Christmas Vacation!

What a fun these two weeks have been! I am ready for my normal routine again! Between holidays, eating, parties, playdates, more eating, movies, staying up late, playing games, snow, and even more eating I am pooped but it's been great. I'll give a quick run down of our activities. Sunday was spent at church for our Christmas program. I told Morgan to give Maddie anything I packed to keep her happy while I was in the choir and Jon was conducting/speaking. She ended up eating four pieces of gum! That evening we had some friends that were in town over for scones and eggnog, hence the beginning of the holiday gorging! We finished wrapping, cooking, and cleaning on Monday. We headed to Grandmas for Christmas Eve which included dinner and new jammies! When we got home we put out our Santa goodies (we had to use neighbor cookies since we didn't have time to make sugar cookies) I finished up my Santa wrapping while Jon slept and I watched "A Christmas Story." Christmas morning was early and exciting. All the kids were so happy to go downstairs and see all their presents. Maddie would have been happy with just her stocking. (for days after xmas she carried her stocking every where and slowly ate all her goodies inside) We all enjoyed our presents! Brooklyn with her art kit & HS Musical Barbies:

Mason's new bball, Jorden shirt, and playstation NBA 08:

Maddie with all her frog stuff boots, blanket, slippers, purse, etc.:

Brinley's new bike:Morgan and I both got new Ipod's but we have no pictures. Shortly after we opened all the presents we noticed that it was snowing outside! CRAZY! You can kind of see snow in the backgroundIt was a fun Christmas surprise. The rest of the day we played with our new toys, napped, and went the inlaws for dinner. When we got to grandma's house we found out that Jalynn and her family had come to surprise us all for Christmas. We had a fun time visiting and playing with Jake. It was great to see her again. I got up early the day after Christmas to hit the stores. I went to Target twice, Walmart, and Pier 1 all by 8:30 am. I got some great deals for next year's Christmas gifts! That afternoon we took all the kids to see "National Treasure" along with our cousins. We did some kid swapping and had a cousin sleepover. We all woke up at 9:30am the next day and to more snow. I called my friend who lives about 20 minutes up the road to see how much snow she had. She told me they had about 8 inches! We packed up all our gear and headed up to her home. We all had a great time sledding down her hill, having snowball fights, and exploring in her 5 acre yard! We were thrilled we didn't have to drive 2 hours to see the snow! During our second week of vacation we continued to have a great time. We spent New Years Eve with some friends and their kids. We had yummy Chinese food and then ice cream sundaes for dessert. Jon and I also found time to squeeze a movie in that afternoon. New Years Day we took all the decorations down. Yeah! I was able to put it all away and stored in our garage. We then had the Dustins over again for pizza and left over sundaes. Jon headed back to work on Wednesday, but the kids still were home. I was not thrilled with their Christmas vacation this year. (Dec 21-Jan 7) They have played with friends the past couple of days while I have tried to clean my house. I will be ready for them to go back to school on Monday! We have one more fun activity for the vacation today: Mason's Birthday Party. Luckily we are having it at the gym I teach at so all the mess will be there! They will swim, play basket ball, and eat pizza. Sorry this is such a long post but this is also what I use for my Journal!