Taylor is Eight!

It's hard to imagine that we have another eight-year-old already! Time goes by much too fast. Taylor had a great day complete with a family party (friend party another day), a dinner of chicken patties, deviled eggs, and a lemon cake for dessert, and a day off of chores. Definitely Taylor's day.

Love the Hat

This is how you know you're really in Wisconsin

Now that's an icicle!

We have 100's of these hanging off the front of our house. I couldn't believe how big this one was!

New Years

We took the kids to the YMCA for a New Year bash this year. It was so much fun with swimming, games, treats, and a New Year count down at 9:00!

New Year's Resolution: Keep up with the laundry (this is one week at our house)

Christmas Morning

Plum tuckered out!

(We found Gavin asleep like this at the end of the day)

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was spent with friends

Aren't these adorable? Reindeer cupcakes. They were almost too cute to eat. Almost...

The kids were stir crazy waiting for the Christmas Eve party so Cade played games with them. One of them was "how many crackers can you fit in your mouth?" It was fun.

Ahh, the Nativity. Courtney keeps trying this every year picturing a quiet evening where the children, dressed in costume, imagine themselves at Jesus's birth while listening to the calm narration of the Christmas story. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be? Instead, we have tired, overstimulated children that really need to go to bed but are too excited to do so. What we ended up with this year was a huge pile of costumes in the front room (cause no one could find quite the right outfit after 30 minutes of picky searching), an angel that had a meltdown because the sheet made him look like a girl, a wise man that pouted in the corner because there are no superheros in the nativity...or something, a "baby Joseph" that kept running off with the baby Jesus, a narrator that had to shout over the tumult while madly trying to shorten the dictation as much as possible, a Mary that put her head in her hands and cried saying "Why does this have be so stressful!", and a shepherd that knelt and prayed through it all. Courtney decided this was the last year. Next year we'll sing the nativity song and watch Luke 2.

Gingerbread Challenge 2010

The kids actually beat the challenge this year by consuming the entire house in less than a week. It helped that the house was half the size of last year's and had twice as much frosting. As a reward Cade got them a 2 ft x 2 ft cloth checkerboard with 4 in pieces!