Christmas

Between Jeremy pulling out FedEx trucks that were stuck in the snow, we were able to squeeze in a few minutes to do our annual stockings. The kids did their own for the first time this year and I think they turned out fabulous!

You can see what a huge Cowboys fan Troy is...he can't even spell the team name right! We had a good laugh at that!

All of the kids slept in our room on Christmas Eve, another tradition in our house. We drag their mattresses down the hall and spend a while acting like fools and reading Christmas books before tucking them in for the night. Amanda's got some good pictures of all of that action. Santa Clause was very good to everyone this year. Aidan got the number one thing on her wish list (see the wheelchair???). Rudy got his Spiderman suit. Jacob got his colored skateboard and Bakugan toys. Unfortunately, the turtle OR snail that he wanted was not under the tree. He'll have to ask for that again next year. Actually he did tell us that he will only be asking Santa for one thing next year.......a wheelchair.

Yes, I know it's weird, but you never know when there could be a bear in our backyard. You've got to be prepared!!!

Jeremy wrote lovely (insert sarcasm here) little notes on many people's gifts this year. He was feeling creative when we were wrapping on Christmas Eve.

Mom and Joe took a turn down the sledding hill. Wish I could've gotten that on video!

Uncle Kim took a video of himself going down the hill on the sled. It came out really good! If he ever sends it to me I will post it on here.

Rudy's FAVORITE gift this year was his Spiderman costume. Thanks Haylie!

Grandma (cupcake) gave us tickets to see Wicked. Can't wait for March!!!!!

We are very thankful for another great Christmas. There's always a lot of running around, but getting to be with family and friends is so much fun and very special to us. Wish I had pictures of the fun games we played at Aunt Leanne's! If anyone has some, please send them to me so I can show everyone what fools we made of ourselves!!!

BIG SNOW

For our family, the Blizzard of '09 was an absolute blast and made the holidays a little (actually a lot) hectic. As you can see from the picture above, we have the best neighbors. Danny, from up the street, came down and plowed our driveway not once - but twice!!! If it weren't for him, we could forget getting out of the driveway!
The Gayler's started their drive from Texas on Friday, when the snow started. I tried to warn Amanda on Thursday that they should leave asap, but they weren't able to. They made it most of the way with no problems, until they hit Richmond and from then on, it was a nightmare! Luckily they made it (after 38 hours of driving!) and the only place they got stuck was on our street. And in comes Jeremy's new truck to the rescue to pull them home!
The sledding couldn't have been better! We were invited to go snow tubing at Massanutten, but after all of the fun we had in our own backyard for free, we just couldn't see paying for a so-so hill and lots of rules that take all the fun out of it. Sorry Pittmans :-) You guys will just need to drive to our house next time it snows...you'll never pay for Massanutten again!
As you can imagine, the combination of #1 the week before Christmas #2 2' of snow #3 4 FedEx routes, that's where the nightmare(ish) part came in. Needless to say, we didn't see much of Jeremy that week (He did get a few opportunities to enjoy the sledding with us, though). But, it's all done now and everything turned out fine in the end.

I have yet to buy myself some snow boots, so I improvised with Glad Press-N-Seal. Believe it or not, it worked REALLY well! My feet were a little cold, but dry - and that's all I can ask for in 2' of snow! In the first picture in this post, I am wearing Jeremy's Napoleon Dynamite boots from Halloween (like 4 years ago). They kept my feet suprisingly warm. However, once we got so much snow that it came over the top of the boots, I had to switch over to good 'ole platic wrap. ;-)

Next year, we just need a wench to pull everyone up the hill!

Little Snow

Since it's been so long since this snow, I'm not exactly sure when this was...either late November or early December. Not that it matters anyway. ;-)
It was only a couple inches of snow, but it was the BEST for packing snowballs and making a snowman!

Besides her Daddy, there is nothing that Abby loves more than the snow! She even attacked the snowman!

Time to do some catchin' up!!!

So, it's been almost 6 months since I put a post on here, so I've got a lot of catchin' up to do. Here goes..........These pictures/videos are from decorating the Christmas tree. Pretty self explanatory. :-)

Jake has done so well in school and loves to write notes and draw pictures for everyone. I had to take a picture of this one to keep forever!

Grandma (with the ferrets) watched the kids one morning for us and we came home to some wonderful gifts!

It's been well over a month since we decorated the Christmas tree, so as I watch the video of the kids dancing to Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas song, all I can wonder is, "What did I feed them for dinner???????"