Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow....

We had a white Christmas! It hasn't snowed here on Christmas in over a hundred years so this is a very big deal.

The snow only made a great Christmas more special.  We had a Christmas Eve brunch so we got to see lots of family.

                                                              Jace and  Ashlee

                                               Gavin gets some Daddy love.

On Christmas the kids opened lots of presents, we had lots of  food and we played, played, played.

                                                      Gifts for six kids is a LOT of gifts!

                                                          Beth almost got lost in presents.

                                                               O.k., where's my gift?

                         Daddy did a lot of this Christmas afternoon. Umm, what's up with the teddybear?

We've spent the last week hanging out, playing with new stuff and having a relaxing time. Hope all of you had a great Christmas!

Snowflakes

  We've had snow flurries for the past few days which is really unusual here, if we have any snow it's not usually until January or February. It seemed like a good time to make some snow of our own. We made coffee filter snowflakes and we made some with regular paper and glitter.

 We also looked up some pictures of real snowflakes and talked about how they are formed.

Mahaley says that snowflakes are proof of God's existence.

 I agree.

                                                                                                                      

The many faces of Beth

Betsy loves, loves, loves to dress up. Christy got her dress up clothes as an early Christmas gift and she is in heaven playing dress up.






Gingerbread Houses!

Today we did our annual gingerbread houses. It's a tradition, pizza, some early Christmas gifts, and decorating. We had 13 cousins all together. Wow!



The five youngest cousins



It is really hard to take a picture of  5 little kids



No, Mama. I'm not eating the candy.

Candy. What candy?



Leah and Ashlee

 

Mahaley's house.



Betsy's house.



Jordan and Emma



Dezere



Tommy's house.



Jordan's house



Leah's house



Emma's house





Gavin







Ashlee's "Candy factory explosion"



Rosie's happy with her work



Jamie

Half of the kids made their houses explode, or on fire, Tommy's tree crushed his gingerbread family and Mahaley's Santa was peeing off of the roof. I worry about these guys a little.









A week at the Smith's

Thursday 12/2
    Mahaley had her endoscopy today. They way overdid the anesthesia so it took a frighteningly long time for her to wake up. They didn't find anything obviously wrong but did rule out some things and took some biopsy samples that will take a while to get back from the lab. We had planned to get a nice lunch on the way home to make up for her 24 hour fasting but she couldn't even walk to the van and slept all the way home. My poor baby:(
   In the afternoon I left Mahaley home recuperating and took the rest of the kids to the Christmas parade where we met up with Adam, Niki, and Syd . Emma and Leah got to be in the parade with their girl scout troop. There was face painting, a bouncy house, candy and (extremely) hot chocolate. Rosie kept saying "ice, Mama, ice." After the parade I took all the kids out for pizza. It was fun and they were incredibly well behaved but I was wiped out, after all I got up at 5 am and I am not a morning person.

Friday 12/3
      This afternoon I sent 4 out of 6 kids away on sleepovers. Any mom with sense would have probably left the baby home with the teenager and went out with some girlfriends or something or at the very least have gone shopping alone. But did I do that? Nooo. I took a bath with the baby and put her to bed early and then ate junk food and watched scary movies with the teenager. Hey, I'm just grateful that she still wants to spend a Friday night with me. Pathetic, isn't it?

Saturday 12/4
       Today I let my kids talk me into having friends over. I also brought baby Jace home with me. Now we have four extra kids over. My condition was no more sleepovers until after January.  One good thing about having a lot of kids is that a couple more over don't really matter. One bad thing about having a lot of kids is that other people assume that having a couple more over don't really matter. We're having fun though.

Sunday 12/5
    Skipped church today because I couldn't fit everyone in the van and because some kids didn't go to sleep until very, very late last night. I made pancakes for breakfast and so far everyone is still mostly well behaved and happy. I'm getting ready to send the extra kids home and make some pot roast for dinner and then we are going to put up our Christmas tree.

Tuesday 12/7
      I had a terrible, terrible, stay in bed, in a dark room, migraine all day yesterday. Wayne had to go pick up some groceries because we were out after the weekend. But Kim came by in the afternoon and brought me some migraine medicine and by dinner time I felt well enough to go to the grocery store and feed the kids. Today I am much better but I still have that floaty feeling that I always have after a migraine. I took the kids to the library this afternoon to make up for missing story time this morning and we got stuff to make some salt dough ornaments tomorrow. I just can't wait;)
 

Thanksgiving times 2

Obviously Thanksgiving exhausted me. Eithier that or I'm just a really lazy blogger. I know people with 7, 8, 9 kids who manage to blog every day but somehow I just can't manage to find the time.
 Anyway, for Thanksgiving day we went to my in laws. We had a nice time. Good food, very relaxing but I got no good pictures because my new camera (which I have returned) did this:

It just would not focus and the flash was all screwed up. So I also got no pictures of our Thanksgiving at home the next day. We ate lots more food and I think everyone had a good time. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I like to cook anyway and you don't have to worry about buying the right gift for anybody. Cooking food that people like I can do!

I also have to mention that Jamie had a birthday! He's 13. I can hardly believe it. He is an awesome kid. I'll have to do a whole post on just him to do it proper justice.

                                                                   Before his gift.

                                                      After he got his DSI, I think he was excited.

stupid camera

Wish Mahaley luck, she has some tests tomorrow, including a sedated endoscopy which she is very nervous about. She can't eat AT ALL today and we have to leave a 5 am tomorrow so overall she is not a happy camper.