One of those days

After all the hoopla of Marra's birthday and holding two parties on the same day Sunday was a breath of fresh air.

Sunday was as close to a perfect day as I have ever had.

We slept in and were woken up by Marra and Kieran crawling into bed with us. We have Kieran in bed with us a lot, but not too often does Marra cuddle with us any more. Shortly after Aislin woke up and we had the whole family in bed.

When we got up we saw that we had gotten a nice amount of snow over night. After taking our good old time getting ready Scott and Kieran went out and cleaned off the cars and we headed over to Mamma Lou and Pappy Jim's house.

We played out in the snow for a long time coming in to make old fashion cocoa. Scott and Mamma Lou made dinner and then we sat in front of the fire place and watched the Steelers Win!

Like I said as close to perfect as I could want,
Family
Love
Snow
Food made by someone other than me
and the Steelers winning!

It was one of those days I wouldn't mind repeating a few times.

Marra's Birthday

Christmas

We had a great Christmas!

Shortly before Christmas we got to meet new addition Judah



And of course we made cookies with Mama Lou

We went to church on Christmas Eve. Marra was in the early family service as a shepard and had a small talking part. She also sang with the children's choir and sang a solo. Kieran slept through the whole service but both Kieran and Marra stayed awake for the 11 o'clock service.

We had Grandma Margie and Pap pap Dick over Christmas Eve.

Marra got a My Twin Doll and Kiearn got Thomas train stuff

Santa came and Christmas morning was wonderful.

We then spent the rest of the day at Mamma Lou and Pappy Jim's house and got to see all but one of our cousin's for Christmas, (we missed you Alex, Uncle Kevin, and Aunt Erin)

I got the flu a few days after Christmas and we missed out on the Moreau and McCracken family Christmas parties, thank you Aunt Renee for the kids sweat shirts. I did not get out of bed for two days straight.

Luckily we did still get to see the South Carolina branch before they headed back. It was great seeing our favorite little red head Emma, as well as Aunt Smoochie, Marc, and Michelle.

Life after Thanksgiving

Life after Thanksgiving has been busy busy busy.

Like the rest of America we are struggling with money and needed to come up with an inexpensive option for Christmas. We have 8 nephews and nieces plus about 12-15 adults that we like to give gifts to for Christmas. We also like to get our cheerleaders something, and this year we have 37 of those. So as you can see we were in a bit of a pickle trying to figure out what to do to make it a great Christmas.

One of my friends suggested painting dishes. So off to Ikea I went. I ended up painting 12 4 piece sets for nieces, nephews, my three kids, and a family friend. I also painted 7 glass plates for the important women in our lives and both sets of parents. To add to that I painted 2 beer mugs and a wine glass. To top it off I painted 37 hot chocolate mugs for my cheerleaders plus 8 additional ones for the level 7,8, and 9 gymnasts at the gym.
Here is a slide show of some of the stuff I painted.