More Family Fun

Opa has been promising Isaac that they would go to Chuckie Cheese for FOREVER, so today we took ALL the kiddos! What fun we all had.

And tonight we all rolled up our sleeves in the kitchen and made homemade pretzels! Mark was our dough maker… 

and after some rising time, we all got busy making our own twist creations. They may not have been the prettiest pretzels, but they sure were YUMMY!!

Tonight after getting all the kids in bed, us adults have been sitting in the living room just relaxing as I think we are all a bit worn out!

But, we have one more day to go, and we’ll sleep when we get home. Wouldn’t want to miss out on any fun.

Snow Day

The kids have been wanting to see snow all month because, as Madeline says, “it’s winter!” So we have been watching the forecast for some mountain snow this week, and we headed up to the Blue Ridge Parkway outside of Blowing Rock to find a sledding hill.

There wasn’t a lot on the ground, but definitely enough for the kids to have a little SNOW fun!

While there was barely enough snow to sled, these two found plenty of snow to munch on!

    

Cute new family picture, even though Rachel put me on the downhill so I look like a super midget in this picture!

And what could be better for a late lunch than some good Western NC BBQ?! We stopped in at Woodland’s, one of our long time favorites, and enjoyed some heat and a great lunch.

The kids napped on the way down the mountain and once it got dark we split into teams and did a Christmas Light Scavenger Hunt. We drew teams and had 45 minutes to take pictures of as many things as we could find on our list.

Turns out, that once we got home and compared photos and stories—we gave the Lowe’s Hardware employees a good laugh tonight as both teams ended up running in to photograph the last of their Christmas displays. Great minds think alike huh?! But in the end Rachel, Oma, Opa, and the little siblings won.

Nothing like a super fun day full of laughter and good times! Never a dull moment.

Christmas Continues

Rachel, Brian and the boys got in LATE last night and how excited the girls were this morning when they woke up. Squealing children at 7:30am is the best when the reason they are so excited is because they are all together again! Couldn’t help but wake up with a smile on my face.

Can you believe that Isaac convinced the girls to watch the Grinch movie first thing this morning?! It took me awhile to get Madeline in the room, but she warmed up quickly and realized it wasn’t so bad after all. Could we possibly be done with our fear of the Grinch?!

Exchanging gifts was a highly anticipated time, so after breakfast we got everyone ready to open their presents!

Opening stockings from Oma and Opa was a blur with all four of them at once, but they had some cute stuff to show off when they were done. The clip on earrings and tiara were definitely Audrey’s favorite:

Oma and Opa put a lot of work into the girls present this year and it was a HUGE hit!! Their very own puppet stage! If you look closely, Opa designed the artwork and it even includes a moveable clock and their names. With a basket full of puppets, they are going to have hours of fun with this. What a great gift! Thanks Oma and Opa.

They got a lot of fun stuff from Isaac and Lucas too (which we will be sure to show you later in action) and we have spent all day playing with their new things. I am always impressed at how well the four of them all do sharing their stuff; for the most part they just enjoy being together! 

When it’s all 10 of us, I won’t lie, the house is bulging at the seams and we do some interesting scheduling to share ONE bathroom, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

It’s home and Mom and Dad always go out of their way to make everything just right… I certainly couldn’t be happier than right where I am with my most favorite people. What a great after Christmas celebration!

Merry Christmas 2012

We kept the girls out too late Christmas Eve at the beach so for my two that meant not sleeping well and getting up too early. Mark and I ended up crawling into their beds around 5:30 to get them both to fall back asleep for awhile, but by 7am Madeline was ready to get up. It was still dark and I was in bed with her when she said, “Mom, I had a bad dream. Is there a lemon on my wall?”

I was totally confused until I rolled over and realized what she was talking about. Mark drew them both "Merry Christmas” posters and put them up over their beds. Madeline’s was of course Hello Kitty and it’s outline in the dark did sort of look like a lemon. HA. Once she figured it out, she LOVED it!

And Audrey loved her Cinderella too! :)

“Keep your eyes closed Audrey, no peeking!”

They were super excited to find their new art easel and what we had put in their stockings for them—pretty much EVERYTHING was Hello Kitty for Madeline and Cinderella for Audrey.

After stockings they decorated baby Jesus’ birthday cake, this year they decided it would be a Christmas tree. (I still shake my head remembering the blue elephant cake Madeline had to have 2 years ago!) They really wanted cake for breakfast but I made them wait for candles, singing, and the big celebration until lunch.

After cooking together and eating breakfast, we moved on to the Christmas story, as read by Mark and acted out by the girls and their Charlie Brown nativity set. My favorite part: hearing Madeline and Audrey sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” by themselves. So sweet!!

Then we finally got to their presents under the tree! No doubt my absolute favorite part of the ENTIRE day was watching them open their gifts they bought and wrapped for each other.

They took turns back and forth opening them, and with EACH and EVERY one, they would show honest excitement and gratefulness. When Audrey leaned over and hugged her, the tears just ran down my cheeks! I am SO blessed to have been chosen to be their mommy.

New princess dresses and roller skates were what topped the list for my two girls. (Well, actually Madeline at first said the dollar bag of Hello Kitty cotton candy was her favorite, but she changed her mind!)

 

We had a wonderful slow paced day just enjoying each other! We finished off the day visiting with neighborhood friends at a dessert drop-in, the girls had a blast playing with all their buddies and their new toys.

Finally, because it has become our favorite time to drive to Gastonia/Hky (at night), we packed the car, the girls in their jammies, and headed west to begin our Christmas celebration at Oma and Opa’s house.

