No words necessary

Nature in Winter

We woke up to a world of ice this morning. Thankfully, the ice did not accumulate on the roads...however, it did make for some beautiful landscape...

Here's a close-up of our holly berry bush.

Oh, and this one is for my six-year old son, a basketball net covered with icicles...

Remembering 2008

We began the year by celebrating Ryan's sixth birthday, Superhero style - Batman, Superman and Spiderman were all present!

And of course, cake was enjoyed by all...Here's Caleb modeling one of Ryan's gifts - a Superman costume

In March we celebrated Abby's fourth birthday with a ladies tea -

On Easter weekend, Scott's cousin and family visited from NC, and we enjoyed some time playing at a nearby tire park.Here's Caleb all dressed up in his Easter finest, complete with Daddy's slippers. In May we celebrated the completion of AWANA, Ryan completed his first year of Sparks and Abby completed her first year of Cubbies.

In May, my sister got married - Abby was a beautiful little flower girl and Ryan was a very distinguished ring bearer.

Springtime brought lots of playtime in our backyard -Caleb's favorite spot was most definitely the swing.

In June we indulged in a week at the beach with Scott's family.

In July we visited one of the local carnivals - Scott's parents purchased all-you-can-ride wristbands for each of the grandkids and the kids had a blast on all the rides.

The kids planted their own wildflower garden and we enjoyed lots of blooming flowers all summer.

We also got to take a much requested puddle-jumping walk after a summer rainstorm.

In August, Grandma and Papa treated the kids and I to a morning at a nearby zoo.

And of course, no summer is complete without ice cream!

In late August we returned to one of our favorite amusement parks, Idlewild. This time Caleb was old enough to join in the fun.

On Labor Day weekend we joined Scott on a work trip to NC - we were able to visit with his cousin and his family - and we also tried out a really cool kids' museum.

In the fall we spent lots of time at the soccer fields - watching Ryan's practices and soccer games.

One of our favorite family trips is the visit to the pumpkin patch every fall. This year we did our annual excursion to the patch on Caleb's birthday weekend.

Later that weekend we celebrated Caleb's second birthday.

At the end of October we attended our church's Fall Festival instead of trick-or-treating.

In November we enjoyed some mild fall weather...

And we also got a taste of some snowy fall weather.

After Thanksgiving we once again had our annual cookie baking day.

In December, we celebrated Christmas with our family.

We also made a trip to Boyd's Bear to check out the Christmas decorations - the kids always enjoy seeing the three story Christmas tree with all of the trimmings.

And finally, we welcomed 2009 with a "make-your-own-pizza" and game night at home.

Boyds Bear at Christmastime

We are blessed to have a Boyds Bear Museum about 20 minutes from here. For the past few years we have especially enjoyed visiting during Christmastime - they do a phenomenal job decorating and it's a perfect place to get pictures of the kids - that is if you can get the kids to pose :)

The most popular section of the store this year was the candle section. The kids spent a lot of time sniffing each candle and exclaiming "this is the best-smelling candle ever!"

And we finally got a good Christmas picture of our family.

Celebrating Christmas

We're ready to go to Grandma & Grandpa's to celebrate Christmas Eve with Daddy's family.

We filled our bellies with ham, macaroni and cheese, Mommy's "special" rolls, and fruit salad. Then we had our own Christmas Eve service: A member from each family took turns reading part of the Christmas story from the book of Luke - and after each scripture passage we talked about it's meaning and sang a Christmas carol. I think the kids really enjoyed taking part in this time of learning about the true meaning of Christmas.

Afterwards we opened presents - with lots of young kids in the room, this time can get pretty crazy!

We spent Christmas morning at our house. The kids opened their presents from us and my Dad and Stepmom (sent from Washington State).

Caleb tried out the gift that Abby received from Scott's parents. I don't think Caleb will appreciate that I have preserved this particular memory!

Later in the day we headed to Grandma and Papa's to celebrate Christmas with my side of the family. We are definitely blessed to have so much of our family near enough to celebrate with them and not have to travel hours to do so!

Christmas Cookies

I believe this is the 8th year of our cookie decorating tradition. It's hard to believe that when we began eight years ago, we had no babies of our own.

This year Abby was prepared. She donned her apron and had her dough roller ready - and she would not take "no" as an answer. Both she and Ryan had a blast rolling out the dough and using the cookie cutters.

Once the cookies were baked and cooled, the decorating began...
Here is one of Ryan's favorite creations.

As always, Abby finds a way to get some of the decorations on her face - even before she actually eats a cookie!

Three generations of bakers - and their favorite aprons: My mom, Me, and Abby.

This little guy napped during the decorating, but he did get to taste the fruit of our labors.

This is one of Abby's creations...

And here's a pair of Daddy and Son cookies.