The girls and I had fun window shopping this Christmas season! Here’s baby boy and me at 10 weeks! We’re now 21 weeks… moving right along!
The big girls did an awesome job at their winter dance recital!
Taylor is back! We sure do love Santa and Mrs. Claus!
Noelle’s first solo gingerbread house was pretty impressive if you ask me! At only 9 years old, she’s such a perfectionist!
A group of my girlfriends had a favorite things party where we each brought our favorite things to exchange with each other for Christmas! It was so much fun, and I’ve been enjoying our little gifts so much!
Noelle made this little hologram by gluing four pieces of an old CD case together (that she cracked down to size) and setting it on top of her iPad. The four butterflies around the outside are flat on her iPad screen, and the one in the middle that looks like it’s flying is a reflection of the ones on the screen. I love when my kids bring me stuff like this that they figured out from tutorials without any help! Oh, and the song is off a really old Ed Sheeran album (Loose Change) called Little Bird. It’s been a favorite of mine for years!
Noelle has a blast doing her hair! One day, she tried out the pin curl curling method from a YouTube tutorial. It turned out so great! I’m always proud of her for being creative with her time and trying new things!
Some of our friends got together and made care packages for local ambulance teams to hand out to the homeless this winter.
They wrote little notes to put in each care package before we zipped them up. Rose was working so hard on her little note of encouragement!
Service projects and togetherness are two of my very favorite things! So thankful for caring friends who coordinate ways for our girls to give back.
All ready to go! I love the note entitled, “Friend….” That’s what it’s all about!
Poppa came to town to get his car worked on, and Rose and I got to go out to lunch with him… definitely a treat!
We had a late autumn this year! Playing with leaves in December was a ton of fun!
Love watching these girls dance each week! After class one day, we went to the aquarium and fell in love with this pearl scale angel fish. Unfortunately, he needs a really big tank and has to be social with lots of other fish, or we might have had to take him home with us!
Rose’s teacher asked 3 things she was thankful for and wrote them down on her feathers. She said, “My family, my school, and my whole world!” She’s so sweet! Here’s an outfit she laid out for school one day. 4 year olds have the best style, lol!
I love helping out with Noelle’s leadership group. These girls are not only leaders, but the sweetest little ladies!
Anna Kate and Brylee had a blast together on their 1st grade field trip, and I did too!
We had the best Mediterranean buffet lunch the day of the field trip! Sydney and Anna Kate are so cute!
After school yogurt date with Ava and Eden! We had fun shopping for angel tree kids with Noelle’s leadership group. It was so awesome to see them totally excited about coordinating outfits and toys for someone they didn’t even know. Giving feels so much better than receiving, and I’m so thankful our girls are figuring that out through life experiences. We’re all in this together.
Every single time we go to Target, this platform has to be used as a stage. At their first mention of climbing on, I think, we don’t have time, then I stop myself with the thought, this is what time is for!
Noelle’s 4th grade hopes and dreams list. She’s so beautiful, inside and out!
Hey Taylor! What ya doin?
This happened the majority of days in December, but my little elf on the right always fixed it during the day!
Mike is always teaching Noelle new concepts and ideas every time I turn around. They are best buddies!
Happy 5th birthday, Katie!
I love this picture of the big girls knocked out, and Rose still going strong! Poor Noelle got cold and had to borrow Anna Kate’s jacket.
Noelle’s only Christmas wish was to meet Miranda Sings (Colleen Evans). Little did she know, we had already bought her a meet and greet ticket two months ago. Although we ended up not actually getting to meet Colleen after all (the meet and greet time was not on the ticket or in the confirmation email, so we assumed it was after the concert, but it was in fact hours before the concert but there was no way for us to have known, boo!), we had such a fun night and more on that to come!
Happy birthday to me! A new Star Wars era has begun!
Our favorite dessert in the whole wide world: The Chocolate Thunder from Down Under at Outback! The picture on the right is one of Rose’s Christmas present boxes, all things she wished for. I love that kid!
Christmas present scenes created by our little cuties! The Porterhouse in Hot Springs on Christmas Eve was perfect!
Merry Christmas!
Walking through Garvan Woodland Gardens on Christmas Eve. Here’s part of the fall scene and then the gingerbread house is part of the winter section. So cool!
