Kevin's Birthday!!

Kevin's birthday is the 23rd, so we usually get the ball rolling for all of our Christmas celebrations with a birthday party for him.  Miles was super excited to get to see Uncle Jack as soon as we got there.  He absolutely loves Jack and talks about him all the time. 


The Jordan girls and two stowaways!

Laney enjoying her chili and me enjoying her!
Bobbis, Grandpa Kevin and all 9 grandchildren!!!!

Sam is so easy to get laughs from!!!
Drew and Katie, Kevin's oldesst grandchildren, were so fabulous with our littles.  They played with them for the entire party and could not have been more fun.  Drew had his I Phone out and was letting Sam use a painting app.  He used his finger to drag across the screen and leave color streaks.  Sam was amazed!!!  He kept looking at his finger to find where the paint was coming from. 


After all that painting fun, Sam chilled out for the rest of the night with some books!!!!

Cookie Time!!!

One of the things that we love to do at Christmas time is bake bake bake!!!! Laney and I made tons and tons of cookies this year. She is such a great helper and even the brothers joined in for some of the fun! Laney discovered that it was easier to just drop her cookies in the bowl of frosting than to spread it on with a knife.

Then she helped me put our cake ball snowman heads on top of her very well iced cookie.
We added some chocolate chip buttons and "carrot noses".......

Some chocolate twiggy arms and voila!!! Our melting snowman cookies are complete!!!

A cute addition to our Santa hat and Rudolph cake balls.

We ran out of cake balls and had to improvise with some snowman faces, but if you look closely you will see what too loose a rein on the brothers can lead to!

Poor Frosty!!!!!
Here's the eye eating culprit!

Sam appears to be disappointed in his brother!

Christmas Karaoke!

We found a channel on our U-Verse that had a 24 hour Santa Tracker. It also had interactive games we coud play and Christmas Karaoke! It was so fun and so cute. My three love to sing, so we frequented channel 98 and sang along to some of our favorites.
Our favorite was Jingle Bells. We rounded up all of the jingle bells that we could find at our house, mostly right off of our tree. Then we replayed Jingle Bells over and over while shaking our bells and our booties!!
Miles had this eensy weensy little jingle bell that I found amidst all of my Christmas wrapping supplies.
Sam's favorite part of the song is the "HEY" that follows each verse. He is an enthusiastic singer. Todd commented that if you want to understand the lyrics you need to listen to Sam. But if you want to hear the tune, you need to listen to Miles. What a team!!!

Christmas Performance!

Laney had a Christmas performance at school a couple of weeks ago. She did a great job!!! She does not typically love performing, but she sang along with her classmates and even did the motions for the first two songs!!! She is right behind the red barn sitting super close to her precious teacher, Mrs. Melton. Mrs. Melton is so sweet to her and has such an understanding heart when it comes to some of Laney's anxieties. She always stays close and helps Laney feel more at ease!

The brothers were happy to sit in the back with us and watch sister's show!

At the end we got to scoot up to the front and take pictures of our kiddos up close. Laney gave me one huge smile, which unfortunately my camera did not catch in focus!! I did get these of my silly acting girl!

All Snug!!!

Just some sweet pictures of my littles right before sugarplums started dancing in their heads!

Hot Chocolate and Christmas Lights!

My three are really really into Christmas lights this year. They get especially super excited whenever we get to pass a "blow up!" Whenever we drive by deflated ones during the day, Sam calls out to them, "Night night blow up. Taking a nap!"
The other night we got all jammied up, poured ourselves some hot chocolate and got in the car to go Christmas light looking!

We went to a very very decorated neighborhood in Arlington and hunted for snowmen. For every snowman blow up that we found, we each got a mini marshmallow! It was so fun. They were shouting "Snowman! Snowman!" all night long!

Santa on the Roof!!!

Santa on the Roof!!!! We took a hiatus last year from our annual Santa on the Roofing, but we jumped back into the tradition full swing this year! I love this night so much and I love that we get to have it at Jessica's house where my mom hosted it all those years when we were growing up! Bobbis is definitely in on the hostessing action, making it possible for Jess and me to run all over the place by giving some major help with our kiddos!!!

Claire passed out the songbooks to all of our fun guests!

My big boy in one of the rare moments that he was not being held during the evening. My three were very very clingy to their family members all evening.

See!

Maybe this was the start of the caroling. We sing carols on the lawn until Santa hears us and comes "Up on the Housetop!"

My sister took the reigns in leading the show. She got our caroling started and helped kids find their way up to "Santa's Circle" so that Santa could toss their gifts down to them.

Laney stayed close to Bobbis, Daddy, Kev, Hailey and Groms for the caroling and Santa watching!!

Here he is!!!!

Waiting patietly!! When Santa called the brothers' names they both went Santa's Circle and told him what they want for Christmas! A soccer ball for Miles and a trash truck for Sam. Laney was not interested in talking into the mike to Santa, but we think he knows that she really wants a drum set!!!

We tried to take a picture of the brothers with Santa, but they really really freaked out. So, I tried to sit with them, but it did nothing to calm their nerves. Sam talks all the time about Santa and even sitting on his lap, but turns out, that kid is all talk!