Christmas Blankets

I just have to say that my favorite Christmas presents this year were the blankets that Jason's grandma made for each of my kids and all the other great-grandkids. She picked out the fabric for each blanket with a particular child in mind. My kids sleep with them every night, they absolutely love them. Thank you grandma and grandpa for helping my kids feel special every night snuggling up with their blankets!!!

January Birthdays

January is a big birthday month at our house. Karli turned 5 and then 10 days later Maya turned 7. Karli was very excited to have family come over for her party, especially her cousin, Riley.

This make-up was probably one of Karli's favorite presents.

Maya was super excited about her bike and luckily for us, their was no snow on the sidewalk, so she got to try it out on her birthday. She was so funny at the end of the day, she said she was so lucky, I think because she had had such a fun day.

Maya has chosen this carousel cake for her birthday a few times, I think it's cute that she likes it so much.

Maya got a haircut a few weeks ago. I love it on her! I think she looks so cute, although I think it made her look older (and sometimes I wish my "babies" could stay little forever).

Nice Mess, Kate!

I help count the Box Tops for our school. I have worked on getting them cut and organized for a couple of hours these past few weeks. I keep all the Box Tops in a bag in my room. I came upstairs a few days ago to find this mess.

My sweet little Kate decided to dump everything out of the Ziploc bags they were divided into. Box Tops, Campbells labels, milk $.05 lids that were once all separated, were no longer separated. It took me 40 minutes to get them put into categories.

Gingerbread Houses

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is making gingerbread houses. My mom actually let me help bake 4 of the houses this year (only because she broke her shoulder 3 months ago and had to have surgery on it). Usually she makes them all by herself, she's awesome! She's been baking our gingerbread houses since I was about 2, so she knows all the tricks about getting the dough rolled thin enough, how to get the dough onto the baking sheets, and how to get the finished pieces off the baking sheets without them breaking. This comes in handy when you are baking 8 of them.

It's always fun to watch how the kids decorate their houses. Poor Halle had to watch from the Pack and Play; she was a good sport.

All of the kids spent a lot of time decorating. And I was actually surprised that Jarren didn't use that much candy (you get to eat the candy on your house after Christmas).

Here's the crew, after all the decorating was done.

Kenadee (niece), Cameron (nephew), Jordan (brother), Esther (girlfriend), Maya, Karli, Jarren, mom, Kate, Jessica (sister)

Siblings are great!!

The Sisters

The Brothers (Jordan just had surgery on his wrist a week ago)

Out of the Mouth of Kate

Somebody rang our doorbell tonight and after they left Kate said, "Was that Satan?"

Maya's Christmas Dance

Maya had her Christmas program for dance on Saturday. She danced to The North Pole Express. She had so much fun up on stage dancing, she was smiling the whole time. It's fun to see her coming out of her shell a little bit.

One of her friends from the neighborhood danced too.

Decorating the Tree

Starting to decorate.

We're Done!