Flipping out for a good cause

I am so behind in posting and need to play catch up, but I had to jot this down before I forgot.

Friday night we had an activity at church and got home kind of late. We let the kids come in and watch part of a movie to wind down. At 10:30 we had kids nodding off and some others who were pretty cranky so we sent them upstairs to brush teeth and get ready for bed. When we got up there, they were all in bed already so we made the rounds to tuck them in...we skipped family prayer (not good but some were already falling asleep.) When we got to McCoy he was crying because we didn't have family prayer. We explained that kids were sleeping and we weren't going to make them get up. He started crying LOUDLY, I'm talking wailing...flat out screaming and crying. We told him we were sorry, it wasn't a good choice not to have family prayer but we couldn't tonight. We walked out of the room and he yelled after us, "Jesus is not happy with us! Jesus doesn't like this!"

Dramatic and heartwarming all at the same time :)

Wecome home Uncle Kaman!!

My brother-in-law Kaman returned tonight from a year long deployment in Afghanistan. We are so excited to have him back with Jen and the kids.

Kaman, we are so proud of you and the sacrifice you (and Jen) made for us. We are so glad to have you safely back with Jen and the kids. We love you!!!

SNOW... finally

We finally got snow the day after Christmas (so not right) but these pics are of our January 2nd snow storm and tubing adventure. We were so excited to finally get to go tubing. We had a blast inspite of the cold winds and relentless snow, even Madden liked it.

Christmas Eve bowling

We were so bummed this year not to have snow for our traditional Christmas Eve morning sledding. After much debate we decided we'd going bowling instead. Even though it wasn't our usual activity it made a great substitute. We all had fun, even the little ones.

I love this pic of Makayla and Coleman...it looks like thy're praying for Coleman's ball to hit the pins.

Coleman rolled his ball so slow that he always would lay on the floor and wait for it to hit the pins. So cute.

I just loved this pic of my red headed cutie :)

Christmas sugar cookies

We always make sugar cookies a few days before Christmas. Another activity the kids love. We always see who can decorate the best cookie. Everyone chooses 2 of their own to "enter" the competition and then everyone votes. This year the winner was a tie between Mariah and Wyatt. We then set aside the best ones for Santa. We were blessed this year by my sister Jenny's family and also the Johnson family giving us some great new cookie cutter and decorating funness (is that even a word?). Thanks you guys for making this tradition even more special.

Gingerbread house

We have a tradition of doing gingerbread houses on the Sunday before Christmas. The kids love it, even though we've started using the boxed store bought versions (so much easier). Each year everyone says it's the best one yet and no ones's going to touch it until after Christmas and yet by night's end, the house starts loosing candy and slowly it is almost "naked" by Christmas. Amazing :)

Smells so good...not

I know this picture is hard to see, but I had to post this. We had our annual Christmas open house on the 16th of December. It was scheduled to begin at 6:00 and right before it began, Tyson thought the fire needed a little boost...he dosed it with lighter fluid. Holy heck did that stink. This pic is of Tyson trying to fan the fumes out the window. Lesson learned...if don't want your house to reak(and boy did it) before 70 of your closest friends come, don't add lighter fluid! It still ended up being a great night full of food and friends.