Merry Christmas!

After a not so good Christmas Eve. We had a most delightful Christmas listening to the kids jamming on some new instruments they received, playing BINGO and playing outside. I hope you had a Christmas spending time loving like God loved us, by sending His Son! I'll post pictures and videos of our fun soon!

What is Christmas about?

Yesterday we played trade off at church because the boys have a horrible cold so we didn't take them, but Nathan and I both had to teach. Nathan taught first service, then I met Nathan and church and switched cars and kids. Evie stayed with me for second service, but Hannah went home. After second service we were talking to our neighbor and he said something about Christmas being about giving gifts. Evie shook her head no and said that's not what it's about. He then asked if it was about getting gifts. She responded with no. Now he was a bit confused, what did she think it was about? She said "it's about Jesus being born and His birthday." Then today I took Kaleb shopping with me and we were talking about Christmas and he said "Jesus had to come to earth" I asked why and he responded "To die and save us from sin" I think my kids are getting it :-)

just out of the bath...

Kaleb comes out after a bath and runs over to me and says "there's water in my ear, hear that?" me "no" Kaleb "there's an airplane in my ear! Do you hear it?"

Breakfast Queen

This week Hannah has been taking over breakfast. She made oatmeal one day and then today she made scones. By made scones what I mean is she took her siblings, kicked me out of the kitchen and made scones from scratch, with the help only from her siblings. I put them in the oven for them and took them out, but that was it. They turned out good as well. She did a great job, I was very impressed! Unfortunately my camera is currently missing, Kaleb had it last, I told him to "put it back" and now I have no idea where he actually put it. Hopefully I'll find it soon. Otherwise I would have had pictures of them making the scones.

Fudge Day

Last Friday was our annual fudge day, where we make crazy insane amounts of fudge, write a Christmas letter, print a picture, pack it all up and stick labels on the boxes. I really have to separate the write a Christmas letter and print a picture from the fudge making, but I haven't managed to do that yet, so it ends up in a bad letter, and way to late of a night! But it's all fun, we've managed to find crazy people to come help us so that helps us through.

Evie with most of the ingredients.

Kaleb helping stir

Evie helping stir.

All the kids helped out at one point or another. Evie and Kaleb really enjoyed stirring and would come help with that a lot. We made 13 batches of fudge, so there were plenty of opportunities to stir!

Hannah stirring

Evie was also very helpful by reading to Damen

Here is ten of our twelve flavors starting to get cut.

the fudge it wrapped and starting to be boxed, I think I'm working on getting the Christmas letter printed

Our friend Joshua who came and helped us wrap and pack the fudge.

 Completed boxes ready to be sent.

This year we tried a couple new flavors, the six we did were s'more, hazel nut, chocolate oreo, chocolate orange, cordial cherry and mint.

A visit from Aunt Lori

Tuesday we got a call from one of my favorite people. Lori! She asked if she could stop by that night. We were delighted she was coming our way! It took her super long to get hear because of the snow :-( But we are so happy she persevered and made it safely here! She spent all day Wednesday with us and then left Thursday morning. When Hannah found out she was coming she got a huge grin on her face and jumped up and down. We had a great time hanging out, she is such a pleasure to have visit. She helped out with the kids, came to library time and we had great conversations. Thanks for stopping by Lori!

I had to make sure I had proof she was here :-) This is Thursday morning right before she left. The boys were running around like crazy kids and didn't want to get in the picture, if you were wondering why they aren't there.

Finally!