Tonight I am happily typing while sitting on my parents couch in front of the fireplace waiting for my sister and her crew to get here. It’s like waiting for Christmas all over again… I LOVE our precious family time!!

Christmas Eve Fun

I am a girl that loves trying new things, but at the same time I cherish a tradition.

Mark and I have always claimed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as our family time—not that we don’t LOVE both sides of our extended family, but we hold it dear for making new traditions for our little family.

With our move to the beach, making new traditions has been a challenge but today was a fabulous day where we did a little of everything!

We try to find ways to get into our community and serve on Christmas Eve, so this morning we met up with 100 other families and delivered meals all over Wilmington to shut ins, disabled seniors, and homeless. We were on the homeless team which was just to pack meals in your trunk and go find hungry homeless people. WOW… thought this would be easy. Not so much. Finally we had success once we met Bob, a homeless guy on the street, and he pointed us to where all his friends hung out, in an indoor U-haul storage building. You really don’t know how blessed you are until you get out there and see how rough others in the world really have it.

The girls were getting a bit antsy while we were driving around in the car and would point to anyone with a backpack after about an hour and try to convince us they were homeless. The girls did draw homemade Christmas cards to give out, and were more than happy to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve to us also means a candlelight church service and good times with friends. So after our 5pm candlelight service at church, we went out with two other families for dinner at our local Chinese restaurant. Seriously, we took up ALL the tables and chairs they had to make a huge long table for all of us!

So what is our new tradition this year, you ask? I racked my brain trying to come up with something new and face it, it’s the beach, it doesn’t get very cold here, so how about a beach bonfire?!

I have been watching the weather since the 10 day forecast came out and finally committed to doing it. Mark went and got my Christmas present on Friday—the beach bonfire permit—and I prepared stuff for s’mores and tracked down a guy to sell us wood.

Chance of rain was 80% starting at 6pm tonight but I just kept praying they were wrong. Sure enough, we got a drizzle for about 10 minutes but then the skies cleared, the moon came out and we had a FABULOUS night hanging out with the Bunch family at the beach!

The kids stayed busy running around, playing and losing the flashlights, and eating lots of marshmallows!

We stayed out until about 10pm and then piled the SUPER sandy kids in the car for our drive home.

I couldn’t have asked for a better day today. Nothing truly spectacular occurred, no amazing gifts were given or received; yet how warm my heart has felt all day—helping others, being with the ones I love, and being reminded that the greatest gift I can EVER receive was born in a manger this Christmas night! 

Merry Christmas to all of you, I pray Jesus has filled each of your hearts today!

Little Wrappers

We had a great Christmas weekend with Gramma and Grampa but they headed back home today after church and lunch. But not before getting a new picture of them with the girls!

After much needed naps, dinner, and a trip to Wal-Mart – we split up the girls for some giftwrapping. A few weeks ago they had their dollar store shopping spree to buy gifts—if you missed that post click HERE. If that trip wasn’t comical enough, wrapping was a whole new set of laughs.

I helped Madeline, and after teaching her the basic process on the first gift, she was ready to do it on her own. Give it two more years and she’ll be wrapping all my gifts! Woohoo!!

“Mom!! Quit taking pictures and guard the door!”

And Mark got stuck with Audrey, who was very little help, but had an excellent surprise face prepared for when I walked in the door to take her picture!

      

I love that my girls are SO excited about GIVING and certainly they will enjoy Christmas Day when they open each other’s gifts.

Looking forward to the next two days with my sweet little family!

Fun with Gramma and Grampa: Day 2

The cold front blew in last night so we had to layer and bundle up to head to our third and final Christmas parade of the season. This one was in Bolivia, the little community Mark works in. We went last year and no joke it was the best parade I had ever been to: TONS of candy, stuffed animals, and t-shirts. SO… of course we were in for round 2 this year.

It is quite humorous to me that the girls BARELY see the parade because they are too busy picking up all the candy that is thrown to them. When we got home the amount they had was MORE than they got on Halloween while Trick or Treating. CRAZY!!

Although we were at the VERY beginning of the route, you can tell, it is not a highly attended parade! All the more reason to go, more great stuff for us.

Oh, and for the record, there was no Grinch sighting this time around! :)

Next on the list for today with Gramma and Grampa—Rice Krispy Treat Houses. These were so much more sturdy for little hands and they had a great time decorating them together.

Madeline and Grampa’s are in the front. Gramma and Audrey’s are in the back.

Tonight after dinner we exchanged gifts. As you can tell Madeline is thrilled just because of the bag Gramma packed some of her presents in. We have a Hello Kitty fanatic!!

A few of the favorites that were not Hello Kitty or Cinderella related… the bouncy ball, which Audrey is quite good at:

The Christmas Alphabet pop up book Jackie gave me:

And a whole lot of new play-doh fun:

We had a great day but were all quite exhausted by the time the girls’ bedtime rolled around—fun can be exhausting. Gramma and Grampa are here for one more day, so we’ll see what kind of fun we can get into tomorrow.

Preparations

Gramma and Grampa Blevins are in to celebrate Christmas with us this weekend. The girls have been so excited they were coming so I planned plenty of activities to keep us busy!

After dinner the four of them worked to put the foam nativity set together:

And decorate reindeer cookies:

Team Gramma and Madeline were much more productive (and neater) than Team Grampa and Audrey.  Guess which cookie belonged to which team?! HAHA!

All four of them had fun but in the end, I am certain it was these two that went to bed with a bellyache:

Lots more Christmas fun planned for the weekend. Stay tuned.