Between Christmas and New Years…

We had a fun, relaxing couple of days between Christmas and New Years playing with our cousins and Julie and Jake.

One evening while the other kids were playing, Vivian decided she wanted me to take her picture so what did she do.  Lay on the floor and grin.  Too funny!

Here’s my handsome man relaxing in the rocking chair.

Christian decided he wanted a picture too…this is Lillian’s doll that Vivian had run off with.  Her eyes look scary here but they were cute at any other angle.

For family night, each family decorated their own gingerbread house.  Here is Julie, Jake and Lily’s house.  I love the chimney of peppermints.

Isn’t their lattice roof cute too?

I also love the star in and North pole on the back (poor roof point).

I was lazy and just slapped some icing on top as snow and Christian and Jared decorated it as they would.

Our House:

I was very proud of my marshmallow roof I must say. :)

One of the days Christian, Lillian and Vivian spent a lot of time coloring pictures.  Vivian was very happy to smile for me but I had a tricky time even getting Lily to look up she was so intent.

I love that Vivian loves to color so much when it really seemed to take a super long time for Christian to even be interested in coloring.  He does love to draw now though….

This is next picture is of Vivian in her panda shirt that she got for her birthday (next post).  She liked it so much she wouldn’t look up until she had her sweat shirt zipped up.

After almost a week of lots of playing, (some fighting on the older kid’s part), coloring, movie watching, crafts, shopping (on Julie and my part) and just good old hanging out, Jake and Julie decided they better get home and back to real life again.  So, on New Years Eve morning we were sad to see our company leave.   Christian got up in the wee hours with me to say goodbye to Lily, Julie, Jake and Kate.

Lily looks wide awake but Christian looks hung over.

This one was a little better  but Christian’s crazy curly hair makes me laugh a bit….it’s a little 1980’s if you know what I mean.

We were glad to hear that they arrived home safe later that night around 9 pm.  Thanks you guys for coming!  We sure had a lot of fun having you!