Kansas!

We had a great time visiting Aunt Elizabeth, Uncle Brandon and cousins in Kansas. We spent one day at an airplane museum but mostly just relaxed. There was no snow on the ground when we got there but a big storm came through and the kids had a good time playing in it.

Michael's always a good sport to play with the kids.

Aunt Elizabeth painting her ceiling and getting her room pretty.

New Years Travels

In between Christmas and New Years we traveled to Kansas to visit Michael's sister Elizabeth and her family. Traveling was long and cold. It took us 16 hours to get there and coming back we did two 9 hour days and stayed the night in between at the Yamnik's house in NM. We won't be making that long of a trip again for a while but overall it wasn't too bad. We traveled along Route 66 and at least drove through the states: New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas. 

Michael saw the metal glistening off of this house from the highway and had to get a closer look. Pretty cool looking place, from the signs we gathered that it was a pot house dedicated to the Lord.

Pat and Marianne are always so good to us! We enjoyed spending New Year's Eve with them.

Christmas Day

We told our kids that they couldn't get up before 5:30am and of course they were sitting in front of the clock from about 5am on. The boys were especially excited this year. They both asked Santa for a new Nintendo DS. We explained that with 4 kids in our family it was probably outside of Santa's budget so they saved birthday money and did extra chores and made a deal with Santa. The deal (which they sheepishly told the Santa we went to visit) included leaving about $50 each out for Santa in exchange for the more expensive present. The plan went well and Santa delivered Christmas morning! 

The smile of getting exactly what you wanted for Christmas!

For Ethan's present for the family he played a mash up of all the songs he has learned on the piano.

Her face opening a princess dress from Grandma and Grandpa Barnum.

A special visitor came to Grandma Connie's to help hand out the presents there.

Ethan was not too happy to sit on a "fake" Santa's lap. Truth is he still believes in a real Santa ; )

Christmas Eve 2014

Ahh its March and I never posted any of our Christmas pics. Here's my attempt at getting caught up on at least the major holidays ; )

Sweet Rhett was crawling during Christmas season and loved to get the balls off of the tree.

On Christmas Eve we went over to the Smyth's house and made candy trains and had a lot of fun playing with friends for a few hours.

The kids opening up their Christmas jammies as Christmas Eve was winding down.

My failed attempt to get a good pic of all of the kids before bed. They were too excited to sit still.

Christmas Eve before you go to bed is my favorite part of the holiday. Everything is put together and ready and there is so much anticipation for the morning! This is a pic of all of the gifts after Santa had come through on Christmas Eve.