Twas the night before Christmas...

Merry Christmas to this cat!  It was nearly 70 degrees on Christmas Eve so her gift was a long missed open window!

Not quite as fond of this gift...

Christmas dinner at mom-mom's before church

 

More preparations...

Nice that Santa takes the time to circle the neighborhood with the firefighters!

One of our favorite things, cookie time!

A little cookie with that sugar?

It's not often we have such a warm December and can spend an evening grilling and playing outside in just sweatshirts!

The annual "picture".  They're old enough now not to be scared, full respect for the big guy!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

One of our favorite annual traditions, finding the perfect tree!  Loving that we don't have to bundle up to do it this year....

Clearly it had to be this one (the light!)

 They really do a good job, I don't have to do too much rearranging!

We even set our small one up in the basement for daddy!

Baltimore

The other week I glanced at the back of a newspaper and saw an advertisement for "dollar days" in Baltimore where all the attractions are only $1 per person for 2 days.  I had no idea what to expect, but figured it's worth a try considering how expensive the aquarium is.  We got up early and headed down (only telling the kids we were going to a city called Baltimore.)  I hoped out of the car before Nate even parked to wait in line about 8:30am.  I waited just short of an hour and a half (it was sunny, I had a magazine and nice conversation with the lady behind me).  We got tickets to get in almost right away.  Because of the timed entry it wasn't terribly crowded inside either.  The kids really enjoyed it, especially seeing the dolphins at the end (unfortunately we missed the show).  By the time we left the line was wrapped twice around both buildings!  I have no idea if those people got in or not.  Then the kids wanted to go to the Science Center too (which they did recall going to a few years ago for their cousin's birthday).  Nate waited about an hour for those tickets while the kids and I just hung out in the sun, snacking and playing at the Harbor.   We'll worth the $8 we spent (would have been over $200 otherwise!).

 Nice place for a picnic lunch!

Thanksgiving

We were excited to host another Thanksgiving this year.  My mom, Nate's dad and step mother and my Uncle Jim, Aunt Brenda and cousin Brian came. 

Each year we make name tag decorations, we still had pine cones to use so we got to work!

Once again, it was a beautiful Fall day so we worked some of that turkey off playing outside!

And enjoyed game time...

And enjoyed reading time...

The next day we had a special day at home.  Aliyah made an art show, Max made a hotwheels ramp and we took our neighbor and went to the science center for a hike and play time while Nate hung lights out front.  It's not great on allergies but we sure are enjoying this beautiful weather.