Christmas in a nutshell

Just like every year past, Chrismas came and went all too quickly again this year. The week leading up to Christmas was a blur of last minute busyness and preparation. Here are just a few of the zillions of pictures I took this past weekend.....

reading of the Christmas story...

the picture below cracks me up, this is his forced "I don't like those clothes that you got me at all, but I'm smiling anyways, because if I don't, you have threatened to take away all my toys" look....lol :)

I LOVE Gena's Christmas gifts this year - their all the kids' recycled gifts from the basement, we didn't have to spend a dime and she doesn't know the difference! (I wonder how many years we can do this before she catches on......)

love this pic....Lilly is such a good big sister!

and Gena gets her first V-Tech laptop at 7 months old :)

my nephew, Benjamin

Yup, that was our Christmas, in a nutshell :-) We had a great Christmas, enjoyed priceless times with our families, ate way too much yummy foods, and opened more presents than we knew what to do with.

On the fourth day of Christmas.....

....we went and looked at Christmas lights!

This evening we met up with my sister and her family and my parents and ate at the Golden Corrall and went and looked at some neighborhood Christmas lights. It's cool - we go to this neighborhood every December, they have the whole street participating in their neighbhorhood lights, and it is all centered around Jesus and His life, from the manger to the cross. The kids loved it. :-)

I also wanted to share a few pics with you from this past weekend.

On Saturday, we got together with my dad's side of the family and the nursing home my grandpa is at. The picture below is my grandpa, in the middle, and my parents and my sister and her family and our family...

The picture below is my Grandpa with my dad, and his brother and sister and their kids/families.....

On Sunday at church, we had a special choir concert performed by our own church choir (my husband included), band, orchestra, and the famous christian singer, Crystal Lewis-- no words can describe it- I will just say it was absolutely wonderful, and many lives and hearts were touched. There was just shy of 3000 people that came to one of the three services we had. An absolutely perfect day!

Jeremy and my brother-in-law, Gerald, before the (last) evening performance....

More Christmas fun to come..... :-)

On the fifth day of Christmas....

...we made a gingerbread house!

This has become a yearly tradition, and the kids just love it. Of course it's just a gingerbread house kit that I bought at Target - but lemme tell ya, it's money well spent.

Even Gena got in on the action......here is her classic big cheesy, toothy grin......I love it! :-)

Of course decorating the gingerbread house actually means more work for daddy, but don't let him tell you different....he loved it, lol :)

And our finished product!

I love Christmastime! What is your favorite Christmas tradition?

kids choir performance

Hello again!!! :) How was your weekend? Ours was busy. Fun, but busy. :) On Sunday, (12/12/10) we celebrated Christmas Sunday with the kiddos at church. Our kids choir led the sanctuary in worship songs that morning, and they sang several Christmas songs throughout the morning service. It was awesome, they did such a great job, and it was so fun watching the kids sing praises and worship God. And my little Lilly was up there in the midst of them, along with my 2 nephews, so that made it all the more special! :) I even got Lilly and baby Gena matching dresses just for the occassion.

The kids group was for kindergartners thru 5th grade, so Isaiah wasn't up there this year, but he was in the sanctuary with us watching the program.

What a great group of kids we have in our church! :) Below is our Pastor, doing part of his sermon in the midst of them....

My parents even came to our church to see the Grands.....

(and getting to hold baby Gena during service was a bonus) :)

Our church even had a special visitor - - Santa! Santa was there to see the kids and get pictures taken with them after service. Score! Saved me a trip to the mall!

After church, we got the dreaded adorably cute picture of Lilly, Isaiah & Gena with their cousins, Matthew & Jonathan. :)

Sunday was a busy busy day. After Lilly's choir performance at church that morning, Isaiah had a choir performace at his preschool that afternoon. Those little preschoolers were just adorable, and Isaiah was hamming it up :) Here are the 2 grandma's and baby Gena....

My little preschooler at his Christmas performace............ :)

It was a crazy busy weekend, but oh so much fun! And as Christmas draws closer, we are just getting busier.....next week will be crazy too with our church's choir performace (and Jer's big day!) :) more to come.......... :)

from the home of country....

Our family took a mini vacation earlier this week down to Branson, MO.....home of cowboy boots, bright lights, country music and about a jabillion singing/comedy shows. It's a little too, um, country for me, but every now and then it's fun to go down there. If anything just to get away......a vacation anywhere is a good vacation! :-) This time we went there and stayed with my in-laws who were staying the week. We just stayed 3 days, I didn't want to keep the kids out of school all week, and plus Jer couldn't really take off work all week. So we left Sunday after church and drove down, and stayed until Wednesday. As always, it wouldn't be a blog from yours truly, if it wasn't covered in pictures......so here ya go :-)

(Jeremy's sister) Aunt Jen enjoyed some quality baby Gena time.....

My mom-in-law just cracks me up......we go down to Branson, where there are a zillion lot of things to do and she brings 2 huge boxes of crafts and stuff to entertain the kids. They were definately not bored! As soon as we got there Sunday she pulled out the first craft..... :-)

Here she is helping Isaiah make a can-snowman-candy cane holder thing......not sure the technical name it is called - but it was very cute.

At bedtimes, we pushed all the toys outta the way and blew up our air mattress for the kids to sleep on. There are 4 kids in this picture below, but my nephew Ben, ended up moving up to sleep on the couch. I think he felt a little crowded....lol

And below is Grandma telling the kids a bedtime story... just like we always do at home :-)

Here is my 9 year old nephew, Ben....he just loved playing with Gena and spending time with her while we were there, it was so cute :-)

Here is Lilly, showing off her fruit loop necklace she made...........

After spending much of Monday around the room, we got out Monday night and all went to see the Dixie Stampede show. (muchos kudos to my father-in-law for treating us, BTW!) :-)

For those unaware, the Dixie Stampede is a dinner and a show....it's super cute around Christmastime, and have "snow" falling, and show the manger scene, and bring Santa out at the end in a sleigh....and of course, the whole theme of the show, lots and lots of horses. Below is our family enjoying the show....

Oh.my.word. One of my less flattering moments occured at the Stampede that night. (aren't you sad to of missed it? lol) We (as in, me and Jeremy) were chosen from the audience to be a part of the show. We were up there with 3 other couples, and had to compete in a horse/snowman race. Jer had to saddle a play horse (you know, the kind that kids play with, that has a horses head and a stick for a body?) and I had to saddle up behind him. (wow, it's even worse reading it! haha). We then had to run a few feet, and go around a pretend snowman and come back to where we started and go again, as if the first time around wasn't torture enough. Needless to say, we did not win for our team, and it was a hair short of humiliating. All in all, a great night! lol

On Tuesday, we got to do some of my favorite - shopping! Here we are taking a lunch break at Wendys....

And we even managed to get in a visit from an old friend. Robbie used to go to our church and moved to Branson 3 years ago.....she got to meet our newest....

All in all, we had a great trip. If you've never been to Branson, I highly recommend it. at least once. :-)