Searching for Christmas Lights

I know it's been forever since I've blogged - so I hope to be better this year! :)

The week before Christmas we took a drive to see Christmas lights! It's one of my favorite traditions during the holiday season.

Here's our house in the first 2 pictures. Elizabeth and Ben really liked our lights but kept asking when we were going to light the top of the house. (Lots of our neighbors have lights on their roofs - my kids really wanted that this year, too!) Maybe next year Tom will hop on to the top of the house to put some up! :)

The kids wore their jammies and drank hot cocoa.

It was a great way to start our Christmas break!

Elizabeth's school party

This is one of the reason I haven't been blogging too much - I had to make 22 of these shirts for the kids in Elizabeth's class - they are in the middle of having all the words stamped on them here. It took forever!

Elizabeth had her school party at the end of last week. I was in charge of it so I was very glad when it went smoothly!

We did stations around the room. This is the station I was in charge of - Christmas Bingo!

Here's Elizabeth at the cookie making station.

Now she's at the pizza/root beer float station. The kids got a ton of good stuff to eat!

There's Ben helping me out at the Bingo station.

Elizabeth finally got to be at my station!

Elizabeth is at her last station - ornament making.

Elizabeth and her friend, Addy.

At the end of the party the kids sat in a circle and passed their ornaments for the ornament exchange. We had a great time!

Elizabeth with her final ornament.

We had such a great party, but I have to say I am very glad it is over! :)

Merry Christmas (an early present)

Elizabeth came home from school on Thursday and went running out the door,

to this! Tom and I have been talking about getting a swing set for a long time, and when a friend forwarded an add from Craig's list for this one, we decided to jump on it!

The first words out of Elizabeth's mouth this morning were, "Can we go play on the swing set?"

I think it was a hit!

Elizabeth's Christmas Tea

For the last few years my mom has let Elizabeth invite a couple of girls to have a special Christmas tea at Grandma's house. Isn't the table adorable?! She also had an adult table for the moms, which was also beautiful.

Elizabeth enjoys having her little friends over, helping to serve them their tea. She looks forward to this day so much!

Here's Cooper, Ben, and Elizabeth's friend from school, Emma. The boys had their Christmas sweaters on but they got too hot!

Elizabeth, Elliott, and Jane.

The kids had a great lunch with lots of treats.

After playing and eating the kids played outside in the playhouse. It was such a special day for Elizabeth, I hope she knows how lucky she is to have such fun grandparents who give her such special days!

Daisy Scouts

We have a new adventure starting in our household - Daisy Scouts! I am one of the Daisy scout leaders, so I am learning a lot, too! This is at our first troop meeting. The girls were decorating folders.
Enjoying a snack.

We're excited to see where this new venture is going to take us! I hope to lots of fun things!!

Thanksgiving Weekend

This Thanksgiving weekend I get an F at picture taking. I hardly took any!! Even on Thanksgiving I got about 2 pictures. So bad.
So, on Friday we got up at 5 am with the H family and went shopping. I got lots of good deals so that made it worth getting up so early. On Saturday Tom had a bachelor party at our house for his brother, Mark, and on Sunday we girls hosted a shower for Annie, his fiance. That's Annie in the picture above.

I made the cupcakes and cookies,

and my niece, Maria, hosted it at her house. It was so beautiful and she has the perfect spot for hosting. Who has room for 4 tables all together!?!

After the shower we decorated the Christmas trees. This year we have 2 trees - one for the kids and one for all of my ornaments. The kids had a good time with all the decorating, but quit about half way through.

I love the holiday season! The elf has already made his first appearance. What a great time of the year!

We went to...

It was so much fun! We went with Jessica and her kids, and my mom.
We went once before, 2 years ago, and we weren't so well prepared. This year we remembered to bring gloves, hats, etc... We needed it!

We were so excited that this year it was Charlie Brown!

You can't tell but Jackson is tipping over here. He was hysterical! He could barely move in all his winter clothes.

What a cutie!

The favorite thing for the kids was going down the ice slide. The boys could hardly walk up the steps (they ended crawling up most of the time!! :)

I think that is Ben! It's hard to tell under all those clothes.

It was pretty amazing - but very cold. We were ready to get out of there and warm up!

Leaves!

This weekend we had our Thanksgiving at my mom and dad's house. My dad left the leaves in the backyard so we could make a big leaf pile for the kids to jump in to. It is one of my favorite fall memories - jumping in the leaves.

This was my other thing I loved to do in the leaves - make leaf houses! My mom told us that she used to spend her recess every day in the fall making these leaf houses with her friends. The kids loves having their own room in the "house".

While we were playing the guys were enjoying sitting by the fire.

It was a gorgeous day out - perfect for playing outside.

After hanging out all day we had a fabulous dinner, it was a great early Thanksgiving!