Christmas Pictures Take 2 and Snow Day

It wasn't quite as ideal to photograph the older kids Christmas pictures, the light wasn't nearly as bright, but I like what we got. We may still try to do a retake though, next week (I'm sure they will LOVE me)









2 snow days last week. We needed to do something to keep busy, so on Wednesday we tried decorating a gingerbread house. DISASTER! The roof was cracked, multiple times, the gingerbread was cracked, it was awful. We tried fixing it, but thatw asa disaster too. So, the when I gave up and said "Whatever", the kids being the great kids that they are made lemonade out of the lemons and took the roof off and decorated anyway!
Our repair attempts...

Elliot and his gingerbread...
The not so finished, not so fixed gingerbread house...
How would you like to live in that house?
They took out the Halloween candy to decorate the roofless house more. (Did I just admit to still having Halloween candy sitting around?)

Isn't it beautiful?
They made cookies out of the roof... doesn't this one look just delicious?
A chocolaty one...
Watching the whole thing.


On Thursday we just hung out and cleaned and played games, and then on Friday, the kids got to go back to school, we were all a little happy about that, except Elliot. But only a little, I really do enjoy having them home! I'm considering it practice for Christmas break.

Saturday prior to these snow days, we also decorated our Christmas tree. It started off that I wanted a "pretty" tree, but the kids got so excited about the older ornaments that we had lying around that we went with a kid friendly tree. I don't mind the hodge podge of ornaments either, they are mostly ones from Matt and my childhood so it's kind of fun to rmeember as we decorate! And, I still think the tree is pretty!

Getting the ornaments out.

So excited to decorate.


Lovin' the lights!
The kids and the tree!
She loved the beads.



We had our first Christmas party yesterday followed by a concert at church. Tonight we get to go watch Landon's choir concert, busy week ahead and then more parties next weekend, and the kids are home again next week, for two weeks!

Part of the Christmas Pictures

While the older kids were away at school we had a little fun with the little ones! Fun for me anyway.
They were actually quite willing, Elliot was especially willing once I promised him he could put on basketball pants after we were done! Whatever works!
I was quite happy with the results, now I have to get the older ones seperately and then all four of them together (they are SOOO looking forward to that)!

Need/Want/Wear/Read

Just read this post here from this blog and I think we will try it this year for the kids, I too am overwhelmed by CLUTTER. There are SO many toys around my house that need to be either pitched or donated, either b/c they are no longer played with or they are broken or missing pieces that make them unusable. I'm SICK of it! This is another post on the same blog that I found very useful. I've always felt this way. If I'm only going to have 3 shirts that I can wear, I want them to be good quality shirts. Better to have stuff that is going to last through lots and lots of wears than an abundance of stuff that is going to fall apart in a month.

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