Christmas Journey

I thought I'd walk you through some of the joys of Christmas with our family.
Obviously, we just bought our REAL Christmas tree (Glenn insists) from Home Depot. Yea. You read it. Home Depot. I'm completely satisfied with driving only 5 miles from home to pick out "the tree" among 100's. That's about as close to the woods or tree farm as I get. Needless to say, the kids were fascinated with the prospect of carrying a tree home on top of our car! In the course of tying down the tree to the rooftop of the car, a Home Depot employee climbed up on the car too. Having never experienced any of this, Caden shouts excitedly, "Are we taking him home too?!!" As if the Home Depot man comes with the tree! I love my Caden.

Daddy and McKenna putting the tree stand on.

Let the decorating begin.

Our tree Christmas morning. Notice that most of the ornaments are "up north"? It's due to a toddler's (umm ummm...McKenna) nonverbal communication methods that lets us know where the ornaments should be placed.

Caden and Conner both recieved Max's Draganoids (bakugans) for Christmas. It's something I never heard about prior to 2 months ago, but it was the number one thing on their Christmas lists.

Grandma Carey visited. It was nice to have most of my family gather for Christmas at our house in Oklahoma. It was a bit crazy with the blizzard-like weather that hit. Roadtrips for relatives took quite a bit longer than normal. Hopefully, family time made it all worth it.

My brother Colby and his wife Sarah plus kids visited too. Pretty good smiles for early morning.

This is my brother Chad and his wife Kenda. They stayed a couple of nights too.

Conner checks his stocking out.

Ben with his stocking.

Busy December

Christmas Program Our family enjoyed watching Caden and Conner perform in their Christmas Program at school on Monday. They sang 5 adorable songs, all about bears and Christmas. Each class 1st thru 2nd represented a different kind of bear. There were brown, polar, teddy, and panda bears. I don't know how to sew, so the hot glue gun is my best friend.
I can appreciate the holidays around here because it's not so PC (politically correct), and people still say "Merry Christmas" to eachother and the "Christmas" word is still used in the children's school. In fact, the children's spelling words for this week included "Mary" and "Jesus".




Benjamin turns 5!!! I wish you all could be here to celebrate Ben's birthday. He has been looking forward to it for a long time. Unfortunately, Ben misunderstood and thought that he would be in kindergarten, like right away. He was all ready to switch from his preschool to kindergarten class. Since December 14 is a day to celebrate Ben, I just want to share with you what a really special kid Ben is. For all of you who know Ben, he is the most mild and even-tempered child in our family. Considering we have some strong personalities in our family...umm...umm, Ben is refreshing to be with. His biggest offense of his whole life is aggravating McKenna and even that has improved. Ben is independent, friendly to everyone, affectionate, yet creative, and outgoing. He has been a blessing to our family and balances everything by being the kid "in the middle" between the twins and McKenna. Anyway, I just thought I'd dote on him for a minute. He had a few friends over for cake and ice cream on his birthday. It was easy and fun for everyone.

Uh Oh McKenna!!! Here's a couple of pictures of McKenna. On Tuesday, McKenna tried to climb on the bench that goes to our kitchen table and instead she pulled it down on herself and it pinned her head. Her nose bled for about 1 minute and then immediately swelled. She looked worse than this. We took her to the ER just in case she broke it. 5 1/2 hours later, we learned everything should be fine. As a mom, it is super scary and traumatizing watching all this unfold, especially to your baby.

Just including a cute picture of McKenna. She likes to have her hair fixed and actually lets me style it, only to rip it out later! None-the-less, her hair is growing!!!

Highlights

Day After Thanksgiving Our family traveled to Texas the day after Thanksgiving this year to visit my sister. It's always a fun place to go. On Saturday we visited the Dallas Zoo and had a fabulous time. The best part is, we still had our membership from the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, Mo. and it could be used as a free pass to the Dallas one. Yippee!!! Not to mention the weather was 70 degrees outside. There was so much to see, we didn't have time to walk everywhere. Anyhow, here's some pics from this adventure:

Carving Time!!! I know it's been a bit since Halloween, but surely ya'all can't be upset that I'm uploading pics from the past. Ever since the twins were 2 years old Glenn has always taken upon himself the role of "master pumpkin carver"; his prodigies are the kids. After each child picks out his own pumpkin, we bring them home and they get to use a permanent marker to draw their designs/faces on. Yes, I emphasized the word permanent marker, because for all you who know how excitable Caden is over the strangest things you must understand how elated he was to be entrusted with a permanent marker.

I must say, celebrating holidays or enjoying your baby's 1st times are such neat experiences as a parent. I couldn't begin to tell you how full are lives are because of the children Glenn and I have.

Conner is removing the gooey stuff from his pumpkin. See Caden's expression? This definitely was a sensory issue for him, that he had to have Conner help him unload his pumpkin too :0

I told you Glenn liked this kind of stuff!

Random

Don't mess with my babies!!! McKenna is very possessive of her baby dolls! Could it be that they belong to her and only her? There's not a day that goes by that she doesn't play with her babydolls. Brace yourself for a high-pitched scream if you touch her babies! Ask her brothers. That same high-pitched scream can also be heard in any store if McKenna even lays eyes on a babydoll there.

Nature Center Walk Every Saturday our family usually takes a walk somewhere like at a park, trail, or lake. It's a good release for all of that kid energy.

Boys are so curious. They love everything from from flowing creeks,bugs, slimy moss and sticks to planes, trains and automobiles:)

Conner and Benjamin dressing up while at the nature center.

Finally a picture with all of us in it! Taken at the Chickasaw nature center in Sulphur, Ok.