Wow, Christmas time...etc

Well I thought it was about time to get these up. Above the kids are making Brigs birthday cake. I can't believe he is five. I'll post some more pics, but they won't fit on this post.

One Sunday Mark told the kids he was a vampire or Dracula. Like this pic????

Alex is in basketball. He loves it. I have this hilarious video of him at his first game, he was jumping the whole time, but since we have dialup, it'll have to wait. He constantly is talking about basketball. I asked him if he liked it compared to T-ball. "Basketball is my sport, Mom," was his reply. He does pretty well.

These are the snowman chair coverings we made. Notice Lissie's has a purse. Then Brig wanted a wallet, and Alex decided he did too.

Well Christmas got all out of order, so I'll just start. We stayed at Mark's parent's house, since we went to a wedding in CA. It was really fun. At 7 am Mark and I hear a knock on our door. (We'd finally fell asleep about an hour earlier because Taylor was having a hard night. He'd gotten a cold). Jon and Joseph said, can we wake up the kids? What time is it? 7 am. Okay. So I go upstairs to check on them and the boys didn't notice that Santa put up a block for no peaking. It was really cute, Jon and Joseph are holding the kids hands/the kids are holding onto them, as they tell the kids no peaking, no peaking. The kids have their eyes shut tight. We go get Mark (let Taylor sleep) and then go to Mom and Dad H's bedroom while Mark and Dad H start the fire and music.

The kids have never been this excited for Christmas before. It was fun to watch them.

Christmas Eve Mark's family goes to their Grandpa Goates. He gives all his unmarried grandkids PJs and married a little gift. Mark's parents have carried on the tradition of giving jammies to the kids. Here's Taylor's in his.

Here is Spencer (cousin, Mark's cousin's son) in his. (he was excited to play with the boys). Boys are hard to come by on this side of the family. The boys have fun being the big boys with their younger boy cousins. ITs fun to watch. Unfortunately, none of Wellyn because they weren't here and I didn't have my camera out when they were playing before. It's cute.

All the cousins and 2nd cousins in their jammies. (As you can see it was crowded in that house, which is around 1400sqf) But it is fun and crazy.

The kids were excited after they opened theirs.

I think this is such a darling pic of Lissie (next to Emmie).

waiting to go out and open presents Christmas morning.

Coming out to see the goods so to speak.

Opening the stockings.

Look at all we got :).

Taylor enjoying a box of something. Good thing we didn't get him any clothes.

It was a really nice holiday time. I'm still trying to get the house back in order, but its getting there. Christmas was nice and I love the time to spend with family on both sides. IT was fun in CA because my sister (with the help of my mom) did stockings for everyone). My mom also had fun socks for all of us with fruit, and candy bars and decorated chairs in our suites at the hotel. We had a nice traditional LaPierre meal and even got to see a wedding. We were blessed to at least part of us spend time with both families which doesn't happen much. I guess that's one of the plusses of a Dec wedding:0).