Happy 7th Jacob!

I love birthdays but I hate to see my kids getting so old. This is my baby boy and he is no longer a baby. He is such a gift to have around. David took the day off and we went to Krispy Kreme for breakfast (my kids look for any excuse to go there). Then we pretty much just spent the day hanging out as a family. He got a video game that morning and spent the bulk of the day playing it with dad. It was a very nice relaxing day.

He waited to open the rest of his presents till Mike got home that night (my kids have loved having Mike stay with us while he was waiting to move his family here).I love this pic. You can just see how happy Ben is singing "Happy Birthday"......Katie, as well.

Mike just makes everything fun and happy.

This face cracks me up. If you can't tell he is puzzled over why the "one" candle didn't blow out.(He quickly remedied that).He has been asking for a big magnifying glass for a while and Grandma and Grandpa were happy to acquire one for him. He has had tons of fun with that thing.Ben and Jake both love this Ninjago Lego stuff. Nana has a "gift" for gift giving.

They have also been found sneaking around with these awesome walkie talkies. Life would be boring without little boys sometimes.Then we had a fun movie night with his last gift. Joelle and I were the only ones who got to see this movie in the theater so it was a real treat. I love just being with my family. They are the best!

These kids definilty know how to party!

Let's "Partay!"

We spent New Years Eve with some very good friends of ours, and it was a blast! We had great food and played a bunch of games.
We love glow sticks at our house, and have them frequently around for holidays. David came up with this fabulous necklace which the kids loved! (It takes a real man to wear something like that.. don't ya think :-).I love this little guy. He is just a "happy go lucky" kid.

And who couldn't help but love these two. These are the older girls of our friends that came. They are such sweethearts and we are so happy to know them.

It is a tradition of ours to go out on New Years Eve and do some fireworks.Somehow we forgot to save anything big and all we had left were a million flowers, some sparklers and a couple of very small fountains. We will be more prepared next year, although the little guys didn't care. They thought it was great anyway (especially Jake and Katie).

Then we came in and brought in the New Year with some great Sparkling cider in our new wine glasses (bought specifically for this occasion and in which Emma is always drinking juice out of now - so cute!)

What a crowd!

I know that this is a horrible picture and probably won't look very good to most of you, but as we all know how much I love food... this picture just makes me happy. It was a very yummy night :-).

I can't believe it has been almost 2 months since Christmas (and I am just now getting around to blogging it :-)

We had a very merry Christmas at our house this year (even though it was our first ever ALL alone). On Christmas Eve we got up and had breakfast and then got dressed and went out for a day of fun. We started out by going to lunch at McDonald's (so the kids could get the new Alvin and the Chipmunk toys). Then we went to see the new Alvin and the Chipmunk movie "Chipwrecked." Last year we decided that we would start doing the whole movie thing on Christmas day and we loved it even though it was insanely busy. But, since Christmas was on Sunday this year we went on Christmas Eve. It was AWESOME! There was no one there. We got there a little early and since no one was in the theater we all played hide and seek while we were waiting for it to start. We had a blast! There are a lot of places to hide in a theater! After the movie we came home and took a little nap. Then we opened our Christmas Eve presents...

The kids play a game on the PlayStation called Little Big Planet, so we got them some of these little dolls they love and collect called "sack boys." They were all super happy. After we opened the presents we all decided we were finally hungry (we had had so much popcorn and candy at the movie that it took a while for us to get hungry). So we went to the only place that was still open (we now know that nothing really stays open past 7:00 on Christmas Eve :-), Shari's. It is kind of like a Marie Calenders but with much better pie. Again, we had so much fun. Then we spent the next hour driving around looking at Christmas lights before we came home and went to bed. We have decided that this is our new Christmas Eve routine. It was one of our best ever.
I loved that Christmas was on Sunday this year. Our meeting didn't start till 1:00 so we had plenty of time to do all of our gift opening. It was such a relaxing day. Our kids were up early this year, but we didn't hear them (this house has great walls and thick doors and they were in the room all the way at the other end of the hall). They didn't wake us up until around 7:30. Thank goodness it was cloudy out so it still felt dark. I love to open presents while it is still somewhat dark out :-).

As always, I love pictures and took tons. So I am just going to stick them all on here just for the purpose of my own kids remembering some of the things they got for Christmas.

Emma, Ben and Joelle have wanted Harry Potter robes forever so they were pretty happy with their Santa gifts.

Nana and Papa got the boys some pretty fantastic science projects in a bottle. We have had a blast making vomit and veins and snot and all sorts of other fun things. These were great gifts.They also gave the girls these fun little knit dresses, and scarves. I am so happy that my girls are finally getting into clothes. These dresses are nice and warm for living in such a chilly place. They have really enjoyed them.

Look at this Guy! His is so cute!!!

I don't know if you can see her face or not, but she was not super happy about getting snow gloves as a present. Luckily she opened these really early on so she kind of forgot about it :-).

Katie loves books and this little guy responds when you read his story out loud. It is a fantastic toy! Thank you Nana and Papa.

Benjamin loves science. David found these awesome kits at Barnes and Noble and they have been having a blast learning about electricity and who knows what (I am not usually around for the science part of things ;-}.

Grandma and Grandpa gave Ben, Jake and Katie these fun little gold boxes filled with little treasures for them to discover and a little bit of money to spend at Target. It was a gift that kept on giving. Thank you too!!

In our home Santa always brings another gift sometime later in the day. It magically appears whenever we aren't looking. It is one of the best traditions ever. Then there is always that one last thing to look forward to.

It was a great holiday! We missed our family immensely and can't wait to share holidays with them again.