Christmas Eve stroll in the gardens. I had a feeling we were going to have a boy in this moment when I saw all of our sweet little girls surrounded by blue. When we got back to the hotel, and I was making this video, Mariah’s song “All I Want For Christmas” kept coming to my head and I thought, I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl, but all I want for Christmas this year is our healthy baby amongst these girls, so it just fit! This night will always remain one of my strongest life memories! For once, my intuition was right!
Our hotel was over 90 years old and every bit as charming! It was built only 10 years after the Titanic, and the girls are so interested in that right now, so they kept pretending we were on the Titanic. We had fun and made lots of memories going outside of the box with our trip!
Our Christmas lunch buffet was incredible. Every single course was the best of that course we’ve ever had. It was all so delicious and appetizing! I keep dreaming about those huge shrimp and the homemade cocktail sauce! I enjoyed the main course too much for pictures, but here’s the first course, a few pictures from the appetizer bar, and then dessert. The dessert table had at least 20 pies and cakes, along with a fresh hot donut bar. We had fun with that!
There was a piano player in the dining room and all the waiters had fancy uniforms on and the girls kept saying lines from meals on the Titanic while we were eating. It was the cutest thing. It did feel like we were on a big fancy old timey ship!
We went exploring in our pjs one night. We didn’t mean to go outside, but one thing led to another, and it wasn’t cold at all. We were having fun!
In the lobby of the Arlington, was this huge gingerbread house, built with real gingerbread, icing and candy. The girls kept wanting to eat it!
Here’s the back of the gingerbread house, complete with scenes in each room of the house. The girls absolutely loved it! We spent a lot of time looking at it!
Poppa and Mike had a fun time at the brewery!
We shared a joining room with Poppa and Rara. Check out how old the door is! From the upstairs floors, the picture on the right is what the letter drop box looked like. We dropped messages that floated down through the see through tube before we realized it was a working USPS mailbox. Oops!
If you go to Hot Springs, The Pancake House is a must! Yummy! Our waitress has written and illustrated several books that are for sale on Amazon. We bought one right there in the restaurant about girl power called “Runs Like A Girl!” It’s so cute! Hot Springs is such a personable, charming little city. We had fun hanging out with everyone!
We had fun Facetiming these Cali cuties on Christmas day! Greg is still in Denver recovering from his accident. He’s recently had some leg movement, and we are so excited about that! Before heading home from Hot Springs, we stopped by Fat Bottomed Girl’s and got cupcakes for our drive home. Their store/cupcakes were featured on Cupcake Wars last year, so we had fun trying them out!
Creepy hand smears on a window from a creepy building we walked past downtown, and Mike fully charged and ready to tackle what would be our tornado-filled ride home!
One side of the street downtown was directly next to a chiseled out mountain. I was so interested in that because I’d never seen anything like it before! One of the back walls of a restaurant we went to was actually the mountain. We had to stop in hotel lobbies several times on the way home to avoid major storm cells. I’m glad we did, because 7 people died that night on the highways we were traveling on because their cars got blown off the road from tornados. We take weather risks very seriously after a couple of close calls. It took us forever to get home, but we were happy to wait it out! My best friend from high school was driving home from Colorado, and we never get to talk/text, so we hung out all day, checking in with each other. Rose was really scared. We kept having to tell her we were keeping her safe. She was so cute!
More slow winter break days when we got home from our trip… lots of time to create new things! Anna Kate made an answer box, so if you have a question, you just write it down and put it in the slit on the side of the box and your answer will pop back out at you! She’s hilarious and always full of big ideas to try! And Rose is just a hot mess, all day, every day!
Friends and fruit kabobs!
Rose had a blast at Cerly’s paint party. She took her drawing very seriously. I was impressed. She even wanted to add some finishing touches at home. Who knew? Cool, baby Rose!
Go little artists and happy 5th birthday, Cerly!
Rose, Cerly and Katie at ages 3 and 5!
Fun on New Year’s Eve!
I read this information in December, and it was a good reminder to pack boosters and have extras for friends. We usually do, but every once in a while, we slip up. If a kid tells me, “Oh, I don’t have to have a booster” I always just go with it, but ultimately, if they get hurt, it’s on me, so unless you’re 4’9” and in my car, boosters for everyone!
This is how we do, yeah, chillin’ laid back! Thanks for the picture, Jon! And that’s a wrap!
