Monopoly

Many of you know the story of why the game Monopoly was banned from our family. It all started many many years ago before any children were conceived...a certain male was caught cheating amongst other family members! Well, we all know who that was... For Christmas we decided to integrate the game back into the family. With the snow keeping it hard to travel, we decided to break it out. As we all know this game can take hours...and it did. Rian is determined to play me again and again until she beats me. Yep you heard me, I'm not playing the softy. Kids can learn to be good losers. It builds character! I love teaching them this game. One of my favorite Rian-isms from the game was when she went to jail again and said "I go for the food!" She's hilarious!

Snow Days

Yes, in Georgia when it snows, it's a shut in! Day before, people are at grocery stores like it was black Friday. News stations report the same stuff about roads over and over...schools panic and close going on 3 days now! Cabin Fever has definitely set in with our family...but it's been fun too! Since Georgia doesn't know how to cope with the snowy weather, because it isn't the norm, we have just learned to enjoy it.

Kids and cat footprints

Although we had gotten about 1 1/2 inches of snow, the snowdrift at out back door was about 4-5 inches high. The kids absolutely loved that!

New Years Day

I had a great opportunity to take pictures for the Plauche wedding on 1/1/11. It was raining all day and had been forcasted to rain all day. But the heavens opened up and allowed for about an hour of good times. I have so many pictures to go through, thought I would just share the first few I had gone through. My good friend Symony accompanied me so I wanted to show off some of her talent. More pics will follow later.

Cousins...

Loved this little girl...

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone. Hope everyone had a great and safe day. For Christmas Eve, we had family over and the Bake family. Plenty of kids to fill the roles for the Christmas Story. The kids loved dressing up and playing with friends...and of course a delicious dinner!

Getting ready for the production...Ammon our little lamb!

Dylan was a little lamb too, walking with the shepherds--and Daddy the donkey--such a tame donkey!

Rian the angel

Ethan and Raegan as Mary and Joseph

All of us singing "Picture a Christmas"

Altogether...except Ammon...he was exhausted (skipped his nap)
Tyler, Jarom, Rian, Haley
Ethan, Raegan, Dylan, and Tarin
...Unto us a child is born...unto us a Son is given...

Before going to bed, the kids were able to open up their new PJ's and new ornaments for the 2010 collection on our tree.

A great day to just hang out and play with the kids. Merry Christmas...we love all of you!

A White Christmas!

I don't think we ever got snow here in Georgia on Christmas Day! So I guess this was my first White Christmas (omitting past visits to Utah for Christmas--obvious white Christmas)! Earlier in the day it did snow, but it didn't last and didn't stick...but tonight it did! So even though the kids had all showered and ready for bed, I let them go out and play for a bit. Didn't last long, they were freezing and came in on their own...they still had a blast!

Yep! That's my son in... SHORTS!

This very moment Raegan had an idea to make snow angels...that idea quickly changed!

A sweet angel taking it all in!

Ahh, gotta taste it! Perfect ending to a great Christmas!

Crazy Or Conservative?

With life a little on edge...not knowing the future can do that...we decided to take a luxury and make the most of it. This 2007 Chevy Silverado LT was a paid off and needed to be more then just a beautiful piece of machinary. I know this was Trent's baby, but I'm proud of him for letting go.

We took this truck and traded it in for something more fuel economic, and less expensive with maintenance. And in turn have enough left over to pay the rest off on our minivan. To have two paid off vehicles is how it should be.

Now, although our thoughts were on a sportier car, this was the best bang for our buck! 25,000 miles for a Malibu '07 and two more years of factory warranty...can't beat that in our price range!!!

Nature's Ice Creations

This morning I heard the garbage man come and go...when I left to take Ammon to his play school, I noticed a lot of white garbage off to the side of the road. Of course, I think of the garbage man being careless. Later in the day I noticed more in the treeline in our backyard. I was curious what could have made such a mess so I go to look at it.

Turns out it wasn't garbage at all! Very peculiar ice had formed at the base of dried out plants. I'm still not sure how this happened, because it is only in a few select areas. So moved by this random creation, I decided to put my extreme coldness aside and photograph these beautiful spectacles of nature. Now if only the sun had come out for a few minutes during these pictures to help contour the details on these ice pieces...

The ice was so light and and broke off so easily, I still wasn't convinced it was ice. It seemed like a very thin styrofoam. Finally, I crumbled it and it could smash into a miniature snowball.

Jingle Bell Run

Yesterday we, Rian, Jarom, Trent and I, all ran in the Peachtree Elementary School Jingle Bell Trail 5K race. It was a lot of fun and helped Rian and Jarom complete one of their goals for the year...to participate in a race. Although we didn't get any kind of an award, it was still rewarding to be apart of an exciting group and strive to teach our kids to be healthy.

Thanks to Stan and Laura for let us drop off our younger kiddos for an hour or so. BTW, my hair really isn't cut that uneven...a tuck behind the ear will do that...

It was really fun to have bells on our shoes for the race.