Oh Me Oh My...

It was a very crazy Christmas in going through the sudden unexpected death of a very very close family friend who was like a 3rd grandparent to my boys, like an aunt to me, a very close friend to my mom and her daughter is one of my best friends in the world. I am so glad we got to go to Chicago with Miller and Eboo (Mrs. Greathouse) this past August...please continue to pray for the Greathouse family and especially for Miller who is 20 weeks pregnant, expecting her first baby in May. The Lord is good and will provide strength, love and endurance for their family, but we are all just so stunned and saddened from losing such a fun, wonderful lady and I know Miller, her dad and brothers and family have a long road of grieving ahead of them.

BUT I am going to try and quickly throw just a few pictures out there to sum up our December very quickly (really more for me to document a little of Christmas this year). For the boys it was wonderful, Hunter and Drake both knew it was Baby Jesus' birthday (and reminded me a lot) the church service on Christmas Eve was a bit of a disaster because we decided to take the boys to the candlelight service (the children's service is at 3pm and Drake is asleep at that time) and so we went to the 5pm candlelight service where we made it about 5 minutes before they both wanted to go to the potty, then Hunter (in a very loud whisper) kept telling Kyle that he could hear Ms. Polly (the organist) and so on which led up to not be able to stay in the Sanctuary for most of it.
But anyways here are a few pics from December...
Getting our tree:


Looking for Huracle (our elf) each morning:


Hunter had a Christmas program at pre-school this year (the 3's have them in their classrooms...but next year starting in the 4's they have them in Fellowship Hall...the real deal...I am going to be a MESS!):
In Hunty's classroom at the beginning of the program

The kiddos in their places to tell the story of Baby Jesus

And Hunty had the roll of putting up Baby Jesus!!!!

They sang "Big Bright Star...Shining Down on Baby Jesus"

And singing G"o Tell It On The Mountain" and "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" at the end.

Giving Hunty a big kiss afterwards he did such a good job!

Da came to the program too!

Hunty taking a picture with his 2 buddies Kyle and Yates



Feeding Da a brownie at the party

With Mrs. Appelt (one of his teachers, the other one, Mrs. Thym is behind him in the white shirt...I accidentally deleted the picture with both of them)

Drakey and Hunty played with the Nativity Set a lot in December. This was a quick picture I snuck of Drakey playing


Meanwhile Hunty dressing up in my and Kyle's closet

And then Drakey brought all 30 trucks out of their room and lined them up in the den...which I thought there was a picture of that but I cannot find it.

Christmas Eve...after church and a wonderful dinner at Uncle Chick and Aunt Leslie's we headed home to go to bed so Santa could come...
The annual picture in their new jammies in front of their stockings before bedtime!

Reding the Christmas story and a few other Christmas favorite books before bedtime

And then for the tricky part...growing up Santa always set his presents out for us, but Kyle's Santa presents were always wrapped. So the past few years we always have the debate as to what to do. Obviously we each like our own way better. I think it is much more exciting to go out and get to see what Santa brought already set up so you can play with it and it has a MUCH better "WOW" factor. Kyle wants to spend the day putting together presents that they have unwrapped. Sooo, we decided to compromise set out stuff unwrapped but he didn't want to put together big stuff (like the tool bench Hunter got) Which for Hunter, they only thing he has wanted for Christmas anyways was Scooby-Doo crocs. He really made Christmas easy for us this year!:) The rest was just fluff for him.
So this was what it looked like
(don't worry...Hunty got his Scooby-Doo crocs!)

Santa even added a few pieces to their train table...

The tool table after it was set up on Christmas day...

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care

Drakey excited about the Backhoe Loader he was asking for

And Hunty's Scooby-Doo Crocs

And it was a Book, puzzle, Scooby Doo Croc, power tool Christmas!





D and Bella even had quite a few treats in their stocking




Drakey on his new grill

And Santa brought an electric train too!


And last but not least, playing their guitars...



Thank you...GOOD NIGHT!!!