02/52

This year we celebrated Madison's birthday with a trip to Great Wolf Lodge.  We got to go last year with Christmas money and it was such a fun family time, we went again!  Madison brought her sweet friend, Bailey, so we had an extra daughter for the weekend!

* we love to eat at Fudrucker's during our Great Wolf stays...yum!

* during the indoor snowfall

* getting our next assignment for MagiQuest

* in the "hidden stairwell" that has a clearly marked sign! HA!

01/52...

Here we go again!  Another year to begin!  Praying that it is a year we follow God with fully obedient hearts!!

We celebrated birthdays for Madison and I at Trail Dust Steak House.  I hadn't been there in years!!  LOTS of fun!!

* the two brightest sparks in our family jumped out on the dance floor together...imagine that! :)

* and the two most gentle members of the family discussing the "cute panda bears" :)

* LOVE this!!

* Absolutely in awe of the amazing family God has blessed my life with!!!

And, of course, the yearly birthday questionnaire...

52/52

The final week (well actually 11 days of 2013) was busy and full of fun and family!


* We enjoyed Madison's choir concert. High school choir is amazing!! Awesome performance right up until the last note of the evening when a young man passed out and we listened to an agonizingly long note before the choir directed noticed. He passed out onto Madison's leg and she carefully held her leg still so his head didn't fall back and hit the bleacher. Bless her heart...bless his heart! What a night!

* We usually find a home made project for the kids to give relatives. This year we saw these cute Christmas tree ornaments on Pinterest. So we bought some Christmas ribbons and pulled some twigs off of a bush in our back yard and tied away. It's not as easy as it looks. :)

* And, of course, we had our annual Christmas party at PawPaw and Mamaw's house. Santa always comes and tells the kids things he's observed about them over the last year. Very fun! It's fun watching the little kids different reactions to Santa. Sam was elated to see him and could hardly contain himself!

* warming himself by the fire???

* We had oh so much fun at our church's family friendly Christmas Eve service this year. Max and Abby sang in the choir and Sam got to be Joseph in the nativity play! It was HILARIOUS!!!

* who knew Joseph was so much shorter than Mary!

* cutest little Joseph, EVER!!!

* Gotta wave to Daddy. I mean, come on!

* Anyone notice that when the wise men arrive, Joseph goes missing. Yeah, he's on the floor with the sheep at the back of the stable checking out the cool blue lights. :) Christmas Morning. This is what the tree looks like when there are 17 people at house for Christmas Morning. (and, yes, the light strands are still out. I told you "ain't nobody got time for that")

* Early Christmas morning we did a special time of opening presents one at a time, reading the Christmas story and enjoying yummy homemade cinnamon rolls just for our six.

* Then everyone came over and we had the Christmas explosion where everyone opens presents at the same time, paper is flying everywhere and everyone is talking at the same time. Just wouldn't be Christmas without both ends of the spectrum for me! :)

* and finally to enjoy our traditional breakfast burritos for brunch and then the Christmas crash (I didn't get pictures of the Christmas crash...aka nap time...because I was the first to crash)

* well, except for sweet Harleigh. She beat us all at the Christmas crash * My yearly unwind from busy season and Christmas season is to do puzzles between Christmas and New Years. This was puzzle number 1.

* The next day we headed to Granbury to do Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa. These pictures are just a few hours before the Tummy Bug fiasco of 2013 attacked our family. Let's just say there was carpet extraction...it wasn't pretty!

* can you guess how these two feel about getting legos for Christmas?