Christmas Eve 2013

We decided to let the kids open 1 present on Christmas Eve this year.  They were pretty excited to open this gem from Joe and Lisa.

 An xbox!  They were pretty excited, and Reef immediately started hoping Minecraft was coming in his stocking! Thanks, Joe and Lisa!

 Then we headed to church for the Christmas Eve service.  After 3 potty trips in the first 30 minutes (tell me again why I potty trained over Christmas break???), we decided to come home early.
We threw out our reindeer food...

And put out lamingtons for Santa Claus..

 I guess Poppy had gone to bed before this picture:

After the kids were in bed, these Santas got to work!

I snapped a picture of our tree in the dark.  Still not quite what Pinterest showed but a vast improvement over last year's attempt!

Co-op book exchange

We had a fun Christmas book exchange with our co-op!

Here's the whole gang:

 The children drew names and were all really excited to see what books they got.

It was such a fun evening with special friends!  We are so thankful to not be doing the homeschool journey alone anymore!

Look who else came to visit!

As John Paul flew out, Larkin and Rachel came in to town!  We were so excited to spend an evening with them!

Larkin didn't get to try the zipline before he left, so gave it a go this time!

 She needed to do it, too.

 After dinner and playing with Larkin's limbs (I know, it's weird, but that's how we roll), all the kids gathered round for the traditional bedtime reading. 

What a great night visiting with friends!  Can't wait to do it again!

Zoo December 2013

Apparently we went to the zoo with John Paul, too.  That's what happens when you wait 7 months to blog-you forget what happened back then!

Looking at this picture makes me think that Jonas was living in a different climate than Reef!  One has shorts and the other a jacket!

 We were pretty excited to see the new lion at our zoo!

 And the baby tigers!

 The one picture of John Paul that reminded me he must've been with us!

 Everyone except Lachlan needed individual pics on the elephant statue.  I guess Lachlan wasn't feeling photogenic that day...

Big Lou's Pizza

Troy's cousin, John Paul, visited for a very short few days in our busiest week of December.  I'm sure we did tons of fun stuff, but I only took pictures of our trip to Big Lou's Pizza, home of the BIGGEST pizza ever.

We ordered the 42-inch, which we thought was the biggest they made.  Think it's enough to feed our crew of 7?

The pieces were huge, and they had special trays to hold them.

 Everyone had his own method to eat it.

 Turns out that the biggest they make is actually 60 inches!  We'll have to go back another time to try that one out!  As it was, there was enough pizza to feed us for 3 more days, and then it got thrown out because we were so sick of it!

Pre-Christmas Fun!

Tree decorating!

 Hey, look, a rare picture of Mommy!

 I did some baking with the girl.

 A big, cardboard gingerbread house was donated to the garage sale and didn't sell.  I'd been saving it for months!

 It kept these 2 busy one day while I did school with the other 2.

 Poppy and I went for a walk to see lights one evening while the brothers sneaked off to church.

 I'd like to say she just liked playing close to the tree.  The entire side of the piano was COVERED in poop when she vacated her spot.  It wasn't pretty.

Breakfast with Santa 2013

I'm almost to the end of 2013, guys!

All the kids enjoyed our annual Breakfast with Santa.  There were crafts:

 Don't you love those boots with the footed pj's?

 I love it when he cooperates for pictures.

 The boys were so ready to share their lists with Santa...

 But this girl wanted NOTHING to do with him!

 Candy-topped pancakes are always a hit!

 I'm not really sure why his lips are blue!