Christmas Day 2015

Christmas morning I first heard the boys at roughly 5:45am. After that I heard them going to check the clock in the kitchen every 10 minutes to see if it was 7am yet (the time they were allowed to come wake us). I'm not sure hearing their pounding footsteps every 10 minutes was any better then having them in our room though...After they came to get us we slowly got the girls up and then headed downstairs so the kids could see their loot. Once again they were spoiled rotten as always! Here they are with their Santa gifts: 

Tyler's favorite gift was probably his new, gigantic Nerf gun (the bullets make a frightening whistling noise when they come your way). The Lord of the Rings, "Ring of Power" I got him had to be a close second (it was a "replica" of THE ring on Lord of the Rings). He spent the day helping the boys make their new Lego sets and playing Minecraft, just 'cause he could. He also enjoyed making a video of himself making his own Lego set (Gandalf's firework cart).

Lucy pretty much loved everything she got. When she pulled her new nail polish out of her stocking she said "Oh beautiful!" When she saw the Elsa doll and blanket her Grams and Poppy Hatch got her she started to sing "Let it go!" She absolutely loves her Barbie Horse that trots on its own. She especially loves making it walk into things... And the last minute My Little Pony backpack we got her was an excellent choice because she stores the "Strawberry Shortcake" tea set that she got in it (it's really just a strawberry tea set). Her Christmas day was spent playing with all her new toys and endless episodes of My Little Pony.

Ben's favorite present was his Star Wars Lego set, he needed lots of help from dad to make it and spent much of his morning doing that. He also got unlimited time to play Minecraft so that was another good part of his day. 

Steven's favorite present was his Minecraft Lego crafting box. He has already made three different things with it. He was really sweet Christmas day and said lots of thank you's to us for all the good stuff he got. It was nice to hear him be thankful. Like his brother, he spent much of the day Lego building and playing Minecraft.

Penny has a short attention span so she didn't dwell too long on any of her presents but she keeps coming back to each of them so I'm pretty sure we did good. Even if we didn't, all her sibling love her robot present and will gladly play with it for her- it records what you say and then plays it back for you in a song. At the end of Christmas day though, she was not a happy camper. I'm pretty sure I gave her my lovely head cold.

I had a busy Christmas. It's amazing the carnage and mess that occurs after 4 kids open presents and so I spent most of the morning cleaning that up and helping the kids find places for their new toys. I also made breakfast which was super fun because I got a pancake "pen" so I attempted to make Christmas tree and candy cane pancakes. They were sort of a hot mess but I still enjoyed the process. My favorite present? Hard to pic one! I was impressed by the cute slippers Tyler picked out and he got me a really pretty wedding ring holder (bird on a tree). I was also happy to get a much needed new food processor and new knives. After cleaning, cooking, and video chatting, I had mashed potatoes to make and then it was time to go to our friends house for dinner. Seriously this being the mom stuff is a lot of work on holidays!

As I mentioned above, that evening we went to The Chappell's home for dinner. They had 4 other families over so it was madness but it was a good madness. The food was delish, the company was great and the kids had plenty of friends to get crazy with. Penny, despite her sick crankiness, really loved the real live baby that was there and kept trying to hold her hand, it was super sweet. All in all this Christmas Season left me feeling blessed with all the good people we have in our lives here in Michigan. They were so good to have us over and it really helped keep me from getting super home sick!

Christmas Eve 2015

Christmas Eve morning was nice and sunny so we took advantage of that and decorated our cookies for Santa outside (plus that meant less mess for me to clean inside). Lucy enjoyed gobbing on frosting and sprinkles and then eating it. Penny enjoyed licking off the frosting on the cookies we gave her. And the boys and Tyler and I enjoyed being master decorators.

That evening our family and another family from the Ward (the Hansen's) were invited over to The Ormond's house for dinner. Everyone bought a soup and after we stuffed ourselves the adults played a dice game while the kids played in the playroom in the basement. The game we played was called Zilch and apparently all my dice rolling in Bunco has paid off because I won! Tyler kept playing off my points but in the end I was the winner! After that the kids decorated and ate cookies and then we attempted to calm them down by playing some Christmas songs with chimes. The boys were excellent chime players but Lucy just wanted to bang away on the chimes, and was not happy anytime I tried to curb her enthusiasm.

