Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas to all our family and friends!  What a
wonderful time of year to celebrate all that we have been
blessed with.  I guess I haven't put up a post in a couple of weeks... sorry!  We've been busy preparing for Christmas and doing our Advent activities. And of course having a newborn around takes up some time too!  But boy is he ever sweet!   We love him so much and enjoy him more and more every day.  As you can see he is not missing many meals... he is getting so big and he really is such a content baby.

 We had a nasty cold run through half of the house.  Mark was sick for a while and his loud coughing scared Carter each time!  Then Brady got it and had a couple days home from school then it hit Colie really hard and she missed 3 days of school and probably should have stayed home longer but I didn't want her to miss all the Christmas activities in Kindergarten that last week before holidays.

This was one of Brady's sick days... still such a happy boy!

 The kids have been enjoying our month of activities, they did a great job on their gingerbread house!  (10 minutes after this picture was taken, the roof slid off... they left it and called it their tornado house!!)







Our first 4 kids in the family Christmas picture!!  I like how symmetrical an even number makes pictures look!  Guess that was good planning on our part... oh wait... planning???... never mind!

We are looking forward to the next few days of festivities with family and fellowship with friends.  As we whip through this time of year, our goal is to remind our kids how blessed we are, and to try to slow down and  focus on Jesus and the real reason we celebrate.  Merry Christmas!!