State of the Family #47

Whew!  Survived the Holidays.  With our last Christmas just occurring yesterday, we are finally done.  Now, that doesn't mean super-organized, on top of it all me has the Christmas tree and lights down yet, but we'll get there eventually.  I do actually have the tree undecorated it just needs to be lugged down the stairs, which I think I will leave to Daddy.

Christmas was good to us and I was so glad to have all my kids home all the time for almost 2 whole weeks!  Seriously.  I am not even being sarcastic.  I was so not ready to send them back to school.  There were way more things that we wanted to do before it was over.

At any rate, we had a great time.  It was a blast to get some real play time with my Noisy Man again.  We had some great Nerf fights (although quietly), pirate battles, coloring sessions and book reading times while his sisters were sleeping.  Have I ever mentioned that I am still not a big fan of this all-day, every-day kindergarten thing?

All the cousins at the Piper Christmas

We made the rounds to all the Christmases with all the grandparents and cousins.  We opened gifts and crammed them all into the van without ever having to strap a child on top to make it home.  Miss Thumb Sucker and Firecracker got a new Barbie house, Noisy Man got a Lego pirate ship.  They all got new clothes and tons of other fun things.  I have a counter full of advent crafts from a fabulous activity calendar we did this year called The Truth In the Tinsel.  It was a fabulous way to keep Christ at the center of all our activities.  Every night the kids would ask if we got to do another craft.  And we were busy enough that there were a few evenings we didn't get to the activities so we will have new ones to do next year. 

Miss Firecracker with some good buddies watching the afternoon
preschoolers sing at their Christmas party

Our weather has been unseasonably warm (almost concerningly so) so we
have been enjoying it to the fullest.  This is at the new part at our YMCA

We even did our first ever Christmas with just our family.  Usually we are so rushed between this event and that, that we aren't at home enough to do a little celebration of our own.  Thankfully, this year things slowed down a bit and we got to do it.  It was so nice just to have our three munchkins open a few gifts that they knew were just from Mommy and Daddy.  Next year I think I am going to try and have the kids get 'gifts' for each other somehow. 

The reindeer pancakes we had for breakfast Christmas morning!

We also all made a trip to the Omaha Children's Museum to see the dinosaur exhibit there that Noisy Man has been begging to go see for 6 months now.  We had a great time and they had some fun things, but we will probably stick to our favorite one in Lincoln (which we can since a membership there was one of our Christmas gifts this year!).  I would love to show some pictures of the great things they had in Omaha, but I forgot my camera at home that day.  It made me sad, but at the same time it was nice to just enjoy our time together with out having to interrupt things for a picture.

Back to the swing of things now.  Time to clean up and move on.  I am signed up for my 3rd Lincoln Half Marathon and am back in a better/more regular running routine.  Bible Studies, AWANAs, Basketball for Noisy Man, and all the other fun activities will be back in full swing this week as well.  Can't wait!