Christmas Recap

I'm finally getting all these pictures uploaded from Christmas! We had a wonderful time, and it was so good to see all of our family that we had not seen for quite a while. We started off in Des Moines and stayed a bit there and opened presents with Craig's mom and sisters, Jill, Michelle, and Michelle's girls.

Then we headed down to Kansas City on Christmas Eve.

I always love the chaos that comes with the whole family being together, which includes some roudy little kids! They have a blast playing together and it's such a special time for my girls to be with their cousins. I'll share some of the pictures here, but the rest can be seen on the slideshow on the top, left side of this page. (Click on the slideshow if you'd like to see larger pictures.)

Here we are all at the dinner table and then enjoying the Christmas story that my mom always prepares for the grandkids.


Of course, the kids had a blast opening presents and one of the funniest gifts (given to one of our roudy boy-cousins) was a pair of Incredible Hulk boxing gloves. They made punching noises as they came in contact with something, so all the kids (and many of the adults!) got a kick out of playing with them.

And, this was the year of the scooter. My mom bought scooters for all the kids that didn't already have them, so they all had a blast riding together. Another fun thing we did was to go to a gymnastics place to let the kids run around. This one was really fun 'cause it had an upstairs climbing structure that the kids could play in along with a bounce house, swinging rope and a zip line. Of course, my girls had a blast jumping on the trampoline, and one of Ashlyn's favorite things is jumping into the foam pit. She was waiting her turn when an older girl before her did a flip into the pit. I was completely taken by surprise when the next thing I know, Ashlyn is doing a flip into the pit! I never expected my 2 1/2 year old to be doing flips, but she did it over and over again. (We even caught her trying to do one into the pillows on the floor last night...that didn't go over so well.) Pretty soon Jaclyn and Katelyn came over and started doing flips too, so they all learned a new trick and loved it.

Here's a cool picture of Ashlyn running down the trampoline (they had a long, narrow one.)
All the cousins, worn out after playing hard at the gym.
We also made it to T-Rex, the restaurant with replicas of dinosaurs and really cool exhibits.

We had an awesome time on our trip! It was so good to spend time with my family. We got home on Dec. 30th, so we have had a couple days to get resettled at home before all the busyness of life starts up again.

On New Year's Eve we had some friends over and had a blast hanging out and letting the kids play. I didn't really get any pictures, but I did get this one. Some of the girls were down stairs and had made a hideout in our closet where they were having a sleepover. I thought it was pretty cute. Happy New Year to all of you! May the Lord bless you and your families in 2009 and may you be comforted by the fact that no matter what happens, we serve a sovereign Lord.