Sam's Teeth

On the morning of the 26th, as we were getting ready to leave for my parents house, Sam showed me how wiggly one of his bottom teeth were. I asked him if he wanted me to pull it and he said yes. So we did! He was super excited.

The next day, the 27th, we were at lunch at McDonald's (I know...). Sam was trying to open the plastic bag that contained his toy with his teeth and pulled his second tooth out. It was too funny and we all just laughed and laughed.

Christmas Happenings

Sam's teacher gave them a Christmas gift on their last day of school before the holidays and told them they could not open them until Christmas Eve. Sam could hardly wait to open this present and it was the first thing he did when he woke up on Christmas Eve morning.

We decided to go to the Christmas Eve service at noon. It is so hard to get a picture of the kids lately.

After service the kids and I headed to Honey Baked Ham (along with everyone else) while Lance worked the next service at church.

We ran home to put the ham away and then met Lance at the movie theater to watch the new Chipmunk's movie. (How horrible are those chairs??) The movie was so cute and we enjoyed getting to do that for the second year in a row.

When we got home we ate dinner, got ready for bed, put cookies out for Santa, and said good-bye to Thunder Buzz (our elf).

Christmas morning I was surprised to see Reese in our room first. She came in at 6:00 and I knew Sam wouldn't be far behind so I told her to snuggle up and wait. Sam came in later than I thought he would and then they started peeking over the balcony to see their presents.

Finally Hayes was up and it was time to head downstairs.

This year's big gifts were a cheese mat for Reese...

A Wii U for Sam...

And a "green car" for Hayes...

Around 1:00 Lance's family came over. I didn't have my phone around but finally grabbed it to take a picture of Hayes opening his favorite present of the day. He had been asking for this for weeks...Talking Blaze.

Around 4:00, Claire, Bryan and Hadley came over. Lance had been outside throwing the ball with Brody and then Hayes wanted to play too.

After baseball the babies went to jump on the trampoline. While they were jumping it started to sprinkle. We thought for sure they would run in but they just giggled and kept jumping. It started pouring down rain and after a few minutes of that they decided to come in. They were too cute all soaking wet.

Cousins

Lance, Bryan, and Sam playing Mario Kart...

The day after Christmas we headed to my parents house. They could hardly get through the door before asking for their presents. I probably still had my shoes on taking this picture.

Becca and Tommy were not able to be there with us but left some presents behind for the kids.

We had lunch and then played with new toys before heading home with happy hearts after celebrating Christmas with so many people we love!

December Highlights

December was a busy month as usual but here are a few highlights from the month. We got most of our Christmas decorations up in November but we put the finishing touches on in early December. Each of the kids have a tree of their own in their rooms. However, the cats knocked Reese and Sam's over multiple times. Reese ended up taking all the ornaments off of hers and we moved Sam's to the top of his bookshelf. Hayes was in love with his and would leave it glowing all night.

We had a dinner party at Lance's boss's house early in the month so my parents had the kids over for the weekend. Saturday morning Lance and I got up and hiked the mountain alone and then I went to get my hair cut before dinner. We had a great time at dinner and were thankful to not have to worry about getting home to a babysitter.

Meanwhile, the kids were having the time of their lives. They went to a craft day at my mom's school in the morning and then went to ride the Polar Express. They finally got to see Santa too.

 We had a small group Christmas party and we did a pajama/breakfast theme.

Hayes had a Christmas sing-a-long at school.

We had a going away dinner with some friends who moved to Florida.

Lance's company party was at the Ritz Downtown.

We sat in a lot of traffic trying to get there but ended up having a nice time.

Holiday parties at school...

The boys started gymnastics this month. They are both loving it. It took Reese walking Hayes out to his teacher and then promising him a treat to stay out there...she is a good sister.

We went to see the Christmas lights at Life University and then swung by Krispie Kreme on the way home...along with everyone else in town.

Reese and Sam sang on stage at church.

And then we headed to lunch with Claire, Bryan and Hadley. Reese and Hadley just love each other!

Hayes got a hair cut after begging for a while. I think he just wanted to get to go and play with the trains and sit in the airplane seat.

The first weekend of Christmas break we did a double sleep over. Reese and Sam slept over at Joci's house Sunday night (Sam's first sleep over) and then Joci spent the night with us Monday night. We pulled Reese's mattress in to Sam's room and they all slept in there. I took the kids to IHOP for dinner because I had no food in the house!

All three kids had their well checks at the pediatrician. When Reese put this paper gown on it reminded me of her having that on for the first time when she was three. She was still just as unhappy with it five years later.

We celebrated a sweet friends 25th birthday. We hadn't seen them all in about a year so we jumped at the chance to go over. My kids just love these girls so much.

And Hayes loves their dogs!!

November Recap

Here is a quick recap of the rest of November. 

If it wasn't raining, the weather was beautiful for many days! We spent several days doing homework outside.

The football team Reese cheered for kept making it further and further in the playoffs. They eventually made it to the championship where they lost. On the way to one chilly game we stopped by Starbucks and Reese wanted a hot chocolate. She looked so grown next to Lance drinking her Starbucks.

We visited my cousin and his two girls. We couldn't wait to see them because it had been a while. They are too cute and we all had a great time visiting them and making a huge mess in the playroom.

We hiked at Kennesaw Mountain.

We have slowly removed all baby things from our house. We took the gate down from the stairs for the first time in almost 8 years. That was a little sad but a huge relief to move that out of the way.

Lance went to Reese's school to see her do a presentation for her Target class. They spent a while on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They had to write a new chapter with a new character and new candy. At the end they did a presentation for parents. They had to dress as their character (I am so glad she created a character that was easy to dress up as...some of the kids had tricky costumes).

After a couple of nights of sleepovers and playdates, the second day of Thanksgiving break I got the kids all dressed up and headed to have dinner with Lance after work. We knew Santa was there so we wanted to get Santa pictures out of the way. We had dinner at Rosa Mexicana and then headed out to see Santa. Well, it turned out that Santa had the night off and was not there. We had some unhappy kids!

Since we didn't get to see Santa we headed up to Daddy's office to get his stuff and we played around on the IT departments hover boards. Reese picked it up really quickly. They are fun but definitely hard to figure out.

This year was Thanksgiving at my parents house so we got there in time for lunch. We had a fun day visiting and relaxing.

Hayes was so tired he fell asleep right on the floor.

The next night Reese and I had a girls night. One of her friends was performing in the Nutcracker so we went to see the show. But first we had dinner. It is so much fun to me to get to spend one on one time with her. We have such great conversations and it is different than when the boys are around.

That Saturday Lance had tickets to the UGA v GT football game. We had a quick errand at Home Depot and realized they had a kids workshop going on so we checked it out.

And then on Sunday we celebrated Daddy's birthday!

Another thing that happened in November was that Reese ran for Student Council. They start this in third grade and each class has two class representatives (a boy and a girl). The class first narrows it down to three each and then those six have to created a poster and a speech. On the afternoon that Reese came home and said she was one of the top three, she went straight to her room and came up with this idea all on her own. Her slogan was going to be "Vote for Reese and You'll Have Peace" and then she wrote out different words for each of the letters in peace that described her. Their school mascot is a Pioneer and so they are always talking about Pioneer Pride, thus pride as the first word. The only word I helped her change was the A. She originally had athletic which is accurate but we decided that it didn't really help describe her ability to be on student council. On the day they had to give their speech on of the girls got too nervous and decided she didn't want to do it so it was down to Reese and one of her best buddies. In the end, Reese won the election and was super excited.