So you think you can dance...

Crew has become obsessed with singing and dancing to all of the songs on Delaney's playlist. Every day he will say "I want to dance." He always has to do a solo and waits at the top of the stairs for the music to start before he comes down. (We all love a big entrance.)

Apparently while singing songs in Nursery at church he asked the teacher "Do you know 'Call me Maybe?' "  Here are just a couple clips to give you a taste of what we experience every day.  He makes us laugh so hard.  And please excuse his lack of pants. That's just how he rolls most days.

Delaney's Birthday Party

10 years ago, a beautiful bright-eyed little girl changed my life forever. She made me a mother and taught me how to love and sacrifice. I am so thankful that the Lord blessed us with our sweet Delaney McKale.

We do a party with friends every other year, and this was one to remember. We invited 8 of her school friends to our house for pizza and games. She really wanted to do a chocolate fountain.

 Then we took the girls ice skating. They had a blast!

 After the ice skating, we went back to our house for more pizza and games

 and then the girls decorated their own cupcakes.

It was such a fun day with such fun little girls. 

It's a New Year!

It's a New Year and I'm SO excited! I've got high hopes and big plans for 2013.

New Years Eve was full of fun. We went to the Cato's for dinner and played the Kinect with a couple families.  It was hilarious watching the men dance off. If only I'd had my camera... I've decided to blame the fact the my silhouette on the Kinect looked chubby to the fact that I was standing in front of the other girls and I had on a big hoodie.  :)

Around 9 we left and went to another friend's house to ring in the New Year. Again I didn't have a camera, but lucky for me- some of them did and took pictures:

I had heard of the Ali Edwards "One little Word challenge" and decided to choose a word for 2013. Basically you find a word or in my case, the word finds you. There is no right or wrong answer- It is YOUR word.  Ali says "A single word can be a powerful thing. It can be the ripple in the pond that changes everything. A single word can be a catalyst for enriching your life. What do you do with this one little word? You live with it. You invite it into your life. You let it speak to you. You might even follow where it leads. There are so many possibilities."

The word that I chose to focus on, meditate on, and reflect on as I go about my daily life in 2013 is

I am so excited to see where this one little word takes me in 2013. 

Winter

Thank goodness we got some SNOW this Winter! The kids had a blast sledding and playing on the fort they build at the end of our street:

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 We drank hot chocolate every single day I think... and watched every single Christmas movie known to man while doing it!

The girls made snow cones with the fresh snow then asked me if they could do it again...and again.

 I won big mom points for introducing this idea I found online: cut the end off an old sock and slip on their arm then put on the glove and pull the coat over the top to avoid all the snow getting into their gloves. GENIUS!

 This is the 3rd year running that we've pulled this shoe holder out and filled with scarves, hats, and gloves and hung from our closet door. I still love it. This year we hung wet gloves by clothes pins to help them dry faster.

 We built some pretty awesome forts:

 And perfected the art of wearing our dear old daddy out:

Christmas 2012

 We had such a great Christmas this year! I'm a huge fan of traditions. Every year we do about the same thing but it is something my kids will remember forever. As always, we go the weekend after Thanksgiving to pick out our tree:

Then we put up this bad boy and the Christmas Elf sneaks in at night to put a fun activity in the pocket for our family to do that day. The kids get so excited to wake up and see what we get to do!

I didn't take a picture for all 12 activities but here are the ones I have:

Go visit Santa

Make Reindeer Food

Ready to sprinkle for Christmas Eve

Pajama Dance Party to Christmas Music

This activity is so easy and is always one of our favorites. I took some hilarious videos of us doing our seperate dances for the dance off. Unfortunately I won't be posting those...

Pick out an ornament for the year

Every Christmas we take the kids to the fancy ornament store and let them pick out an ornament for that year. This year was a little crazy. I helped Kai and Delaney while Trent helped Crew. Kai was holding his by the string when it untied, dropped on the floor, and broke a piece off the bottom. We went to tell the lady that worked there at the same time to see Trent telling her that Crew had broken an oranament. Talk about embarrasing. We told her that we wanted to buy the two broken ornaments as Delaney was trying to decide between two that she loved. The lady who worked there told us that she would help Delaney decide by giving her one as a gift. You couldn't tell that Kai's had broken so she wrapped his up and then grabbed a new ornament that matched Crew's broken one and told us that because we had been honest that she wouldn't make us pay for it. She told us that lots of people break ornaments in that store and that most of them just leave the broken ones on the shelf and don't say anything. When we left I looked at the receipt and she had only charged us for one of the 4 ornaments we left with. I returned to the store to tell her of the mistake. She smiled and said "there is no mistake. Merry Christmas!"  She is a saint. It was such a great way to teach our children the blessings you can receive from being honest.

Gingerbread Train?

 By the time we went to the store to pick out our Gingerbread House there were only broken ones left so we came home with a Gingerbread TRAIN.  We proceeded to decorate while singing "gingerbread train, a gingerbread train" over and over to the tune of "Dinosaur Train." (You will only know what I am talking about if you have toddlers who watch PBS Kids.)

Our work of art

 We made Caramel Apples this year to deliver to the neighbors. Don't be offended if you didn't get one.... I bought enough to do several batches (we have lots of great neighbors) then got too exhausted after the first batch to finish the rest. Basically the first 10 people who opened the doors when we knocked got one. Sheesh...December wears me out.

 We decorated homemade sugar cookies for us and Santa.

On Christmas Eve we opened our Christmas jammies and acted out the Nativity Story from the Bible:

 Then sprinkled our reindeer food on the snow-less lawn while wearing Daddy's shoes

And left out cookies and milk with some carrots for the reineer that got eaten up by morning.

Like I said, it was a great Christmas!

Visitors

 Trent's brother Dane came to stay with us for a month while he did an orthopedic residency here in Kansas City. At the end, his family came to join him and stayed for Thanksgiving. We had so much fun having them here!

 Trent and Dane are so much alike. We had a lot of fun playing games and hanging out. Per Dane's request, Jessica and I made a non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner this year. None of us are big turkey fans, so we did steak instead of turkey, baked potatoes instead of mashed, then all the rest of the normal stuff you eat at Thanksgiving: stuffing, sweet potato casserole, green been casserole, pomegranate salad, apple pie, coconut cream pie, and pumpkin pie. It was all delicious and it was so much fun having them here for that!

 Whenever we have visitors, we take them to our favorite place in Kansas City- Union Station and Crown Center. The kids loved the huge train exhibit, going to see Santa, and eating at Fritz's where the train brings you your food:

We also took them to my mom and dad's so they could see Adam-Ondi-Ahman. My dad took us on the tour which is great because he knows a lot of things most people don't about the area. We had a great time being out in the country, eating my mom's delicious cooking, riding on the golf cart, and playing on the rope swing and swing set he made.

 The kids had so much fun with their cousins! We are hoping that Dane gets into the ortho residency program here so we can have 5 more years of this with them:

Delaney & Quinn

Crew, Beck, & Kai