Christmas Eve!

Spent Christmas Eve at Rah Rah's house. Had a great meal and opened gifts and enjoyed our time together.

The boys watching Rah Rah open her gifts!



The boys got lots of fun things!





When we got home we opened stockings. The boys get to open stockings on Christmas Eve and then we leave them with Santa's cookies and milk. Santa then leaves the stockings with the boys gifts on Christmas morning so they know which things are theirs!





The boys threw out their magic reindeer food and then we set out cookies and milk and were ready for Santa to come! The boys were sound asleep in record time!!

Christmas in Montgomery!

Got to spend a few days down in Montgomery with Chad's grand dad and his wife. The boys LOVE being at Gramp's and Grammy's house!! We all do actually! The weather was pretty nice while we were there so the boys were able to get outside and play. We got to go to the park one evening and see the lights. I of course forgot to take my camera on that outing so I missed on on some neat pictures!



Got to see Cody and Lauren for a little while on Sunday while we were there. After lunch we all opened gifts and had a good time before they had to head back home.






The boys with Gramps!



I was so excited to get to spend a little time with my friend Mallory while we were there. She's expecting their 4th baby and it's going to be a boy. She has 3 girls so they are all thrilled that a baby boy is coming!!

Christmas in Savannah

We celebrated Christmas in Savannah last weekend. When we arrived we were greeted outside by Santa and Mrs. Claus!! What a surprise!! We all gathered round for pictures before Santa had to leave....he was getting a little warm and needed to change! It's a lot colder in the north pole!




Copper said, "he's not the real Santa!" Hmmm. I don't know!



We all sang Christmas carols. Cade led us all in one song but I can't remember which one it was!



We all received new Tervis tumblers. Of course Chad got a Duke one! These are supposed to be the best cups ever! You can drink hot or cold drinks in them and they apparently don't sweat at all!! The site has every imaginable (well almost) thing you could possibly want on a cup!



The boys were excited to open their gifts!!



I got a "chocoholic" tumbler but also got this awesome cookbook! I follow her (The Pioneer Woman) blog and love it!! She talks about her life as a homeschooling mom on the ranch (she's from the big city) with her kids, husband (Marlboro Man) and dog! She also cooks a lot and has hilarious stories...and I do mean hilarious!! I'm so excited about my new book! Thank you Amanda!! If you go to her site be sure to read her "Love Story"!

Christmas crafts!

Here are a few of the crafts the kids have done over the past couple of weeks. I love doing crafts around the holidays. Most of the crafts I do with them are very simple and don't take much time!

Made ornaments using beads and pipe cleaners! This is a popular craft around Christmas time!




I love doing crafts with handprints! The kids love anytime they get to work with paint. We made this reindeer today that actually used footprints and handprints!



Made this tree last week. The decorations were made using my hole punch! The kids actually sprinkled them on while the paint was still wet so we didn't have to use glue which probably would have resulted in a mess with those tiny dots!



Tissue art is always fun too!



If you have any easy holiday crafts feel free to send them my way! I'm always looking for new ideas!

A little holiday fun!

Over the past three and a half weeks I've probably baked about 100 loaves of bread for either gifts, craft fairs or to sell at Chad's school. I'm about baked out!! I have a few more loaves to bake tonight and tomorrow and then my kitchen is going to shut down for a while.....well at least from bread baking! Even with all the baking I've done, which has taken up lots of my time, we have managed to squeeze in some time to make some fun Christmas treats for ourselves and others!

Chance got a cute stocking cookie cutter on Sunday from his bible class teacher Mrs. Kim. We used it the very next day to make cute stocking sandwiches! It doesn't take much to impress little ones!! Give them some M&M,s to decorate with and they are super happy!




The boys helped make goodies to take to their bible class teachers and neighbors! They love being able to help and this was a super easy treat and it turned out cute!

First they had to unwrap a LOT of hershey kisses. They wanted to eat them so bad! I told them as soon as they got every one unwrapped they could eat ONE!!


Then they had to place a hershey kiss on every pretzel!


I added the M&M,s because I was afraid they would get melted chocolate everywhere. After letting them cool we packaged them and they were ready to hand out.


Earlier in the week we made reindeer cupcakes! The kids each got to decorate one by themselves which only lasted long enough for me to snap a picture. They gobbled them up quickly!


I decorated about 20 more to take to Cade's school. As soon as we got to school Cooper dumped one container out onto the parking lot while getting out of the van. THANKFULLY they weren't all in the same container. And it just so happened that Cade's class had 8 kids out with the stomach bug so we had plenty of unharmed reindeer for the kids to enjoy!! Whew!

Christmas parade

Thursday night I headed out with 2 of my boys and our neighbors to watch the Christmas parade. Cooper was running a fever so I left him at home with Chad who didn't care anything about going anyway! Cooper on the other hand was very upset that he had to stay home. I hated it for him. He was so excited about going. When we got home he cried because I told him the parade was over. Bless his heart! Hopefully next year he'll get to watch the parade with us!

The kids anxiously waiting for the parade to come!


The boys were all bundled up for the chilly night which ended up not being too terribly cold...thank goodness!


We came prepared with hot chocolate too...yum!


Rah Rah met us there and watched with us.


Me and my boys

The trees are up!

Last weekend we got the trees up in the house. The boys were so excited to help put them up. We are excited to have our house all decorated for Christmas. The trees come on first thing when the boys get up and don't go off until bed time! I just love this time of year! For the first time ever we have places to put 2 big trees. We have one up stairs and one in the living room. The boys have little trees in their rooms too!

First we put up the tree at the top of the stairs. Rah Rah helped us put this one up!



And here is the view from the bottom of the stairs! I love it!!



Next we went downstairs and put up the living room tree. The boys were in such a hurry to get the ornaments on the tree! The bottom of the tree was a little more decorated the the rest but that's okay!


Cade showing off the ornament he made last year



Can you tell where Cooper's favorite spot to hang ornaments was?!?!