Enjoying Christmas Break....

We were given this cute little train one Monday night, it was the cutest thing!  Everyone just loved it!  Our last 12 days of Christmas gift was a gingerbread house, the kids were soooo excited to do another one.  I let them do it all my themselves, and they were in Heaven!  This is there creation!

Santa Cookies

We love Santa Cookies!  This year we were handling life better, so we made two batches.  Sarah and Jonathan loved helping, I love that they are getting big enough to do it with us!  We also did some plain sugar cookies, and Gordon and Sarah just loved it!

Merry Christmas 2013

Merry Christmas 2013

                                           

      The Sunday before Christmas, ready to go to church!

Random Happening in December

Enjoying my time with Sarah!

Making Yummy Cinnamon rolls for Dave's Seminary class he teaches early in the mornings!

We love our Ooddle!  We have lots of fun with him!

Gingerbread House

One of our favorite traditions is making a Gingerbread house.  Sarah kept asking when we were going to be making it.  I put it off for a few reasons.  But, tender mercy happened, and someone gave us this one.  We all where very excited, it had some cosmetic issues but it isn't matter to the kids.  They had a blast!

Henry hopitalized for Croup

There were volunteers that brought around hats, Sarah was in Heaven!  Henry not so much.

In the middle of December Henry started to get a cough Thursday night, which sounded like a croupy cough.  Dave rocked him to sleep on Thursday and was up a lot during the night just being miserable.  Friday we traveled up to the cities to see Dustin and Nicki, and he was starting to look and sound better.  Night came and again he got worse, and was miserable again.  The next day he was okay again, but his croupy cough was still there.  This lady I know said I hope that doesn't turn into really bad croup and don't have to take him to the hospital.  Well, that night around dinner he didn't want to eat and was miserablele again.  I decided to put him down to see if he could relax at all.  When Dave came home from work he checked on him, and he said we should give him a blessing and then take him to the hospital.  Dave took him in, and when he got there he was in severe respiratory distress.  They gave him a respiratory treatment, but he continued to have the barky cough (the third night is the worst of croup).  They put him on some oxygen, and gave him a second treatment.  Finally the cough started to lessen, but they wanted to keep him for observation.  We have wonderful neighbors/friends that came over and watched the kids so I could go up and make sure they were okay. Dave stayed the night, and held him and was with him.  The next morning was Sunday. So Sarah and I stayed with Henry;Dave took the boys to church with him.  Sarah was VERY worried about him being in the hospital.  It was good for her to see that the hospital is a good place to be to get feeling better.  We had an out pouring of love from our friends/church members.  Since Henry really wasn't up to eat Sarah and I ate a the hospital breakfast, Sarah thought it was the best thing!!  Henry started to perk up and start eating around lunch time.  We got a possible discharge time that night.  Henry was starting to move around and play a little after a LONG nap.  Finally, that night we got to go home, and I needed to give him a steroid to prevent any other problems that night.  We were so thankful to be home and Henry feeling better. 

Polar Express Family Movie Night

 This was our 1st annual Polar express movie night.  The kids heard that we were invited to an adults only Christmas Party and were sad that they couldn't came so I planned this up and it was a blast, so we will keep it was a tradition!  We dressed up in our red pj's and had hot cocoa, cookies, and watched polar express which we all love (since Dave and I watched in the theaters when we were dating!)

12 days of Christmas

 We came home from Jonathan's performance and found a box of gifts, we had the 12 days of Christmas (I have such fond memories as a child of the 12 days of Christmas).  It was so fun to open a gift a day, it made the Christmas Season so much fun!  The kids looked forward to it everyday and loved to open a gift each day!  There were a variety of gifts.  One day we opened coloring books after breakfast cause Daddy was going to be gone we enjoyed coloring as a family!  We loved the different Christmas books, to add to our collection to read each night!  At the end we opened a Gingerbread house and the kids where thrilled.  I put it together and they decorated it all by themselves!  We felt so loved!

Poems, Plays and Punch!

 In the middle of December Jonathan's class was putting on a little show for the parents.  (I thought that all the first grade classes where doing this, but it was just his teacher.  She said that she likes to have something for the kids to look forward to and to have the parents that aren't able to volunteer to see what the kids are accomplishing.  I am continuing to just love Jonathan's teacher, she is so great for him!)  Jonathan has been reciting his poem for weeks, it is call "A Dog named Mim".  He was in the play, Princess and the frog and he was the frog.  On the day of the show a boy got very nervous, almost going to throw up, so Jonathan stood in a recited his part with him!  They all did wonderfully~