December began with us celebrating my 31st birthday. It was a very low key day that I spent with Miles and Brooklyn home from school, but they were sweet enough- with daddy's help- to have my normal bday breakfast (blueberry muffins and lil' sausages) ready and I got to open gifts before Gavin went to school and Brooks went to work. Our elf, Zippy, made his appearance and decorated the kitchen for my bday. So sweet!
Now that we are home in the USA we had the opportunity to get a REAL tree for Christmas and we were so excited to go and find a tree to bring home. When we lived in Houston, we would go to a tree farm, find the perfect tree, and cut it down ourselves. We couldn't find anything like that nearby, so instead we settled for a "tree farm" where real trees were already cut and we just selected one. It was kinda easy since we knew we wanted an 8-9 ft tree and there really was only a few trees for us to choose from, so while it took us an hour to drive there, we spent 10 minutes getting our tree! It was freezing outside, which made us grateful that we didn't have to walk up and down rows and rows of trees to choose from! The kids were given hot chocolate and popcorn while our tree got wrapped up and off we went to do some Christmas shopping!!
We had two parties back to back one weekend and unfortunately I only managed one picture, that Gavin took and not everyone was in it! But still, we opened up our home one night for our small group from church and had an ugly sweater party. After dinner and visiting we played a few games and laughed a lot!! The next night, Brooks' entire work team, their wives and kids all came over, we ate gumbo, and enjoyed getting to know everyone.
Sunday morning at church all the kids sang for a special Christmas program. Brooklyn and Miles weren't really sure what was going on, but they were comforted by some of their favorite girls! Gavin had fun and sang as much as he could from the songs he knew the words to.
We battled a stomach bug that passed through all of us and was pretty brutal to experience. However, our kids are pros at dealing with stomach issues and knew exactly what to do. It actually makes life easier, except for watching them being sick! Don't be fooled by Brooklyn's picture below-- Miles had been teaching her what to do when it was her turn to be sick and she was practicing!
Brooklyn's growing up and getting into more and more things. One day, I found her in the fridge trying to get string cheese all by herself. Another day, while we were out Christmas shopping, I went into the bathroom and somehow the two little ones got out of their seat belts, moved their stroller to the sink, and started washing their hands on their own!
It snowed a few times and we are slowly getting use to the weather. The kids love seeing snow covering the ground and our house, but don't enjoy the cold as much.
December meant time for Christmas presents so I made personalized gifts for all the kids teachers and gave them each a recipe for a sweet treat!
Gavin's school held a Christmas sing a long program and each child was assigned a certain song to sing as a group and a character- Gavin was an angel and a cute one at that! Brooks and I loved listening to all the Christmas songs being sung and how into it the kids were!
An amazing part of December for us was getting to be with Brandon as he graduated from college! We drove to Waco one weekend, met up with all the family, and celebrated Bran getting his bachelors degree from Baylor. It was such a fun experiencing, not just celebrating Bran's huge accomplishment- I mean the guy went through a lot to get to this point- but the fact that he made it to this point! It was just awesome!
No comments:
Post a Comment