Christmas Lights

As we were driving around this Christmas season Abagayle was noticing all of the decorated houses for the season. Pretty much everytime she saw a house lit up she was say "we need to put lights on our house like that" Her brother promptly informed her that "we can't put lights on house because our houses are all squished together!"
Then our neighbors across the way put some outside lights up. Abagayle was sure to tell him "Look they have their lights up, so we can put them on our house."

I love their logic!

New Years Eve Fun!

How do we spend our New Years Eve?

Well Brandon crawled under our house to try and clean out the dryer pipe because it takes 2 plus hours to dry a load of laundry. Not much was there, so time to call the mgrs :)

Can you say gross!!

We had a nice round of Mickey bowling. Good times for everyone!

We are also carpet cleaning tonight, I didn't think anyone wanted to see pictures of that.

14 weeks old

She was in her seat this week. She LOVES to chew on her fists!!

Christmas morning

We had a great Christmas morning. Here is what the tree looked like before the opening began. We had a couple extra stockings under the tree this year for the missionaries and a couple of presents for them from Santa. Fun times. They kids came down to find the Santa gift under the tree, here is the video. Thanks grandma banana.

Sorry it is so dark, we opened presents for a bit with just the tree lights on. Jackson is saying a "venture suitcase", an adventure suitcase. It is a kid sized suit cased that has camo fabric and a water bottle on it. He really wanted this for Christmas, it is what he asked Santa for.

Lorelei really liked to chew on the wrapping, this was one of Brandon's tshirts wrapped up.
This was the kids at the end, with a pile of loot in the back. They loved everything.
After the presents were opened Lorelei took a nap, she had a long morning we woke her up early at 800am.
The kids spent the next hour or so watching their new movie, Mickeys Twice Upon a Christmas. They loved it. I don't think they moved from this position till it was over.
We had a great dinner with Rileys and the missionaries. It was our first Christmas in our own home. We loved it, it may become a tradition :)

More snow fun :)

Brandon built the kids a snow hill to slide down, they loved it! This was on Christmas eve and Christmas Day.

At the end I was repeating what Brandon said in the background. I think that he does a lot of the work.
Jackson tried to swing when the snow was practically covering the swing. He immediately fell off :)

Here you go mom, Lorelei laughing :)

Here is a quick video of her laughing, sorry it too so long mom. She really gets going right as the time is up. Enjoy grandma.

13 Weeks, and growin strong!

I cannot believe how quickly this is going by. She is almost has rolling over from back to the front down. She is about 90% there, just that pesky shoulder to get over :) She is talking more and more, letting you kow if she is happy or not.

I love her chubbiness!! The diaper even hides a couple extra rolls :)

Brandon's Car, lovin the snow

So Brandon spent over an hour trying to dig his car out yesterday to go to work, only to have it get stuck in front of the mailboxes. The snow was soooo deep! Then he and few other guys spent 3 hours digging out a roadway in the front of the complex so that people could come and go. He was trying to clear it so he could go to work today. We did manage (after digging it out) to get the van out to go to the store today, but had some trouble getting it out and back in the spot. This is crazy! Our neighbors took some pictures of Brandon's car. This is his car next to the van, and covered completely! Today thankfully the Rileys offered to drive Brandon to work and pick him up since they have chains on their car.

I know Brandon misses the Bronco in times like these, but now two months ago when gas was 4 bucks a gallon. You win some, you lose some.

Where did our swing go?????They have gone outside everyday and loved! They cannot believe the how much snow there is. Tommorow Brandon said he is going to make a snow hill in the yard to slide down. Should be fun. I think this will be my second white Christmas ever.

Fort Awesome!

Jackson had been asking Brandon to build him a fort all day today. Once we got home from Costco the kids and Brandon went upstairs and an hour later here is what it looked like....

I couldn't fit it in one shot so her it is in two :)

We have our kids in the master bedroom, just because they need more space for toys and such then we do, this fort is almost the entire master bedroom, from floor to ceiling!

The kids are so excited to sleep in their sleeping bags under their fort tonight. What an awesome dad they have!

A sledding we will go!!

On Tues I went to four different stores to find a sled for the kids. We finally found one, the last one, at GI Joes. So on Thurs we went sledding. First around the complex with dad as the snow dog pulling them.

Jackson even took a turn pulling Abagayle around

Then we went to the golf course down the road to try the sled out. My camera died there so I didn't get a lot of pics. We brought Jackson and Abagayle's friend Gracie with us to play in the snow. She and Abagayle had a great time just rolling around in it. :)

We love the snow!!!

Care Bear

Every time I put this suit on Lorelei Brandon calls her a care bear. He thought she was so cute sitting in her swing sleeping away in her suit.

I am not sure if you can tell from the pic but the suit has paw prints on the feet and little ears on the hood, it is so cute! Costco had them marked down this week so I bought her the 12m in light pink for when she grows :)

12 weeks old now!

She is huge! I swear she has gained more weight. She is so ticklish now, for daddy!

Abagayle came down out of bed about 1230am when we had just got Lorelei to sleep, dad cuddled his two girls for bit. I told him to keep his eyes open, since the two pics before they were closed.

Snowball Fight!

This one ended as most things snowball fights end....

The sound would not come on for me, Jackosn hit her in the head with a reused snowball dad had thrown at him, so it was hard. She came crying to me, Jackson still didn't understand why she was upset.

Snow Day and Baking!

Yesterday we woke up to some snow or should I say the kids woke us up screaming that there was snow!! We had a fun morning taking it easy, since we got a call that church was canceled. we went out to play in the snow for a bit. It was so windy, which made it so cold, but the kids loved it. Prepare for pic overload :)

He was a dancing fool

My two sweet angels

This is our "sledding" nice huh.

Dad bit hard one time when he was pushing Jackson

The kids took turns pushing each other, then they tried to push dad.

Then they decided to push dad over, they were unsuccessful :(

When we came inside I deceided I was going to bake our Christmas treats for the neighborhood, some fudge and cranberry bread. Jackson needed to nap after his snow time, for all of our sanity :) Abagayle was down here helping. I had just loaded a pan with fudge and turned to put it in the fridge when I turned back around this is what I saw...

She had grabbed the spacula out and started to taste it, so it was funny, i let her finish. Only to find her trying to redip in the little bit left in the pan. That girl loves chocolate!!

We will miss you!

I hoped and hoped that the snow would stay away until Sunday, so we could have our party. Thank goodness it did. We had such a great time. There are four families leaving us over the next couple of weeks. The party was a great time to say goodbye and have some laughs and of course some cake :)

We had a lot of people show up, which was really great. I didn't get to my camera during the party, so if anyone has some email them to me, thanks. I did get these kinda cool boards for everyone to sign on the border.

We will miss you Beitlers, Goodmans, McFarlanes and Rileys!!