December celebrations...

During the second week of December we celebrated Great Grandpa Fox's birthday with him.  Cousin Andrew shares the same birthday making it all the more fun...

 Charlie LOVES playing with Great Grandma Toddy and all her silly games...

 Jack was feeling extra cuddly and spent most of the time with Great Grandpa...

 All the kids except Charlie...

That weekend we attended the Hill's annual Christmas Party.  Jevin, their son, is in Emily's class this year and they have become close buddies this year.  Emily found a book as soon as we arrived and literally read the book cover to cover for over an hour.  When she finished she looked up at me, sighed and said, "That was wonderful."  Love this precious girl and all her tender moments...

 Jack pretended that he was a big and kept himself entertained playing board games...

 We decorated and ate sugar cookies...

 ...and built an enormous track with some other kiddoes...

Then all of the kids were summoned to the living room for the traditional reading of The Night Before Christmas...

Jevin and Emily got front row seats...

All of a sudden the sound of jingle bells echoed throughout the house and in walked none other than Santa Claus himself...

 

He even had a little present for each child...

 

Santa had a present for Charlie as well but Charlie's response was, "NO WAY!" as he ran out of the room and far away from Santa Claus.  We managed to get one family photo with Santa and then headed on home...

 

Emily's Christmas Program...

 

Emily's Christmas program was early in Decemeber.  The lucky girl had lots of family there eager to listen to her perform...

Heading up to the stage...

Eventually she spotted her peeps in the audience...

...and gave them a shout-out!

DECEMBER...

During the first weekend of December Olivia and Auntie Jenny finally came to visit.  We had been missing them bunches since we had to cancel our Thanksgiving plans.  These two MISSED eachother so much and literally stayed side by side the entire weekend...

 

We attempted some cousin jammie pictures...

Then these two were back at it...

Just before they had to head back home we set up the Snoopie house...

Love that Charlie and Olivia have such a special relationship. On the days when they are apart Charlie carries around three baby dolls, all named baby "Wivia," kissing them and hugging them just like his cousin. 

Thanksgiving Non-Break...

 

After a fun weekend with family we were gearing up for our BIG trip to Cannon Beach for Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately a huge storm blew through the coast, damaging the camp ground we were supposed to stay at so we quickly had to change our plans.  Uncle Zach came up with some incredible plans for us to stay down at their house and researched daily activities for the kids.  Unfortunately again the kids came down with hand-foot-and-mouth (an new one for us! YUCK!) one after another.  TWO full week of sick kids during one of our busiest work periods of the year was no fun.  All of the kids were much better by Thanksgiving but we were not about to take any chances of spreading it to anyone else so we opted for a quite night at home, carved pizza instead of turkey and stayed in our jammies all day!

The next morning the Christmas decorations came out from storage and the kids were welcomed back but their buddy, Elfie the Elf...

This was just the pick-me-up the kids needed and by evening they were back to their normal selves...

Bryan brought home the projector and the kids watched movies in the "movie theater" while playing on the i Pads at the same time...

It wasn't exactly how we had planned on spending Thanksgiving and the work "break" was definitely excluded with extensive sanitizing I had to do but there is always next year.  At least my house is/was really clean for a day or two and the kids had lots of time to rest up and get back to school after missing several weeks.