Since getting back from Thanksgiving the girls were really struggling with doing their school work. It was taking HOURS. Like 2-3 hours to do one sheet of math. And an hour or two to do other things that used to take 15-20 minutes. It was driving me in sane, as I had tried everything to get them to focus and stay on task and none of it seemed to be working. I was trying to figure out if they weren't understanding things, or if they were just playing around, as things were not taking this long before the week off of Thanksgiving. Well, today I had made a play date for at park at 10:30, which meant we had to be out of the house by 10. I figured I'd start the girls on school and see what we could get done, not figuring there was hope of getting more than one thing done we started with math. It took them all of 15 minutes to do their math. Evie was doing a math sheet that was almost identical to the one she did yesterday that took her over an hour! Needless to say they were slightly more focus and had all their book work done in less than an hour and we were able to do most of our reading for the day before leaving as well! It was a wonderful feeling not fighting with them to just sit down and do their work. Now I'm debating if I should not stop for Christmas, since they apparently remembered how to do school again. :-)

Stair Fun

One of the things the kids enjoyed doing at my parents house was bouncing down the stairs.  Here's a video my Dad took of the fun. There was lots of laughing and lots of trips up and down the stairs!

Fixing things

Today was Nathan's annual family Christmas party at his work. Hannah was informing Kaleb of this this morning and the conversation went something like this.
Hannah: We're going to Daddy's work today!
Kaleb: Oh, is he going to fix things?
Hannah: No, it's going to be fun!
Kaleb: But will he fix things?

Of course that's what Daddy does at work, he fixes things right? As one of Nathan's co-workers reminded him this week, they do not fix things, they make things!

A walk in the snow

After family pictures Rachel and I took the kids for a walk in the snow. They love snow. Any time they can be out in it they are all for it!

Damen is all smiles

A trumping we shall go!

Hmmm....now what to do with the snowballs.......

Look Mom!

 I think I'll eat it!

Hannah having fun rolling down a small hill

And then trying to sled....It was a fun and very wet walk!

Sibling Free Zone

Yesterday Evie had a princess birthday party to attend. She was so excited, first because it's princess, second because it was all on her own. As I was driving her there in the car she was going on and on about how wonderful it would be. She said "I'm so excited to not have my siblings around, it will be soooo relaxing. Well, it would be relaxing if it wasn't a party, to be all by myself, but the party will be fun." Apparently Evie needs more non-sibling time :-)

Family Picture Day

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving Debbie had arranged for family pictures. Unfortunately it was snowing, so the person she had arranged to come take the pictures couldn't make it. So we made do with what we had, a couple of point and shoot cameras, a rigged tripod and a fireplace.
I set my camera to take pictures while we were getting setup.

Silly picture with Aunt Rachel, Uncle Magnus and Mommy. 

What am I supposed to be doing? And where am I supposed to stand?

Is this a good spot Mom?

Smiles

And more smiles!

I liked this one of the Wickham family!

Silly pictures with Aunt Debbie

Aunt Debbie with the boys! Damen and Kaleb

Debbie's thinking what have I gotten myself into?

 Evie and Aunt Debbie trying to have big cheeks like Lilly!

Thanksgiving week - Monday & Tuesday

We left Sunday the 23rd after church for my parents house. It was a quick and uneventful drive down, which was wonderful! Monday we went to Rockville to visit my grandparents. Debbie came out and we hung out at the library for a little bit, walked around the square area and had lunch on the patio, which worked out great!

I didn't have my camera, but my sister did. Here is a picture of the kids in front of a tree near my grandparents apartment. 

Here's another slightly less formal picture! 

Tuesday the kids went out with my sister Rachel and her husband Magnus to the used book store near my parents house. Rachel and Magnus took all four kids and had an adventure trying to keep the boys from pulling all the books off the shelf :-) That afternoon we headed back to Rockville and had a nice visit with my Aunt over some Ben and Jerry's ice cream. The kids enjoyed their ice cream and we enjoyed our visit!

silly songs with Hannah and Evie

Okay, so we're skipping forward to today for a minute to share some videos with you.

It all started when the girls gave us an invitation to see "There's a hole-ole in my sock"

After that we got a few other songs. There one is "Bananas in the backpack" which Nathan and the girls came up with a few weeks ago in the car one day. 

