Our Favorite Santa!

We finally made it up to see Santa. Can I just say I love this Santa. When we walked up Bennett looked right at me and said I have never seen a black Santa. The other kids did not even notice one bit. We have always told our kids that all the Santa's we see are just the Real Santa's helpers. Andy thought it was funny and said, isn't Santa they one time they really go off looks for the job? Old, white, chubby? This guy was thin, our age and not white. He was by far our favorite Santa of all time though. He was so cute and kind. When we walked up he said, "ho ho ho, I am not the Santa you are used to seeing am I?" So cute. He took time with each child and talked with each one of them. I loved it so much. When I look back at all the pics of my kids with Santa, I am pretty sure this will always be my favorite!

Waiting for Santa!

ANd more birthday...

I haven't really blogged about preschool yet. I don't really have any pics of anything and that is probably why. A few months ago around their birthday's I guess, I had been feeling like I needed to do something for the twins. I didn't know what it was. I prayed about it and got no where really. One day Andy said, maybe it is right for the twins to go to preschool. It is not like I am against it by any means, but for our family it was a no go. I do not want to push my kids out of the house any sooner than I had to, so why start earlier than needed? I thought about it, and prayed about it and one morning as we were doing little home preschool I noticed that I was not pushing the twins at all. I was helping Paxton and Maddox, but with the twins, they were kind of stalling on some levels. So I decided to check out the local preschools. It was then that I realized another reason why I had not done it before because it was a small fortune X's TWO! Then I stumbled on this little church preschool just blocks away from our house and fell in love with it. I loved the teachers and the school and the class size and it is just a couple days a week for 3 hours. I loved it. So we started and although I really miss then, it has been one of the best decisions we made last year.

So here they are celebrating their birthdays at school. I left my camera with them to get some extra shots. So adorable. I love these five years olds!

With their teacher and a book of drawings the class made for each birthday child!

Eating their snacks or jello, oreo's and juice!

The whole class!

That night we met Daddy at Monkey Joe's. They had a great time bouncing away!

Then we went to dinner. We should have quit while we were ahead. We were wanting Mexican and we new that they sang happy birthday at this restaurant so we went. The kids were just so tired after Monkey Joe's. You can see how tired Jadeyn is in the bottom picture. Andy was being grumpy for her!

A room full of balloons!

We decided right before Bennett was five that we would fill a dream of mine for our kids. I always pictured a room full of balloons on my birthday. Doesn't that sound fun? So we decided on their 5th, 10th and 15th bday we will do just that. Bennett loved it when he turned five and is really excited about April when he turns 10! So after the went to sleep the night before their birthday Andy and I got started on the balloon journey. We had 75 in each room! That is a lot of balloons. Unfortunately I was not much help blowing them all up!

They were so excited when they woke up!

How beautiful!

A whole lot of birthday going on

(For some reason I cannot move my pics once they are in the blog post!!

So they are out of order! Oops!)

My twins are five. MY TWINS ARE FIVE? How can that be? I know I say it all the time, but really? They are getting so big! We celebrated in true E style. We had three parties and the kids did not complain! We just love celebrating around here. We have more like birthweeks around here!

Best cousins! Jadeyn and Natalie. I am so happy that Jadeyn has girl cousins so close. They really love eachother. When Natalie and Julia are here

it for sure seems like a girl dominant home.

I love Julia's face in this pic!

One of his favorite toys...a dart tag game? Or something like that.

J with Grandma Joy.

Opening up some fun things!

Another cake!

Such a pretty cake!

Wishing it was his party too!

The favorite toy of his birthday. A remote control car!

Her favorite! Hello Kitty Makeup. Two of her faves!

They love money and have no idea you use it to buy something!

With Great Grandma!

Mickey and Minnie Cakes!

Our night away

I look forward to this night every year. It is such a fun tradition now. We get so excited to get dressed up and eat fancy food and stay in a hotel by ourselves! Every year we say we are going to sleep in and neither one of us every can.

We have internal clocks that just wont' let us sleep in.

Getting ready for out night out!

This is at the house where the party is, isn't that tree fabulous?

I love this great room!

This picture I messed up somehow which is sad, because we are by the tree and the back of the house and you can see all the beautiful windows! I love it!

St. Nick

We celebrate St. Nicks day every year just like I did as a kid. It is a very European/Catholic thing to do, we are neither, but we still like doing it. We fill their stockings that were hung on the door with candies and little treats. This year they got a present too that I have been wanting for almost 10 years and finally broke down and got it. I love it! They did too!

Look how tired and and happy they are in this pic. It makes me laugh!

Here it is in all it's glory!

To Branson we will go...

Although Branson may be a little cheesy to some, I get it, it is still such a fun place to go with our family. It really helps we have some family there now too. We had never been during the holidays so we decided in November to head down there. IT was really fun. We saw a live Christmas production that was very good. We saw Dixie, the Christmas show, and ate some good food and enjoyed our hotel. The hotel is the kids favorite part. In fact, every single day, every SINGLE day, multiple times a day they play "hotel". They play hotel all day every day to be exact. They just love the real thing so much, why not bring it home I suppose! A big shout out of thanks to Gloria for hooking us up while in Branson with a great hotel, yummy food and discount tickets! We had a blast!