January

 

At the beginning of the year I realized that I hadn't been having the kids do book reports this year and Michael kept wanting to make cookies. I realized that I hadn't had the kids make many treats so I decided that I would make a rule that they could make a desert for each book they read...I later rethought this because they can read a lot of books! This is what Alden made for reading all of the Lord of the Ring series. The cookies had chocolate rings on them.

This was a cool random craft Benson did. It's hard to see but he wanted to make a doll house similar to Roslyn's. I was amazed at all of the little rooms and the little furniture things that he put in it. In this picture, he was just finishing up painting it.

My little princess. One of the preschool kids accidentally left this crown, since it was Christmas break, we ended up having it for a while. Maebryn and Roslyn were often found wearing it.

Fixing the hole in the ceiling. When the electrician came to do the pool, I was standing where this picture was taken and saw a big boot coming out of the ceiling and said, "That's not good". Luckily they had everything fixed really nice and you would never know that it ever happened.

Calvin's dessert for finishing all of the Harry Potter books. He made a cookie..originally had tried to get them to look like chocolate frogs but then changed it to be something else because the frogs weren't working out.

This little girl is really big into shoes lately. Fun to see her all dolled up. She will ask for her shoes and bow on most mornings...even though they don't always last too long before one or the other comes off.

One morning these two were matching so I took their picture together. It was fun to see how they each reacted to me taking their picture and saying to look at me. Evan was about to jump and Roslyn did well what you see in the picture. :)

Alden's newest game. He's a big fan of this one mostly because he can play it with even the little kids and they love it!

Pool Progress!

Using the sewing machine for the first time.

Feeding the bees! Any day that it's warm we will often see the bees out looking for food, so as I was getting some sugar water ready for them the kids and I put some on our hands and sat watching the bees come and drink it up.

Cute girls

Our neighbor gave us a bunch of cute fun girl clothes.  These two have had a fun time picking which outfit they want to wear.

This was a Saturday that it warmed up enough that I almost didn't want to go inside so we decided to eat outside. 

December

This little one loves cucumbers! 

Our cute little one

Seeing Christmas lights

So fun to see Roslyn with her doll house.

Building with the marble works.

Merry Christmas morning.  It was a beautiful and simple Christmas. Sometimes I think I get just about as excited as they do for this day. So fun to have so much excitement to share together. 

All of our stockings were in order and finished this year...often I am close but usually I have something I need to fix and don't get around to, this year they were all complete. I even redid Alden's name so that it would be the same font as the other kids. Originally I had done it in cursive with rope...actually was probably more difficult and possibly even looked better but he said he'd prefer the print and to be like the other kids.

Great Wolf Lodge! We found a really great deal which made it so we could make this quick trip. It was fun to see what this was all about.

Michael's birthday! He often doesn't want a cake but something a little different.  This year he wanted a big cookie. I wondered if he would actually like this that much but he seemed quite happy with it.

Pool progress. We now have the gunite done.

Annual sleeping under the Christmas tree was a success! The kids all loved the Tara pj's and cookie decorating. We watched a Christmas movie and went out to see the lights around the town.  We thought we would just stay in our car but as we went around there were some places that looked like it would be fun to get out. I'm glad we did, it was fun to see all that some of these places had.

Watching the pool progress. It's been fun to see each step happen. This was the steel, preparing for the cement.

This was a fun little moment, that Roslyn was really sad over something, can't remember what it was at the time now, but Maebryn, who usually won't get off my lap, hurried down and kept giving Roslyn hugs and kisses. It was so sweet and neat to see how much she cares and loves her sister. (We often get to see everyone loving on her but since she is so little, she hasn't been able to show us how much love and care she has for each of her siblings.)

Rudolf the Red nose Reindeer craft for the letter R
 

Volcano from  kit we got from Uncle Austen for Christmas.