When we got home it was time for our traditional opening of the Christmas PJ's. I was by far the most excited about Tyler's PJ's these year and so was he! Ben was disappointed that he didn't get Star Wars PJ's like Steven, fail on my part. And Tyler, for once, gave me normal PJ's that I can actually wear without embarrassment, whoop, whoop! 

Graham Cracker House Party & Bass Pro Shop

Last Saturday we invited some people over to make graham cracker houses with us. The list of invitees was long but many we're headed out of town or already had parties to attend so we ended up with 3 families joining us: The Solomon's, The Chappell's, & The May's . That was the perfect amount for our small home and I am very happy with how it all turned out. The older kids had fun making and decorating houses, the younger kids had fun getting crazy in the playroom and the adults got some good socialization time. Tyler was the only one complaining at the end because he didn't get to make an awesome creation, he was too busy making frosting and helping our kids put roofs on their houses. Here are the boys masterpieces (I had made one for Lucy to decorate but she had zero interest in doing such, she just wanted to play with her friends): 

   

Although Tyler and I had no success with making houses the May's and the Solomon's made some masterpieces:

   

The next day I again attempted to take some pictures of the kids in their cute church Christmas clothes...

Monday began the kid's and Tyler's Winter Break so we celebrated with a trip to the Bass Pro Shop (located in an Outlet mall). We picked up our Santa pass which told us we could line up to see him in an hour. We spent the next hour riding the carousel there, seeing the fish and then eating and playing in the food court. Penny was super attached to this ear of corn and stayed right by it pretty much the whole time. There was a little boy who didn't seem to appreciate her lingering, he kept getting cranky at her for just being there, so silly.

When our time came, we stood in line to see Santa and thankfully the wait went fast. This Santa was really great, he had a Southern accent and Southern charm to go with it. I liked him oodles better than the Milford Santa. Too bad Penny did not like him one bit and she made me be in the picture too. Double too bad that I had not done my hair that day. Now it shall be forever documented:

Tuesday and Wednesday a head cold knocked me out which was totally not cool! We were supposed to be out having Christmas fun but instead I just laid around (when not taking care of my crazy kids) feeling pretty miserable with a yucky headache. Thankfully by Christmas Eve the worst was over and though I still felt crummy, I was able to actually get off my bum and do the things that I needed to/wanted to do.

Christmas Clothes, Lights & Other Things

So lately Penny has been so happy and adorable and I have found myself really loving the stage she is in. I even bragged to a few people how great she has been. Apparently that was my downfall because literally the next day after I spoke so kindly about her, she went nutso crazy on me and was pretty much in tears that whole day unless I was holding her. That was Thursday, now it is Saturday and she seems to be back to her adorable self. I hope she stays adorable this time! Here she is looking cute before the Ward Christmas Party:

Notice the adorable bow in her hair? I finally found some that stay in her hair and that she doesn't pull out. Love them! I am hoping the bows will help people to stop calling her a boy, or buddy, or him, or he. Even when she has on her pink shoes and a pink top on she still gets called a boy. Maybe, just maybe, these bows will help enlighten people...

Last Sunday I had the kids wear their cute Christmas clothes because you got to get as much use out of them as possible, right? And since they looked so darling I attempted to get some pictures. However, getting all of them to be in the picture and to look and smile at the camera is quite the challenging task:

On Monday, for FHE, we went to the Wayne County Lightfest. We picked up some doughnuts on the way there and discovered that their stock of doughnuts at night time is less than plentiful. We ended up with 6 creme filled doughnuts that were not loved by any and 6 chocolate frosted doughnuts that were immediately devoured. I think for variety's sake, I may to need to get doughnuts in the morning next time. 

The drive was long due to traffic and as we neared the lightfest we were all extra thirsty from our chocolate doughnuts so Tyler stopped at a gas station to get us drinks. Steven, while looking at his juice, asked us what the "g" stood for. Tyler immediately replied "Gangster!" Steven then said, "This juice has 13 gangsters of sugar in it." Ha ha! I mean close enough right?

When we finally made it to the lights a serious good time was had by all the kids. They loved the Santa ones, the trains one, the ones that looked like a pretty Princess castle and Penelope was pretty cute as she pointed and Ooooed at all the fun lights.

