Sara and Evan's Christmas choir concert was last week.  They had a fun time the last couple months at practices and were so excited to get to the performance.  They had a lot of people show up to support them.

Christmas decorations...

We finally put our Christmas decorations up for Family Home Evening last week after Evan's gave us a lesson on why we celebrate Christmas.  It is not a fun task when you have small toddlers still awake, a mom who wishes she could do it herself but has kids who want to do it, too.  This year I started to get the nice tree decorations out and started putting them on but thought better of it and decided it would be better to put  as little as possible on the tree since I would be gathering it all up at the end of the day anyway and putting them back on.  Right now as I look at the tree most of the ornaments are hung from the middle up out of Asia's reach and it looks pretty bare.  But it does look nice with the lights glowing. 

I wrapped the ribbon around the tree and then just sat there and let the kids and Ben hand the ornaments.  As I was sitting there Ben could tell I was having a hard time and came up and gave me a hug and said, "This is hard for you isn't it?"  Yes, yes it was.  I'm glad I just let go of my need to "control" though.  The kids loved doing it and loved seeing all the ornaments from years past.  

sick, sick, and more sick....

Well, it's been three weeks since all seven of us have been healthy at the same time.  It started with Evan sick on and after Thanksgiving.  Then after him Miles and Asia and Kamri all sick at the same time. They were still trying to get over it when we were counting our blessings that Sara hadn't caught anything yet.  Well, we spoke too soon.  She's been down for a couple days.  And I jinxed myself.  Last night before bed I told Ben, "I wish I could get sick and get to stay in bed all day."  Low and behold I woke up this morning feeling a bit out of sorts.  But seriously, I never get sick - not even when I'm pregnant - and a tiny tickle in the back of my throat and a bit of tiredness that I had today does not count.  But it was nice to take an hour a half nap today after church.  

Let's hope in the next couple of days we can say we are done.  

Time with cousins

Ben's cousin and his wife and new baby came over to visit and then Ben's brother, Dan, and his wife and nine kids stopped by.  It was a house full....

This sweet baby loved to be in Sara's arms

Happy Birthday!!

Well, I am officially 32!!  

Holy cow!  When did that happen.  The girls got together again and went out for breakfast and then on to the local TV station to be in the audience of the talk show.  This is maybe our sixth year (maybe a bit less maybe more) attending on November 30.  My mom couldn't be with us this year but we didn't want her to miss out on the fun. Trista was there with us but she was taking the picture and Cameo joined us at the station after breakfast)

(By the way girls, who has the picture of us at the station? - Misti?)

Visiting Santa

Sara and Evan joined their school Christmas choir and they had a performance at the City Hall last week.  Afterward we got to go visit Santa and sit on his lap.  It's amazing how their lists change.  I had to give each of them gentle reminders of what they had already asked for because a little birdie told me that Santa already had their gifts picked out.

Although she wanted nothing to do with him, Asia sure did enjoy the candy cane Santa gave her - wrapper and all.  She was pretty upset when we took it away to get her buckled in the car.  She did not want to let go.