Golden Anniversary

Seth's parents celebrated FIFTY years of marriage on December 15th. How wonderful!

 Back in October, we did family pictures. This is Bobby's '57 Chevelle, just like the one that they had when they first married

 James's devious grin cracks me up

 Adelyn and Brenda

 Melissa, Bobby, Brenda, and Seth

 This is my favorite picture!

Bryan White at Whitelake Studios took these pictures. He's amazing! He actually did Melissa's wedding picture and all of our kids' newborn and child photography. 

 On December 15th, which was a Friday night, we threw them a dinner party at Brenda's dad's house. This is where they got married, so it was quite appropriate. We set up tables in the front room and Chef Kern prepared the best salad I've ever had, beef tenderloin, vegetables, and of course his bread pudding and other delicious desserts. 

 Emily made them a cake

 Melissa made them an amazing book that recaps the last 50 years of their lives. It's filled with pictures and is really cool to look back on the memories. During the party, a slideshow was shown on 3 television screens that showed the pictures. The guests were siblings plus a few close friends they've made over the years. 

Seth did a sweet toast and they cut their cake

 Adelyn and James dressed up for the occasion 

 

 Seth and I (at the end of the night.... at this point I'm in slippers and Seth's shirt is untucked)

 James zonked out on the couch 

Happy anniversary, Bobby and Brenda! 

Christmas is in the air

Christmas was off to a great start! Below are activities leading up until when school let out.

Melissa hosted her office staff's kids at her house to decorate cookies and see Santa. She included my kids

 This is the SWEETEST Santa!

 He showed the kids magic tricks

We always love decorating the tree. We laid out ALL the ornaments. 

It was Adelyn's year to put the angel on top. I couldn't quite get her up there, so Seth had to help her. 

Sweet boy hanging ornaments

They always want to sleep under the tree. I made them a thick palate, but it's still on hardwoods!

 Roseanne, our elf, lit up the kitchen with lights

 She turned the kids into elves and shot at them with nerf bullets. One night she put underwear on the Christmas tree. Of course, that was the day that James's teacher had them write about what their elf did. James said it would be inappropriate to write about underwear at school so he wrote about something else. Shew!

 We baked sugar cookies and decorated them

Feeding the kids raw dough. Shame, shame. 

 The rolling pin is a gun and James is shooting them

 Yum- whipped cream!

 

 We hosted our life group Christmas party. Everyone wore their ugly sweaters

 Jessica brought photo booth props

 Jean and I matched!

 Cute kids! I don't have any pictures, but we played some fun games afterwards that had us all cracking up!

 Seth pulled the kids out of school a little early to go see two Star Wars movies. They saw The Force Awakens followed by The Last Jedi (the new one). This picture is before school started (Seth didn't wear the costume to the movies). He's always the fun dad!

We saw Santa! James asked for Big League Chew (so he'll be better at baseball)

 All of the kindergarteners sang Christmas songs in Santa hats for their performance 

Grandma, Grandpa, and James

Proud of this kindergartner!

 

 They decorated gingerbread houses in the classroom 

 

On the last day of school, they honored the Principal Pals (students selected each quarter by teachers for hard work). Adelyn was pumped to be chosen!

 Y'all, she is such a good girl. Third grade started off a little rough. It's definitely more challenging work, but she has put forth great effort and is bringing home top notch grades. 

Adelyn with Mrs. Fox and Mrs. Davis (AP and Principal)

 Adelyn's party had 4 stations: making ornaments (using tinsel, plastic balls, and markers), making ice cream sundaes, games, and making slime. Can you think of anything messier? But I do believe they had the best party in the whole school! 

 This catches us up to December 21st! The kids got out later this year, and I'm still trying to decide if I liked that or not! They don't go back until January 8th, so that's nice. Whenever/however the break falls, these kids have been SO excited about all the Christmas fun! It truly is the most wonderful time of the year!

BIG Snow!

The forecast was calling for snow on Friday December 8th, but no one expected as much as we got. In fact, the kids went to school that morning and they had to switch to the early release schedule. We had a fun afternoon playing in the beautiful snow!

Of course, Adelyn had to do cartwheels

Cutie pie

I'm not 100% sure we've EVER been able to build a real snowman. We've tried! This was the kind of snow that rolled easily into balls

James is climbing over the fence to collect sticks for snowman arms

Mac looked so pretty!

As did Bentley

Winter Wonderland

Snowman as tall as Adelyn!

Gathering sticks for the arms.... they ended up building 3 snowmen plus a coach and ottoman :) The snow packed so well, they could climb all over their creations and it would stay put

On Saturday morning, the guys had a snowball fight (Bert, Thomas, Seth, and James). 

Cousins in Bert's Polaris

She's ready! Googles (these were from a Home Depot kids workshop) were necesasary!

SO much snow flew up on the kids when they were being pulled behind the Polaris, but they didn't care!

Thomas

James and me

 

We brought the kids in and everyone enjoyed some hot chocolate

 Then we headed over to the Durand's since they have a better hill. It's not pictured, but Thomas had made a great track with a snow-packed ramp. Super fun!

Brenda had originally bought these for the kids for Christmas but gave them to them early. You strap these "sleds" onto your shins 

 And they're off! 

We all tried them out! It's a good ab workout!

We enjoyed the weekend of snow activities. Seth grilled a lot (steaks, bacon, eggs, biscuits.... you name it). We loved our surprise snowpocalypse!