Live Nativity

A local Camel Farm and a local church host this each year.  We went for the first time this year.  Beautiful!!  We were able to view from a loft in the camel barn.

Christmas Lights House

Last night we took the kids, for the first time, to a recommended house of lights. One of my friends told me about "musical christmas lights" that were at a house that is about 45 minutes or so away from our house. She said it would be worth our trip. These lights were really neat!! Christmas music was playing and the lights "danced" to the music. The kids loved it! We got out and listened for a while, but the best part was as we pulled up to the house there was a sign telling you to program your radio to a particular station. Once tuned to that station, the music that was coming from the house was the same music that was being piped into the van. We could stay warm in our van and still listen to the music while watching the lights. I took a movie, but it really does not give it justice! This morning Emily asked, first thing, if we could go back to the musical lights again today :).

Christmas Parade time again

Friday night was the Harrisonburg Christmas Parade. My preschool, Freedom Baptist Day School, entered a float into the parade. Mike drove our truck for us and the kids rode on the float. Everyone dressed in their warmest pajamas (very cold night!) and we decorated the truck to look like a bed. The kids had such a fun time and saw so many kids from their school!! We all had a good time! Lydia and Frances

Ryan and Emily

Emily and Lydia dressed in their warmest pj's and many layers underneath.

Merry Ho Ho from Santa

This "Christmas Morning: was the most exciting one yet! Ryan was very much into the magic of Santa this year and was quite involved in deciding how Santa was going to get into our house since we don't have a chimney:). Lydia and Emily were excited, but not quite as into the magic since they are younger.

As most of you know, Mike is a Deputy Sheriff with the Rockingham County Sheriff's Department. As a result, he has to work holidays on occasion. Every other year he hits the year in which he works the big holidays. This was the year for the big holidays. He had to work both Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year so we debated on how to handle the Santa thing. One of his co-workers "split" the day with him and came in at 10:00 after Mike had worked since 5:30am. Luckily Mike was able to spend the day with us, but that did not help our Santa situation. We decided to tell the kids that Santa came on Thursday night instead of Wednesday night. After spending a great Christmas Day with family and praying no one would accidently ask "What did Santa bring you this morning?" we had our Santa morning on Friday morning. I took a little movie that morning and have attached it--it's about four minutes long. We are not certain what the deal was with Lydia, but she ended up enjoying her presents later--after the video was over:).

Happy Holidays!

Our time leading up to Christmas Day is always chocked full of fun family events! If you have not already picked up on this, my family--immediate and extended--is quite important to me! We visited with Nanny and Pap; Jeremy, Destiny, Nathan and Savannah; Aunt Mary Ann; Connie and Earl; Paul, Allison and Adella; My parents; Grandma; Uncle Bill, Vida; Sandra, Tammy, Shane and Brittany. It is always such a special time when we get to see all of them!

On Christmas Eve we went to Nanny and Pap's house. Nanny and Pap are Mike's grandparents. When Mike was younger, he lived with Nanny and Pap for a short time. They are very special to him and over the years have become very special to me as well. Ryan, Lydia and Emily LOVE going to Nanny and Pap's!! All rules are omitted from their lives just by walking in the house:). Nanny and Pap had two children, Connie (Mike's birth mother) and Mary Ann. Mike's brother, Jeremy and his family, came to Nanny and Pap's on Christmas Eve with us. In addition, Connie and her husband Earl and Mary Ann were there for a yummy lunch of Nanny's famous Veggie Soup and some wonderful ham and turkey rolls! Unfortunately, Mike was not able to make it to Nanny and Pap's Christmas Eve while we were there. He had to work during the day that day, but visited with Nanny and Pap Friday (today) afternoon.

On Christmas Eve night we met up with Mike at my parents house. We celebrated Christmas with my parents and my brother and his family. Our big gift to my parents was a picture of all four grandchildren. We had a picture of Ryan, Lydia, Emily and Adella taken professionally. Mom and Dad were very surprised and happy! Ryan, Lydia and Emily walked out of the house with more stuff than they know what to do with:). They are in seventh heaven!

