This is....

This is...

My sister Jen and three of her girls

Julia, Heather, and Theresa

My sister Stephanie and her three kids

Sarah, Dylan and Kyle

My brother Charles along with his wife Heather

And their two children

Emily and Isaac

All the grandchildren except Nicole who is away in the Navy

Me and Chris along with our kids

Maggie, Katelyn, Ben and Connor

A post with my siblings, my nieces, and my nephews

I love'm all!

Story with Grammy

When my parents were recently visiting Maggie drew a few pictures and told Grammy a story about them.

Grammy encouraged Maggie to make a book out of it.

They worked together to put the book together and Grammy wrote, word for word, what Maggie recited for her.

Then, while sitting on Grammy's lap, Maggie read her book to me.  It's called "Green Dog" and has a great life lesson in it. 
A quick explanation is that Green Dog would see a friend that was a different color and would change to be the same color as that friend.   But in the end Green Dog realizes that he likes who he is and decides to go back to being Green.

Beautifully written by Maggie with a little help from her Grammy!

This is....

Absolutely

Pure

amazing

Just plain

Sweetness...

My 2nd favorite Christmas gift

At dinner on Christmas night we went around the table asking each child what his or her favorite gift was.  Then Katelyn asked me.  My answer was, "My favorite gift today was seeing how happy and blessed our family is!  I loved seeing all the smiles and hearing all the laughs of my family!" 

I then said my second favorite gift was this figurine.  I cried when I opened it.  Just as a picture is worth a thousand words this figurine is worth about a million words. For what is now and for what I will miss later.  Rocking my children safe and warm on my lap is by far my favorite thing to do.  Nothing even comes close.  Fortunately, I learned early on that taking the time to rock my children is one of the most important things I can do so I have been sure to do it often! 

Sadly, I know this won't last forever.  The day is coming all to soon that I won't be able to rock my children because they will be too big.  Of course we will "nuggle" as Ben calls it and that will be great but it won't be the same.

So I cried for what is so amazing now and what I will miss so much later.

Yep, this is my 2nd favorite Christmas gift... 

Payback....

Don't let her fool you...  She's not so innocent...  She may look like she's just sitting nicely and enjoying company at our family Christmas party but she's not...

She's making fun of her innocent little sister's pecan pie. The first pecan pie her very sweet and wonderful younger sister ever made.  Possibly, said pie didn't come out overly great but that's not the point...

So when the younger sister sprayed whip cream all over her face she deserved it!!!!!

Who's laughing now?!?!?!?

A snow day!

Oh, how I remember those mornings when I was little and the news reported that it was a snow day.  The excitement and anticipation of piling on our snow clothes and playing outside all day.

For my children it is no different.  They were begging from 7:30 to go out and play.  I held them off for a bit while we waited for friends to come play.

Katelyn's best friend Ryley was dropped off and within minutes the kids were outside playing.

 Throwing snowballs

Snowboarding

Laying in the snow

Looking adorable and loving it even if it's hard to move with all this winter stuff on.

Snowboarding and throwing snowballs at the same time

Ben loved sliding down the little hill and rolling on as he hit the bottom

You're rocking it Mag!!!!

Happy Snow Day!!!

Outside Christmas lights

One of the very exciting things that our new house has that our old house didn't is outside electricity outlets.  Every year the kids wanted outside decorations but since we didn't have outlets, and we weren't willing to run a cord out a window, we didn't get to have any.

But....  Yay!  Our new house has outside electricity!

We didn't go too crazy, just a couple of trees, a reindeer, and some net lighting on two bushes, but it was so pretty. I loved looking at the lights but knew it was time for them to come down as Christmas was over weeks ago.

Then it snowed and the lights were no longer just pretty, they were absolutely beautiful!

So out there they stayed a while longer.

I tried to take pictures of them and got some decent pictures but I don't think it is even possible to capture the true and amazing beauty that they actually were.

The other day I decided it was time to pack 'em up and bring 'em in.  I did get some inside but our reindeer and one of the trees is frozen in the ground and I have no idea how to get them out.  The one tree I did get out broke while trying to get it out of the ground so I gave up on the other one.

I'm not a big fan of this time of year at all but I will say that the beauty of the lights on the snow makes it a little easier to deal with!