We taught the kids how to play euchre, I can only go to 5 points with them, totally lose my patience! I’m trying to teach them to be always paying attention and be ready, nothing worse than playing slow euchre! So, when Jenna came over and knew how to play – Jackpot, they could play without me:)

A family game with my new favorite board game – Ticket to Ride

Our annual picture in front of the Christmas Tree, which almost always happens after the ornaments are off and I remember we haven’t taken it yet

Love this picture of them all reading in Mari’s bed, she has them all reading How to Train your Dragon books

A “too cold to go to school day”, calls for making pancakes

And, some mandatory reading time

And, some “you need to go outside” time, not even sure who this 3rd boy is??

I volunteered to go to the State Capital for the boys’ field trip, not realizing they were going on separate days – back to back, ugh, so I was pretty excited for the snow day that cancelled Ezra’s. He wasn’t too happy when Tobin got to go the next day, but we’re rescheduled for February.

It was very cool, love the architecture

Some sledding/snowboarding

Some friends came over and spent so much time lining up our Teddy Bear Dominoes and City Blocs all over the basement, and they kept having to restart it, it was quite a scene

Oh so excited to get some oranges from Grandma & Grandpa’s backyard tree, we are so spoiled with these!

 

Building snow guards for the eventual snow ball fight

Grandma & Grandpa came to visit before their migration (thats what Mari calls it) to Arizona 

We headed to Camp for Sleigh Bell Weekend and had another great year starting the Christmas season out right

Grandma & Grandpa (the other set) came for the first time, we were excited to have them join our special weekend!

And, Pam & Rob & family came too!

We even stayed for the fireworks after the parade this year

Back at home, I used a little child labor to get our Christmas cards assembled

And, our church did a gingerbread factory

The Little People Nativity set gets pulled out every Christmas

And, every Christmas Mari plays with it!

The kids decided to do a neighborhood Secret Santa and made cupcakes

Dressing up for a church program

Some Christmas cookie making

Christmas Eve

Christmas morning

I set up the interval timer on our camera again so we all got to be in the pictures

And, Kelly’s family came over to celebrate

We had a 2500 piece puzzle about 1/3 done and they became obsessed with it!

I guess Bernie would be our nephew;) He is such an awesome dog!

Building with nano blocks, the smallest legos you’ve ever seen!

  

New bean bags for Christmas

A new super fun game called Ticket to Ride that we can all play

Mari got more books

Ezra got a rubik’s cube and him & Kelly spent a long time with computer printouts figuring out how to solve it

And, during the break we headed to Aunt Trisha’s for some fun

Happy New Year (at about 9:30 at night)

And, Kelly beat me yet again in our annual game of Trivial Pursuit:(

Woo hoo, another month!

We visited my parents farm and brought friends for some combine rides

My mom doing her magical baby thing, this one was a little too small to be excited about a combine ride;)

And, since I did 17 shoots this month, it seemed like I wasn’t taking any pix of our family so got some “every day” stuff

We got Clue out, I’ve had it in the basement for years waiting for them to get old enough

When Mari gets bored, she plays solitaire, with actual cards!

Music break . . .

Thanksgiving at Aunt Faye & Uncle Al’s, and there is always picture worthy food!

This super cool veggie tray was put together by Pam & Rob

Aunt Faye and her beautiful table

The whole gang

And, we decorated for Christmas, I hardly need to do an ornament anymore, they do need some motivation to finish, but I let them do it however they want.

Not even going to explain or make excuses . . .

We had field day at Ez & Tobin’s school, I got to take “official” pictures for the yearbook:)

Our awesome pumpkins!

The kids made a zip line

There was lots of soccer

I love the fact that they will still play kid things together (and had to document it for future proof)

Kelly lost his job of 20+ years, and we trusted in God’s provision, Kelly is blessed with very marketable skills so it didn’t take long to find a new job, so very thankful. Here’s his headshot for Linked In.

I did 21 photo shoots in October so brought the kids with me on one of them and got some shots of them (I made the boys wear nice things on top but they have sweatpants on;)

  

Multiple times a day I get to see this tree in our neighborhood, it reminds me of God’s creativity and His deep, deep love for us (He could have just made everything grey you know!)

We take a road trip to watch Grif play football

And, hit a state park on the way

    

Mari used a lawn mover for the first time!

And, there was leaf pile fun

Our new basketball hoop finally got set up:)

And, we had our sometimes annual pumpkin party

Meet Dorothy, Luigi & a dolpin

Who knows, maybe I’ll even do November, 2014 soon;)