Wedding Day!

Andrea's wedding day was beautiful and perfect. She was a gorgeous bride, and she and Tyler looked so happy all day long!

Sorry  for the total picture overload!

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Open Up Your Heart and Let the Sun Shine In!

My sweet sister got married over Christmas break, so we were able to get out of the snow for a while and head down to California! After a brutal 14 hours of airport/airplane time, we were there just in time to catch "The Storm of the Century!" No matter, it wasn't freezing or snowing. We did get a few days of sun, and on Christmas Eve we decided to head over to the beach for a bit. It was funny to see Claire experience the sand and the playground for the first time.

Decorating the Tree

We decorated the tree last week, and even let Claire help! Aren't we nice? We had a fun evening together and the kids were so awestruck and excited by the whole thing. Holidays with kids are so great.

I'm surprised Claire didn't tumble headfirst into this bin for the amount of time she spent like this...

Without thinking, I crawled under the tree to tie the tree skirt. I then immediately had three little copycats crawling under the tree with me. Sigh. Oh well, at least they're cute.

Of course that night, like every night, deteriorated into this....

And then finally James put the star on top of the tree. And of course, because Daddy was stepping on a stool reaching up to the tree, his little follower had to do the same....

Snow Day!

After Thanksgiving we had another fun day out in the snow. This time Claire really got into it and was actually walking around out in the snow first (although I had to stomp out a path for her since the snow was almost up to her waist). Again, the kids had a great time sledding in the backyard and throwing snowballs!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had an extra-awesome Thanksgiving over here due to getting TWO unexpected snow days that week! Oddly enough, we hardly had any snow, which was kind of the problem - it would rain all day, but due to the old snow it couldn't drain off the streets, so every night it would freeze into ice on the roads. So even though it was not cold and not snowy, we got two extra days off from school that week, which was awesome. So in sharp contrast to every other year we've had, where James would not get ANY days off the week of Thanksgiving, and had to work from open to close on Thanksgiving itself, we had six awesome days just to hang out together as a family.

On Thanksgiving itself, the weather "got better," the roads cleared off, and it started snowing again, making it possible to drive again. We had dinner with the Kenley clan and dessert with the Cartwright clan. It was a really relaxing day, and nice to only have to drive a few minutes home afterwards.

Claire got fussy after dessert but finally settled down with my grandma and stayed snuggled like that for like 45 minutes. Not fair! We can't get her to snuggle for 45 seconds!

Fun with my cousin Kelsey.

The kids outside after their snowball fight with my Uncle Gary.

After being completely clear of snow from our melt-down earlier in the week, it snowed like 10 inches on Thanksgiving Day. Here's a shot the next day of the stack-up on our balcony.