December Wrap-Up

A great Christmas and a some crazy weather...

The Sunday after Christmas high winds caused this tree to come down in our backyard, taking all the power lines with it. You can't tell from the picture, but if fell at a 45 degree angle sparing our house of any major damage. The power was out for about 7 hours.

We had tons of snow a week before Christmas, but by the time Christmas came, most of it had melted away. It was in the high 50's for a couple days the week of Christmas.

Ry, Ireland, Cale, and Ethan on Christmas Eve. Caleb obviously not happy about having a picture taken.

Below, taken at the Campbells Christmas Eve dinner.

We went to some friends on Christmas Eve, and then had 3 families over on Christmas day.
It was so nice to spend our last Christmas in New York with some great friends.

Gingerbread Houses

A couple days ago, I bought a gingerbread house kit for the kids to make...they had a great time and made a big mess. Today I caught Caleb having a little taste...

He didn't bite the candy off, he just sucked on it for a bit...yum.

Here's another gingerbread house that I whipped up. If any of you believed that one, I have a few more tall tales to tell. My cute friend, Niki Lee, sent me this from Williams Sonoma. It puts ours to shame.

Christmas festivities...

Couldn't resist posting these...

Hmmm...wonder who he picked this up from?? Notice the picture in the magazine.

Yep, you are caught!

Just so dang cute!

Someone woke him up from his 5:00pm snooze on the couch. Love the hair.

Ethan HAD to have these.

Christmas Tree

As per Lorenne's request...here is a picture of our Christmas tree. Caleb has had his way with it, so it's already a little mangled, but oh well. Notice the lack of ornaments on the bottom 3rd? He's also eaten whatever candy canes he could reach--wrapper and all.

Stokoe Farms

Every year that we have lived here, we go to Stokoe Farms the day after Thanksgiving. At Stokoe Farms you can pick and cut down your own Christmas tree, slide down the big slide, peruse the country store, and have free hot chocolate and cookies. But the best thing about going the day after Thanksgiving is Santa, Mrs. Claus, and an elf parachute down out of an airplane over the crowd.

Santa came flying down so fast I was sure he was going to wipe out. I was getting ready to reassure my kids that he'd be ok after they peeled him off the ground.

Ireland and Ryan on the slide. They went down about 50 times.

It was soooo cold! I think the temperature was 20 degrees!

Definite hat and gloves weather. Where's that baby's gloves!?