After being spoiled with fairly warm temperatures (warm for Michigan in December) they finally did a drop for the worst Friday. And with the drop came snow. And for some reason I was feeling pro snow and me and the girls headed out to play in the lightly falling snow. I asked Penny to say cheese and this is the face she gave me, priceless:

For dinner that night we made the bad choice to go out. The dinner itself was great, the kids well behaved and the food good, but when it came time to go home all the precipitation had turned into ice. More specifically, black ice. Thank heavens Tyler knows how to drive in that stuff but it was the LONGEST drive home ever.

Other happening this week was Miss Lucy getting fresh with the boys. At our first play date this week she spent the whole time running around hand and hand with her friend Graham. At the second play date this week I found her hiding under the covers with her friend Zane. Yes, she was just hiding so she could scare us but seriously, Miss Lucy and all of her boys!

It's Beginning to Look A lot Like Christmas

So Lucy refuses to take naps when we're at home but inevitably, when we go to pick up Steven and Ben from school, this happens:

I really wish she would nap at home because I could really use an hour break from her to get things done. A few days ago I attempted to wrap Christmas presents for the boys with her around and she not only chopped off a lock of her hair, but she also drew all over her cheeks with a Sharpie. It was not fun.

Wednesday night I had my Bunco group and we were all to wear Ugly Christmas Sweaters. I was too cheap to buy one so I just stuck some Christmas bows on my red sweater. Here's me documenting it with the girls before I left (did you know that Penny is part bat?):

The bows surprisingly stayed on for most of the night, they didn't start falling off until the last round of our game. As for the game itself, I got a Bunco and did super good in the first round and then completely ran out of luck in the last 2 rounds. Because of that good first round my score was too high to be the lowest but because of the bad last rounds it was to low to be the highest so I won no prizes that night. But a good time was had as usual. The photo below is all of us Bunco Babes (we did have 3 people subbing for people who couldn't make it that night, based on lack of Christmas sweaters I bet you can guess who). I absolutely love Ashley's Reindeer sweater that she literally made right before coming (such talent!):

Yesterday I did a little baking for the Ward Christmas Party we are having tonight. Penny loved getting to taste the chocolate cookie dough:

And Lucy loved photobombing Penny's picture:

Last night one of my friends got sealed to her husband and we got to attend the sealing. I love Sealings and I love all the good advice given in them. It was a beautiful Sealing and a nice date night for us. We even got to do a Target run afterwards where I spent too much money but felt better about it because of coupons I used- ha!

Today our high is a whoppin' 59 degrees and since I know from the past 9 years of marriage ain't no lights are going up unless I put them up, I decided it was the perfect day to get them up. Nothing fancy mind you, just mini ones on the top of the porch railing but it still makes me happy. Plus I managed to re-find our outdoor Christmas tree that we purchased many moons ago. So now I feel like our house looks much less Grinchey :)

Bronner's

Penelope's new favorite thing to do is to squeeze out all the food in her fruit pouch onto her tray and then to scoop it up with her hands and rub it into her hair. As you can see in the picture above, this is quite a messy endeavor and it means that I can't let her be the independent feeder she was before. 

Penelope is starting to get interested in girly things. She likes putting on necklaces, carrying around purses and she even likes a tutu now and then:

Penelope also adores her sister. They were both posing for a picture when for some reason Lucy decided she wanted to strike a praying pose so Penelope followed suit:

I spent most of this week finishing up my Christmas shopping and preparing all the Primary binders and Primary things for next year. I also got it into my head that I needed to root through and organize the rooms upstairs so I did that too. After all that not fun stuff, I decided we needed to do something fun Saturday so we did! We went to Bronner's Christmas Wonderland and like last year, we let each of the kids pick out a new ornament (except for Penelope, poor neglected baby). 

Bear Hug!

The boys both apparently loved the marshmallow character that was on their ornaments that they got last year so they got ones with the same character, it was just doing different stuff. Benny's marshmallow guy was fishing:

  

And Steven's guy had a tree. He originally wanted one that was tailgating with a 6 pack (I think because it had a flag) but I persuaded him to choose this one instead:

And after picking out a bazillion different ornaments, Lucy finally settled on the Princess castle:

Once the kids found their ornaments we decided it was time to scoot off because it was crazy crowded and thus ended our day of Christmas fun.