Christmas Day was spent at my parents house with my Mom's family. It was a terrific day of family together time! Ryan, Lydia and Emily were so excited about opening presents and attempting to figure out what they could open next:). It was such a great holiday! Hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas!

Mike's Family Christmas

I have not blogged too much about Mike's family. All of his siblings live within 1/2 hour of each other, but unfortunately they don't seem to get together as a family too often. The two people that Mike refers to as his parents are actually his father (Jerry) and step mother (Lois). They married when Mike was only two years old so Lois is the only mother Mike has ever known. Like Jerry, Lois had been married prior to their marriage. She had two children from her first marriage--Debbie and Steven. Jerry brought three children to the marriage--Chris, Jeremy and Mike. They all lived in the same house for several years until the older kids began moving out. Mike's closest sibling in age is six years older than Mike so he is really the baby of the family! All five kids have their own children and families and we try to get together at least once a year for Christmas.

Last night was our Christmas get together. We had a fabulous dinner with some funny conversation. We played a gift exchange game as well as an ugliest Christmas ornament Olympics--congratulations Cory!! Before everyone left we talked them into taking a family picture. Unfortunately, Steven and his family were not able to come and are not in the picture. Hopefully we will get him next year! It was a fun time with fun people! We need to get together in the summertime too!

Parade Time!!

Friday night was the Christmas Parade in downtown Harrisonburg. Our preschool put a float in the parade. I use the term float loosely. We had a week and a half to plan this "float" and get ourselves registered--one of these weeks was actually the week of Thanksgiving . . . so . . . there was not a tremendous amount of time to plan. Shayna loaned us her pick-up truck and Jennifer scrambled to find a large wagon to pull with the pick up. Turns out the pick up and wagon were great! We made two banners and wrapped boxes for the children to wear to be presents on the wagon (my children, however, did not like wearing these boxes:). Prior to arriving at the parade, we received incorrect information from the persons running the parade so that messed us up a great deal and we had quite a bad start. Once we got going it was quite fun! I originally put the boxes on Lydia and Emily and Lydia began to cry as we started moving. There was a parent behind her that helped her take the box off. Lydia then decided to join her family and stayed with them under their blankets. Ryan and Emily shared a blanket and rang their jingle bells. Rabia, Treasa and I walked beside the float and handed out flyers and Jennifer pulled a little red wagon behind the float with one of the kids from our center. Once we were finished we had to go back and collect our vehicles. The kids were told to hold on tight while we rode back to the parade start (at a much faster speed) while having no sides on the wagon:). The kids were all so bundled up in their super warm winter clothes on this 19 degree evening that I don't think any of them could have fallen off of the wagon if they wanted to. After the very cold parade, Rabia asked us to come to her church where they were passing out cookies and hot chocolate. All in all it was a pretty fun night.

Twins Party

Last night was our twins club (ARCMOM) holiday party. We decided to have our holiday party in November as a result of the fact that the hall where we have the party was booked up for December, but we still wanted to have the party before Christmas so we could offer a photographer again for family Christmas pictures. In addition, the photographer took a group picture of everyone that came to the party. 11 of our members and their families came to the party. As our gift to our MOMs (Mothers of Mulitples) we made little tote bags with the words "World's Greatest MOM Hands Down" painted on one side and with some help from some teenagers, the kids painted their handprints on the other side of the tote. Not only was this a great gift for the MOMs, but it was a neat activity for the kids as well.

Pictured below are Lydia (standing), Emily and Ryan with their good friends, Abby, Glenn and James (next to Ryan) (my good friend Kara's kids). James and Glenn are five days older than Ryan and Abby is 5 weeks younger than Lydia and Emily--I "caught" my twins from Kara:)