Katie's Piano Recital

Katie did such a great job at her piano recital on Sunday. She loves to play the piano and practiced her Christmas songs for weeks. We were so proud of her and she was so excited to play in her recital. Here's a short clip of her performance.

Christmas Activities

This year I decided that I wanted to do something fun with the kids every day for the month of December. I haven't done as much as I wanted to, but definitely more that I ever have before. Here is a quick sampling of what we've been up to. We started with Christmas trees made out of popsicle sticks and sequins. It definitely turned into a project that took more than 1 day and we're still finishing up, but we got a few done. The one below was done by Sydney.

We strung popcorn and cranberries (actually little wooden beads). The kids only did it for about 5 minutes and I had to finish.

The finished project!

This morning we made and decorated sugar cookies. Audrey preferred licking the frosting and at one point I caught her painted frosting on her legs and feet!

Charlie displaying his cookie that he titled "Audrey."

Here are the finished cookies. It was a huge mess but they turned out pretty cute!

Random Christmas Season Updates

After 3 hours of bathing, primping, curling hair and talking Charlie into getting dressed, here are a couple of examples of our sad attempt at trying to get a Christmas card picture.

They are going to make Audrey look at the camera rather she likes it or not!

Audrey is crying in about 90% of the pictures.

We kept trying to get Sydney to smile a little less intensely, and Charlie to look a little more involved. Ah, the joys of four children!

I had book club at my house last night and I made lemon water to drink with our dessert. Since Sydney discovered lemon water that's all she want to drink. Here's our sophisticated 3 year old enjoying her lemon water this morning.

I found this picture of the Elder's and our kids from 2003. What a difference a few years makes, it's fun to look back.

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We've been saying that we were going to visit our friend's the Elder's for four years and we finally got to go and spend the weekend with them. They live in the beautiful Gold Beach, Oregon, and had many wonderful sights to show us! It was a ton of fun. This was our family at Otter Point. The view was spectacular, although a little nerve racking with the kids and all the cliffsAnnaka did a gingerbread train with the kids. They loved it! I'm not so good with doing these kinds of things because I'm afraid of the mess, but after watching how much they enjoyed it, I vow to try and let go and do some more fun activities.

Here are six of our eight kids. Charlie, Anya, Katie, Isaac, Sydney, and Ellie.

We're off on our hike. Boy, we are a crowd!

David, enjoying the view with the little kids. Notice how tight he's holding on to Sydney, she was insisting on walking on her own. Sorry, Sydney...not gonna happen!

Here are all eight kids. From left to right. Audrey, Charlie, Anya, Sydney, Tyler, Katie, Ellie and Isaac.

Last we got to go to a farm that does a little petting zoo. This is Audrey petting the rabbit. She LOVED IT!!! This rabbit was 30lbs. and his feet are as big as a dog's paw. It was amazing!

We had a wonderful time... Thanks Annaka and Travis for letting us come and visit and for the wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner!!!