gingerbread:

(That’s Joseph, Mary, Jesus, a star, angel and sheep via Emelyn’s imagination in case you can’t tell. She spent hours decorating and designing this!)

Watching “The Nativity” movie:

Snowmen @ Chickfila

Today we went to chickfila for a kids craft activity... Pinecone snowmen on skis. This month they had a free food or craft each day for families to do... Sadly, this was the only day we participated in. :(

Such a cute idea! Of course with a fun play place inside the building and food cooking, smiling for a picture was the last thing the kids wanted to do!

Fayetteville Square Lights

Last Sunday the weather was not terribly cold so we went to the square to walk around and enjoy the lights. We ran into various friends while there which was a fun treat to!

Silly kiddos with their friend, William:

Ruth and Katherine, 4 days apart in age – such sweet girls!

Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree has been the focus of a lot of attention this season. We forget how exciting this time of year is to little ones! Emelyn loves talking about each ornament and either asking or telling us why each one is important. Isaiah loves his ornament Each kid gets a new ornament each year for the tree that represents their personality that year – Isaiah’s is a basketball with shoes and he prefers to play with it than leave it on the tree. He also likes to remove and replace each ornament through out the day to a new spot. And Ruth – well she just likes to look at the tree, bring us ornaments or to put her babies in the manger.

Here the kids were yesterday before church in front of the tree.

Christmas Concert

Emelyn had her first Christmas concert Wednesday, December 11th. She and her “Mission Friends” class sang two songs – The Little Drummer Boy and Away in a Manger. Such beautiful sounds!

A family picture  after the concert:

Snow Storm

Thursday, December 5th we had a sleet/snow storm that pretty much shut our town down (or at least dramatically slowed it down) for a week. Most schools didn’t start back up until the following Thursday.

Here is a picture we took Friday morning at 6:30 (It mostly rained/sleeted Thursday, then snowed Friday the 6th.) It was a very pretty, quiet, snow:

The kids couldn’t wait to go play and went out while it snowed that morning:

After the snow stopped, we had 9 inches in our yard and had plenty to shovel, play in and sled in!

So pretty waking up to the snow on Saturday!

Hayley came over and stayed with us for some of the time since the university was closed. What fun!!

The kids all agreed s’mores were the best way to warm up:

And after days of playing in the snow, the kids were ready for something new to do. Thankfully, we had had lots of deliveries made which meant lots of cardboard boxes! They entertained the kids for a few more days:

Thanksgiving

 

We went to Manhattan to spend Thanksgiving with Valerie and her family this year. As always, I forgot to take pictures, but did manage to get these two:

Samuel and Ruth splashing in the tub together. Can you tell they’re cousins?!?

Valerie reading bedtime stories to Isaiah and Jeremiah:

Library

It is in the 60's today again but the forecast is predicting snow and sleet later this week so we headed to the library to stock up on new books and movies. Here are the kids at the library:

On a funny side note, as we were driving home Emelyn and I were talking about the movies we got.

Emelyn: "I wish we could have gotten Mulan too."

Me: "What do you mean? We did get Mulan II."

Emelyn: "No mom, Mulan too, meaning as well as, in addition to, you know... Along with!?"

Haha... When did my little girl grow up and learn these things?!?

And speaking of growing up, I found Ruth like this earlier this morning... Apparently she's old enough to figure some things out too... Like how to reach the forbidden ornaments!