This one is inspired by Calvin and Hobbes, which Hannah has been reading lots of recently. It's called "Bath Time"

The next several clips are of a "Hole in the Swimming Pool" which involved lots and LOTS of laughter. I think they're pretty funny, but if you're not in the mood to watch several short clips of laughing little girls please feel free to skip them, but hopefully they'll make you smile! :-) 

Dress a Veggie

The Thursday before Thanksgiving at AWANA it was dress a veggie night. This was the first time the boys had participated.

Hannah made a dog Digger

Evie made a girl, Sarah, waving.

Damen made a clown and won the prize for the best dressed veggie in Cubbies.

And Kaleb made a squirrel, with a big bushy tail :-)

ice

I was trying to decide if I should start current and go backwards to catch up on posting, or start where I left off. I have decided to start where I left off. On Thursday the 20th we had our first good solid freeze. The kids had a blast going around the yard and finding ice. After finding the ice they brought it on to the deck and started smashing it.

Hannah having fun with a large piece of ice.

Evie showing off her ice

Kaleb very excited about the ice he found

The shattered ice

Santa Bread

The other day I received an email from my mother in-law with a picture of Santa Bread in it. I found the recipe and did it with the girls yesterday.

Evie took pictures during some of the process. 

The girls did a great job cutting the beard and twisting it up! (well Kaleb was aparently playing with the pizza cutter)

Here it is before it went into the oven.

Here's the after, it turned out pretty good I thought. It also tasted good, it got devoured!

things the boys love

The other week in Sunday school the boys were learning how they should love God above everything else. One of the things they did were talk about the things they love.

This is Damen's, it says he loves, Daddy, Ice Cream and Chocolate Cake

I at least made Kaleb's list :-) It says, Mommy and Daddy, Spaghetti and Bacon

Apparently we feed them too much :-)

sling

After Nathan ended up with a sling, Hannah decided she needed one too.

Here's the one she made!

Swimming

Well Nathan was sleeping the day after he hurt his shoulder I was pretty tired too, so I kind of let the kids go wild. It was warm in the house, you know, like 65 degrees. So the kids decided to put on their swim suits, make a beach out of blankets, a diving board.

Hannah just jumped off the diving board, she's on the sand there

Damen jumping in

Evie diving in!

Kaleb brought the diving board down

Here you can see, the yellow pillow is the sand, the red towels are the towels they brought to the beach with them. :-)

The Adventures of the Day

The good news of the day was that the MRI Nathan had on Wednesday showed no additional issues. Which means he only dislocated his shoulder and nothing else, so he's good to use his shoulder again in two weeks. The doctor also said he could take it out of the sling when not doing much, for example he can use two hands at work.
After his doctors appointment we proceeded to take apart the dishwasher. It's been having problems with the top sprayer getting clogged with food debris and not spinning. Which results in our cups not getting clean because the water from below is not spraying. It's easy enough to clean out, but we've cleaned it out WAY too many times in the past few months. Today I took the entire bottom area a part, cleaned out the disposal blades and everything else and put it back together. We'll see how long it lasts for. If it doesn't last more than a month I think I might be in the market for a new dishwasher. It used to work great, but we can't figure out what happened that's allowing debris to feed into the upper sprayer.
The next excitement for the day was the hot water heater. It stopped working on us the other day, we hit the reset switch and it worked again...sort of. Then today it was running super hot, we had turned up the temperature a little when we had reset it, but not that much. We gave the boys a bath and then went to bath the girls and there was no hot water again. Nathan went and bought a "plumber's repair kit" for it which included the two thermostats and the two heater elements. I swapped out the top thermostat and then Nathan tested the bottom element and couldn't get a resistance reading. Not good. So I swapped out both elements and both thermostats since Nathan couldn't really do much with one hand. He did help a little and supervised, but I've decided plumbers and appliance repair people get paid way too much.
That was my Saturday, how was yours?

dress like a Bible character

The Thursday before Halloween was dress like a Bible character at AWANA.

Evie was Queen Ester, Hannah was Elijah

Kaleb was Salomon and Damen was David as a shepherd. He wanted a harp, but the best we had was xylophone.