Christmas Around the World-Germany

We are doing Christmas Around the world this year and we started with Germany. We learned about the traditions of Germany and one of them being Gingerbread Houses. So we made our own rendition. The kids had so much fun. 

The kids hard at work making their houses. Levi ate most of his decorations. Germany makes huge elaborate houses, some take weeks to make. We saw pictures and they were amazing. 

The finished products! The one in the middle is Daniel's. They had so much fun and we had a lot of fun as a family. A great Family Home Evening! We finished off our night by watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "Shrek the Halls." The perfect night.



Thanksgiving 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!

We started our Thanksgiving this year celebrating with some friends the Saturday before. We had an official turkey dinner complete with all the fixings. These are our good friends Garet and Andrea Cooper. They are in Daniel's Unit back in Utah. They are good friends and we enjoyed spending a holiday with them. Garet made an amazing turkey.

We then carried on a family tradition of PIE NIGHT the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We invited neighbors, classmates and church friends. We had a full house and it was so much fun.

This is one of our neighbors across the street. We enjoyed spending the time to get to know all of

them.

These are some great friends from church. We enjoyed some yummy pies and good brownies. It was all so good.

Thanksgiving Day at the Landing Zone here on Post at Fort Rucker. We enjoyed going out and not having to cook or clean up. 

Levi is ready to eat. He was on his best behavior!

Smiling Abby (or Babby as Levi calls her) Ready to dive in.

Happy to be here Luke (or Lukey) as Levi calls him) is ready to eat to.

Tacyi (or Cici as Levi calls her) can't wait. 

Levi was so good and ate all his food. He is saying cheese in this picture.

We are just happy to not have to cook or clean up afterwards. We had some great friends who invited us to their houses but we wanted to keep it low key. It was nice and relaxing.

Digging in to some yummy food. Filled our selves up and someone wait on us. My kind of Thanksgiving!

Creative Kids!

The girls had to dress up as a book character at the elementary school today. This is my sweet little Hermione Granger from Harry Potter.

This is my brave Jedi apprentice Ahsoka Tano from Star Wars the Clone Wars. (tear, tear she makes me so proud!)

This Levi being Levi. He just wanted his picture taken since I was doing all the other kids.

At the Primary school they had to dress up as a Pilgrim or and Indian. Luke chose an Indian as you can see. We used one of Daniel's old shirts and ripped it up and he and his sister Abby decorated it with Indian symbols. We had gone to a friends place to see their horses and other farm animals and they had all these peacock feathers so Luke collected a bunch and he wanted to use them on his headband. I had placed them in a different spot but he informed me that it was wrong. and made put them where they are in the picture. He had to come up with an Indian name so he chose. Chief Peacock! Man that kid kills me. They all had to wear their costumes to school.

TIMBER!!!!!!!!!!

This lovely dead as a doornail tree has been in our backyard here at Fort Rucker. Every time there is a storm it loses branches. Hallelujah the are finally cutting it down!

This tree stood a little taller than a two story house. The trunk was about 3 feet in diameter. One of the branches that came down a few months ago broke the fence which they had to replace. The guy in the photo took a huge wedge out of the trunk and it fell with a HUGE thud. They made it look so simple.

This guy did the cutting of the whole tree, brought it down with a friend, chopped the whole thing up and then made our yard look more lovely than we had it. Amazing!

They had to saw the trunk of the tree into a bunch of sections so that a fork lift could carry them off.



They left us some good fire wood for our fire pit. Nice guys. The last time a branch fell it almost hit our dog but managed to break an Adirondack chair we had by out fire pit. Thank heavens it's gone!

My Little Martha Stewart

This is Tayci's first cake that she made all by herself even down to the frosting. She has become my little Martha Stewart. She loves to bake and is really good at it. She has done pumpkin cookies, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, bread and homemade hot chocolate. She has quite the talent and has even taught her brothers ad sister a few things. we are so proud of her and she has so many talents. This is just one we are sharing with everyone. 



Halloween Fun

My kids had so much fun this year in Halloween!

This is about 600 peices of candy that we passed out. Daniel was on nights so I left it in this bin on the front porch and asked everyone to take 1. All but about 20 peices were gone. Daniel was gone til about 1 in the morning this night and last year he was at SERE course so I was able to take all the kids out by myself. Hence the bin at the door.

These are my superheros! My handsome and brave superman and batman and my beautiful drama queen witch and Rapunzel. Our pumpkins look a little sad but with Daniel on nights we had to carve them on Sunday and they sat and wilted.

Levi was so into trick or treating this year. He caught on well. and learned to say please in his cute little voice and when they would put a candy in his bucket he would automatically respond with a thank you. He ran to each door with his brother and sisters and didn't get in the stroller once. He stopped to enjoy his loot every now and then.

Tayci, Abby and Luke were all to willing to make sure he got to the door and get his candy. His little bucket was so heavy but he wouldn't let anyone carry it but him. He finally allowed Abby or Tayci to put their hand on it to help ease the load.

This was their load. We gave the kids the option of keeping all their candy or keeping just 10 pieces and letting mom and dad buy the rest off of them for 5 bucks. They all gave it up willingly. I was all to happy to get rid of it. We put it back in the bin and Daniel took it to his class mates. I remember the excitement and I know hey enjoyed it. We have had a lot of fun this Halloween and fun to see what the kids chose as their costumes. Granted Levi didn't really choose his but I figured since Luke had chosen batman why not have another superhero.