December Catch Up - Christmas & Benjamin is 8!!

Eva LOVES to color!!

She's super busy too.

Enjoying some spaghetti.

Building our gingerbread house.....I made Daddy do it this year.

My super talented sister got her PhD!!! We had a party to celebrate!

Mmmm! Cake pops!

Mitochondria cake

Big sister Anna is a big helper to Eva. She loved having Anna lift her to put the felt ornaments up high on their tree.

We tried something new and did our presents Christmas Eve morning so we could have more time playing and having fun all day. It worked great and we enjoyed a wonderful family day just the six of us. Merry Christmas! We sure are blessed!

Beautiful Anna got the unwrapping started....

She was so happy to have a new Brave bow and arrow set (her brothers broke her other arrows).

Legos....cool!

Eva did great with her first Christmas that she can open her own presents. So fun!

She loves her scuttlebug scooter.

What Benjamin really wanted, a scooter!

What is it?!

Darth Vader Collin!

Group present.....what could it be?

Animal blankets! So soft and cuddly!

Anna loving her Doc McStuffins check up center.

A Pacer's jersey for our basketball fan.

We left a note for Collin on the basement door to follow the string down to his big present.

Following the string......

....he sees it!

A drum set for our music loving Collin.

Benjamin having a great time with his new basketball goal.

Anna had so much fun setting up her new jewelry box.

Daddy and Evie hanging out on her new chair.

Our family after Christmas Eve service.

Hanging out with our church buddies.

Santa came!

Aren't they adorable?!?

Eva had an audience as she unwrapped a stocking for the first time.

This is for me?

Time to go see extended family like sweet Logan. This is Eva's snowman and Santa. They started out as her siblings toys but she has adopted them and is obsessed with them. She carries them around everywhere with her and dances (they play music) and coos and has the best time with them!

Opening presents with grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Eva and her snowman.

Silly car ride with cousins to see Christmas lights in the cave!

More presents

We actually got all eight cousins posed together for a picture!

Our monkey with a gorilla.

Eva walking with her Grandpa.

Handsome Benjamin

All the girls at the zoo!

Benjamin's birthday cake, an oreo basketball!

We had a quiet morning opening presents just the six of us. He was really excited by this ant farm. Then I got to enjoy a first, a date with the birthday boy to see a movie.

Benjamin really wanted to take his extended family for a birthday dinner at a restaurant and we had a great time.

Cake time! Happy Birthday To You!

Let it Snow!

It snowed all day! We ended up getting 9 inches of beautiful snow and Eva so loved watching it fall. She went to our back door all day and just quietly watched. It was such a peacefully, sweet sight!

We knew the snow was coming and we have a pretty rotten snow shovel, so Dave had me go buy a new one before hand. They had kid shovels too so I picked up a couple and it was one of the best things Collin has ever gotten! When Dave got home from work that night, they tackled the driveway and sidewalks really quick before it got dark. Collin LOVED it!

My sweet workers.

Benjamin and Anna enjoyed themselves too.

I had put Eva in her highchair with a snack while I ran to the front door to take the pictures of our working crew and when I came back in, she was peering around her chair and had stretched her little neck as far as she could to see what all the action was.

We spent the next day getting ready for Christmas and playing in the snow!

So proud of their tree!

The nativity is always a hit with our kids and Eva enjoyed her first year of being big enough to play too. She would put baby Jesus to her shoulder and rock him and pat his back even though he was smaller than her palm. It was too adorable for words!

Another adorable sight was watching her walk around in her snow suit!

Dave put a ramp off our porch and packed snow all around and over it and it made for perfect sledding! We stayed in the comfort of our own yard and the little hill of our yard was just right for being fun to slide down, but not too tiring to come back up to do it again. It was a hit!

Collin was especially fun to watch since he's the lightest and would slide down so fast!

For some reason Anna had fun pushing her head around in the snow. Crazy girl!

I can't say Eva really enjoyed being out in the cold air and snow, so she eventually went in with Daddy and watched the fun from the (warm) inside.

The next day, the big kids went to a birthday party during nap time, so when Collin was up we had some one-on-one time in the snow together. I made him a food coloring spray bottle (to paint the snow) and he had a bunch of fun with that but eventually just wanted to get back to his "work" with his shovel!

I decided to try a felt tree this year so the kids (especially Eva) could enjoy moving the ornaments around and decorating all month. It worked out great and they all had so much fun!

More manger fun!

Look how fast Eva's hair is growing!

Riding in her new big girl car seat with her new stylish coat and hat that her aunt Kelly found.

Phone Pictures

These are a bunch of pictures that we took with my phone that I wanted to make sure got on the blog for memory keeping sake. Eva got a rocking chair from Grandma for her birthday and she loves to rock in it and climb all over it. She sits down and sweetly says, "ra, ra" as she rocks herself back and forth.

She LOVES Anna's toy stethoscope and will wear it for an hour or more. I love how this picture shows how vibrant her blue eyes are. We get lots of comments on how blue they've gotten.

Sleepy time. This was when her blankie obsession started. She seemed to need something to do with her hands while she nursed or else she would end up pulling my hair or pinching me or some other painful thing. I started handing her this little lovie blanket and she LOVES it! She is now obsessed with it and we have many extras because she always has one nearby. None of the other kids got attached to a lovie like this, other than Collin really liked sleeping with his full sized blanket that my grandma made him, so its been really fun to see her love her blankie so much!

Having fun with Grandma while big sister is at dance class.

She found where I kept her extra blankies and was in such awe and love. She grabbed them one by one and pulled them in close (she especially likes having it under her chin as she hugs it) and squeezed and rocked and hugged those blankies in such joy!

Benjamin and Dave took some friends to a Colts game (thanks to Grandpa for sharing) and had so much fun!

This was the week Eva finally started walking. She loved climbing so much that she didn't really care to learn, so finally at 15 months she figured it out. When we went to dance class this day we got there early before anyone else and Anna and Eva went out and danced and were so very cute!

Wish this wasn't blurry, it was hard to capture them with a phone!

I just love the way Eva is looking up to her big sister here!

Our furnace stopped working properly and it was too dangerous to leave it on, so we had a really cold night before they could replace it the next day. The kids thought it was hilarious getting dressed up in so many layers to go to sleep. Dave did a good job getting the house toasty with the fire place and space heaters before we went to sleep and it ended up not being too bad.

Eva LOVES baby dolls! She carries them around all day long. When she found her sister's stroller in the basement she was in heaven!

She says "ra, ra" (rock, rock) to her babies as she cares for them too.

The kids were tickled when we had a boy and girl side when we went out to dinner one night and wanted a brother picture....

....and a sister picture.

After we got our family picture taken for our Christmas card, we ate at my favorite restaurant (Thai, yum!) and Eva had her first egg roll. The other kids don't like them, but.....

Eva did!

We met friends at a park and went for a fun bike ride together around the hospital. They loved it!

Eva had so much getting pushed by Collin on this little tricycle. I think she felt so big!

Our Classical Conversations (the homeschool group we attend) semester ended with a play that some of the kids worked on and reciting a part of Ephesians that they memorized. Our three are in the front row all the way to the right.