Christmas

Christmas Morning before the stockings.  Yes, they are gated in so no-one sneaks a peek at the gifts.

Sometimes my children are such nerds, but always in a good way.

Chris loved his headlight and Star Wars books

and Evan loved his batteries.  See what I mean???

Around the Christmas tree: Alexis, Ben with Peter, Chris and Evan

Peter received a clown nose set in his stocking.  Isn't he darling?

The mommy clown

The daddy clown

Princess Snow White/Alexis.  She loves this outfit.

Peter also received a train piggy bank that whistles when you put money in.  He has become quite rich as he looks for coins to put in his train.

Alexis and Kassidy

My cuter daughter with my cute niece

Cold and Snowy

Sometimes my children are sooo like their daddy.  But, what am I going to do?  Nothing!  In the early morning hours when Doug gets up sometimes he grabs a blanket and sits over the heating vents to warm up before getting ready for the day.  My children love to copy this move all day long in the cold hours of our house and during the winter that pretty much sums up the day.

Alexis and Ben over heater vent.

We got some pretty good snow fall so I let the children loose in it.

Evan in back and Chris in front digging in the snow

Peter and Ben in the snow

Someone was very enterprising and made this snow bear right outside the glass door.

Sitting on Santa

We had our church Christmas party and along with lots of food and a small program, Santa came to visit.

Ben

Chris

Daddy

Evan

Alexis

Peter

Mommy and Peter

Ben wanted to try his hand at taking pictures and this is one he took.  I like it.

Christmas Party

I love having people over.  I love to plan parties.  I do not like last minute, thrust upon me events.  I really am not spontaneous.  Anyway, I digress.  We planned a Christmas party with our friends and had lots of fun.  There was food, laughter and games.  We did a Christmas minute-to-win-it theme and even the children got to play.

We did the nut-stacker.  I love our friend Carol's face in this shot.  She is concentrating so hard to get those nuts to stack up and Lexie's just fell over.

Stacking was a little easier for the men folk.  

Scott Wood and Scott Palmer.

Then there was the get the oreo in your mouth from your forehead with no hands.  That was fun to watch.  You get so caught up in it your whole body twitches with the contestants.  Or at least mine did.

John Oliphant and Karsten Neild.

We also did a wreath throw.  The contestants had to stand back and throw mini-marshmallows into a bucket ringed by a wreath.  Not many made it in the bucket and afterwards we were find marshmallows everywhere.  The children helped clean up by eating them :)  

Ben taking his turn to toss the marshmallows

There was more, but I was having too much fun to take pictures.  I think we should do this again.

Sky High

Have you ever lived in an area practically your whole life and found something new?  I've lived in the area of Spokane, WA most of my life and I am still finding new things.  It's kind of shocking really.  Who knew there could still be surprises for me?  The latest new thing is a place called Sky High.  It is just a building filled with trampolines for people to jump and it was perfect for my kids.  They jumped for an hour or so with daddy while I went to get my back fixed.  They were exhausted and dripping sweat when I returned.  I wished it was closer to home.  I think we would go more often if it was.  Anyway, some pics.  Did you know that it is really hard to take good pictures of people jumping around like maniacs?  These are the best there are.

Evan

All the black area is a trampoline.  You can even jump off the sides.

Lexie got tired near the end

Peter found a less tiring way to spend his time.