Lego Club

December brought more activities. Lego Club had their big competition that they had been working towards all fall. Paul is one of the coaches and Ben really enjoys building the robots and working on the coding for making it do the tasks it is assigned.  Here they are getting ready to start their turn at the mission table.

Ben is praying it goes well!

Back at the table making a few adjustments with Coach and the rest of the team.

They did an awesome job and even won an award for their Core Values, which was an awesome win!

And when we went outside to leave, this is what it was like out!

Great job team!

I love this picture - this is what happens when you have two older sisters!

And the girls both performed in another play - this time it was Elf!  I love watching them perform!

The kids had a chance to play outside in the snow finally.  I did not want to go play in the snow (I really don't like being cold in the snow), so I watched them from our front window.  This worked out great for me and then the kids got a kick out of it by throwing snowballs at me (the window)!

 I love these next two pictures as you can see Matthew throwing the snowball! 

Glad they had fun and glad I could watch from inside!  Daddy is the one who plays in the snow with the kids! 

 They even made a little snowman for our front porch!

 Since it was so cold outside, we did a lot of inside activities.  Here is Matthew playing school and "reading" to the class!

Uno is always fun! 

 Guess what this girl wants for Christmas??

 The girls' brownie troops went Christmas Caroling at the retirement home close to our house.

Juliette finished up her basketball season - a great team of friends! 

 Although this is a better representation of this crazy group!

Uncle Chris Turns 40!!!

The weekend after Thanksgiving, we drove to Cincinnati to surprise Uncle Chris for his 40th birthday! He had been on working the previous day out of town and did not get back into town until the wee hours of the morning, so he was asleep when we arrived. This worked out well as the kids played around for a while first.  Matthew had no problem jumping into play mode when he saw all of Brendan's really cool toys!

The kids loved playing around with Brendan.

Then when Uncle Chris woke up (probably from the noise of lots of kids in his house!), he came down to find us there as a surprise!

Hi Uncle Chris!!!

And Aunt Ginny got in on the fun too!

Aunt Ginny had bought some gingerbread houses for the kids to work on, which was a lot of fun!

And that night, Aunt Ginny had arranged for a surprise party for Uncle Chris with a few of his close friends and their families.  It was a really nice evening celebrating, including Madgie's special Texas Sheet Cake!

Good thing Brendan was there to help blow out all of those candles!

The finished gingerbread houses!

The next morning, Uncle Chris opened up some presents and cards that the kids had made for him.

These kids love their fun Uncle Chris!

And their awesome Aunt Ginny, who planned a really nice weekend of surprises for Chris - well done!

It was a short visit, but really nice to have some family time with cousins and Madgie and Patch!

Thanks for inviting us Aunt Ginny - we had a great time!  And Happy Birthday to the BEST big brother!  Love you!

Christmas Tree

In our yearly tradition, the day after Thanksgiving we went to pick out our Christmas tree.  It was pretty cold, so we bundled up!

We took the wagon ride out to where the big trees were.  

But we did see some Matthew sized trees too - he's ready to cut this one down!

We looked at a lot of great trees.

Before we finally picked "the one".

Then the boys got down to business in cutting it down.

What a good helper!

And the girls helped Dad carry the tree.

What a great looking group!

I just thought this was a cool picture.

While waiting for the wagon to come pick us up with our tree, we found another Matthew sized tree, although this one didn't look as healthy.

When we got home, we got the tree up and started to decorate.

We belted out Christmas songs too.

Ben put the angel on top this year.

Abbey decorating the tree.

And when Matthew woke up from nap, he helped too.

Love these two!