Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

What a great year! 2009 was full of great things- especially James' return from Iraq & KG birth. Plus so many other great moments- K learning to read, K & C retiring their training wheels, T's first haircut, trips to the beach, Disney, & to visit Grandmollie, seeing KG change every day, T turning into a little boy instead of our baby, Thanksgiving with most of our family together, the excitement of the boys about Christmas, & all the other priceless moments. We have truly been blessed. I pray that in the coming year we thank God daily for all our many blessings and that we try to show more of Christ & less of each of us!

Here's some pics from the last couple weeks

the boys doing a toast for New Year's Eve after watching Rudolph's Happy New Year & enjoying jiffy pop and sugar cookies! They were so excited for our countdown by the Christmas tree- complete with party noisemakers and hats!
KG visiting Great Grandma today.
the boys in their snowgear- they made some snowangels today.
KG with her Daddy & her new Minnie
a picture may be worth a 1000 words but there's now way it could capture the boys' excitement
3 generations together New Year's Eve! we didn't take pics at Brian's work but the boys loved visiting him there
check out the boys in their awesome new aprons (thanks Aunt Janelle!) and new hats
how do I explain this picture? they had a big project with plasma cars, Uncle Brian, and rope
the boys decorating their gingerbread tree- I missed the pics of making gingerbread cookies with Nana since our camera had an accident
James putting the Christmas tree together.

Ikea is fun

Friday we decided to make a quick trip to Charlotte Saturday. What a great trip! Who knew Ikea was so great- a playspot for the kids, shopping with just the 2 little ones. KG loved her backpack ride. big breakfasts for $2 each. and we got furniture we like & saw snow & snow scrapers on the way there & home. If we just had one a little closer, we'd be there a lot!

Here's the boys proudly sporting their new costumes courtesy of our dear friends. The costume/ present box came at the perfect time. We'd been home all week with 4 sick little kids when the box arrived with lots of fun stuff- even a pilgrim costume!

KG happy as can be as we headed on our walk today- this is a well-used backpack- KG is the 6th user!
Here's the boys super excited to see Fireman Santa driving around our neighborhood today. T was sleeping but big brothers loved seeing Santa, the firetruck, and the candy.
Baby girl is getting big & getting some curly hair too!
We were so thankful today for good friends who brought us soup & cookies tonight when we couldn't make it to the cookie exchange. How sweet & yummy! We really are thankful for good friends & family.

13 years!

yesterday James & I celebrated 13 wonderful years of marriage. Our celebration was a little different this year than past years- six of us eating tons of yummy food at Cheesecake Factory. well, KG only had bread but the boys feasted on lots of bread, bananas, corndogs, french fries, chocolate milk, a few bites of our cheesecake (J- red velvet and K- white chocolate caramel yumminess as James called it), and part of their ice cream. Very sweet celebration! I'm so thankful we could be together to celebrate together.

We've had a good December- we're working on developing our own family traditions. We've been doing lots of fun Christmas crafts and baking. Besides decorating our tree, reading lots of Christmas books, and singing lots of Christmas stories, the boys also made beaded crosses, gingerbread cookies (which I burned), went to story time at the Poe house, made applesauce ornaments, painted pinecones, made pomanders (cloves in oranges). We've spent lots of time enjoying this season with friends and we're looking forward to seeing family in the coming weeks. We've enjoyed our advent calendar each night- the boys are a little more excited about the chocolate about the stories we read but they're still getting that this season is really about God sending His Son as the little baby in the manger.