Saturday, December 31, 2011

Christmas with Family

Christmas is such a fun holiday. One of my favorites. But what makes it the most fun and meaningful is having family around to share in the season. This year we had family come visit us. We were very excited to have Robb's mom, Caroline, come visit as well as my sister, Marcey, and her husband, Bill. Along with all five of our kids, Robb, and I we had a house full of family. It was awesome and I thought it make the holiday weekend perfect! Here are some pictures...

Our Christmas tree

Christmas morning...all the kids just woke up!

Audrey

Kate and Josh

Jake and Forest

Ready to open presents!

Josh in his new moon chair

Bill and Marcey

For Christmas breakfast, Robb's mom made her traditional Christmas tree biscuits. It was so yummy!

Josh, Audrey, and Jake enjoying their breakfast and a big stretch.

Josh

Audrey making faces for the camera.

Kate eating her breakfast.


Aunt Marcey, Uncle Bill, and all the kids

Marcey and Me

Bill and Marcey

My five FAVORITE kids. How I love them all!

We had a great holiday and hope you enjoyed yours as well! (Not sure how I missed getting pictures of Robb and his mom! I will have to make that up on the next visit!!!)

Celebrating Birthdays and the Lego Kids Fest!

The beginning of December is a busy time for our family. Josh, Jake, and Kate all have their birthdays from December 3rd-December 5th. Well, this year, the Lego Kids Fest came to Hartford over that same weekend! So, we got to go celebrate all three birthdays by going and having all sorts of building fun. It was a great way to spend over 4 hours!

On our way to the Lego Fest we stopped and had lunch. Since it was the boys' birthday they got to pick where we went. They picked Arbys.
Here are Josh and Jake about to get their birthday lunch.

One of the many activities at the Lego Fest was building something to contribute to a map of the United States. Here is a big picture of the map and what some people had already built.
Josh built a house he was very proud of.
Jake built a park that he said was his best thing he's built so far.

Kate was excited to be at the Lego Fest, too. She found a statue of Santa built all out of legos!

And then she got to see Santa! She was so excited!

As you can imagine, there was A LOT of building going on! The kids were in heaven!
Josh and Jake building their race cars.

Kate and Robb showing off Kate's car.

More building

Daddy/daughter building

Kate

Jake

Josh

A display of a lego scene

Who is that?

Another activity was a mural build. Each person was given a small square to build with certain colors. Then the square was put on a wall that built a mural. It was pretty cool. Here is Jake putting together his piece.

Josh with his completed piece.

And the mural...
One of my favorite parts of the Lego Fest was seeing all the AMAZING statues built completely out of legos. It was awesome to see and there were so many! Here are quite a few (not all, believe it or not) of the statues we liked:

Kate with a builder lego man.

A baby dinosaur

Look at how big this one is? I wonder how many pieces of legos they used to make all of these!

Egyptian Kate

Jake the lion

Ninjago

Jack Sparrow

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

Kate seems to like the dinosaurs.

The Toy Story crew

Spongebob

Harry Potter

Lightning McQueen

Some Star Wars friends

The big lego pile. The kids got to play in all these legos. They even made "lego angels!"

Resting after a long day of fun filled play...

Josh

Jake

Kate

After we got home from the Lego Fest, we had "birthday" cake. Every year I ask each of the kids what they want for their birthday dessert. This year, Josh and Jake picked cheesecake. So, here they are with their treat.

Blowing out the candles...

Birthday presents before....

And after...

Kate's birthday was on the Monday after our big weekend celebration. During the day she had a few friends over to play and have cupcakes. Here they...

Eliza, Lizzie, and Kate

Kate and her cupcake
That night we had another family celebration where Kate got her Buzz Light year cake and presents. As you can see from the look on her face, she was VERY excited!

Opening her presents...

Eating cake and ice cream...

Everyone had a great birthday weekend. It was fun doing something new that everyone enjoyed.