December is one of my favorite months of the year. Its filled with love, joy, and lots of family time. It was such a wonderful month spent with Pete, the kids and our families.
Here are some pictures from our month of December:
Claire and 2 of her favorite aunts playing cards
I gave the Claire and Grace a little pedicure....they wanted their toes to be yellow!
We drove the kids around to look at Christmas lights...a tradition my parents did with me as a child.
Jake just finishing up his swim lesson while Grace waits for hers to start.
As previously stated, Grace does not usually shine in uncomfortable situations. Group gymnastics, talking with new adults, etc. We went to Grace's Christmas Program fully expected her to stand up on stage nicely, but not really participate. Boy were we wrong! Grace did such a WONDERFUL job! She did all of the motions and sang and smiled and waved at us a couple of times. It is probably my proudest moment with her to date!
The doctor determined that Claire needed glasses. These are the ones she picked :)
The kids did a great job sitting nicely with Santa and telling him what they wanted for Christmas. They had compromised because Claire and Grace wanted two gifts that were exactly the same. I told them that they could only ask for one so they decided that Grace would ask for one and Claire would ask for the other. They sat on Santa's lap and HE told them that they could most definitely ask for 2 presents EACH! So...off to Toys R Us I went....
Pictures below are from baking Christmas cookies:
In Mid-December, I took all three kids to the dentist. It went really well and all kids came out with an A+
.jpg)
We were able to make it to Indianapolis for a short visit around Christmas time. It was SO wonderful to see my family and I think it was the longest I had gone in between visits. We celebrated Christmas and had a fabulous time simply spending time together.
Jake loves balls. So my mom got him a HUGE box filled with balls! He was in ball heaven!
Our kids with their cousins, Allison & Sarah
LOVE my family SO much!
While we were in Indy, poor little Claire got an ear infection. So very thankful the my sister is a pediatrician and was able to look inside her ear and call in some antibiotics.
Grandma, Jake, and Allison
When we got back to Ohio, we hosted Christmas Eve and our house. We have a tradition of baking and decorating Santa's cookies that day. We also make homemade pizza for dinner before church.
Before Christmas Eve service
Santa came!! Grace came into our room Christmas morning and was so upset because she was sure that Santa did NOT come because she didn't hear him at all throughout the night. I assured her that he came but we would have to wait for the others before we went downstairs. In the meantime, I offered for her to play some games on my phone. She picked up my phone, immediately went to the camera, and found this picture of the tree after Santa had come (I had taken it the night before). She got SO excited and said that "Santa came!" Oops!
Christmas morning at our house:
After Christmas morning at our house, we went over to Pete's parents house and had a wonderful day.
The last Friday in December, Pete and his older siblings and spouses (minus Tim unfortunately) went out ffor a night on the town. Pete and I had to laugh because we felt so old. We were sitting in one of the bars and found ourselves complaining about how loud it was and it was too dark to read the menu! Ha!
We buy a few of these cardboard castles/houses every winter. The kids LOVE to decorate them, pretend play and watch movies inside of them.
2013 was such a blessed year with these 3 and we can't wait to see what 2014 has in store!
Happy New Year!
