Christmas Weekend...

Christmas this year....spent with FAMILY!

Our very favorite people to be with.

December Parties...

Cooking Party...

Grandma RaNea started a little tradition to bring all the girls together for a little night of fun and cooking...

Ugly Christmas Sweater Party for the Title Nine Crew...

the snuggie Lex actually traded for in the gift exchange...

Ashley and Cole making crazy faces...

All my T9 girls...
this sweater was handmade with love...
the kids in their Ugly Christmas Sweaters...

More FUN in the Snow...

The snow started to fall again pretty good on Monday night and of course the kids were out rolling snow balls trying to make a fort. The begged me to come out and help when the snowballs got to big to push. I grumbled but headed out. I had a brilliant idea to make a sled ramp instead, because the fort idea has already been done :) So I recruited Dustin off the couch, because my sled ramp engineering skills are not good, and we all went to work. After it was finished, Dustin and I even gave it a try...

O Christmas Tree...

Time got away from us this year and we weren't able to go out searching and chopping our Christmas Tree. (this year's story was a little boring) But, what we did do was see a $20 tree lot on the way back from picking the kids up at Grandpa and Grandmas, stopped there, crawled out of the truck while it was pouring rain, had the nice tree guy pick up the first tree we spotted, he spun it around to see if it was to our likeing, and it was :) so we paid the nice tree guy $20 and he loaded it in the back of the truck, and within 5 minutes of getting out of the truck we were happily on our way home with this year's choosen Christmas tree. It was QUICK and EASY!

So here we are decorating our 5 minute tree...

...ummmm Dustin is SUPER happy to be a part of this big event

...first tree topper

...second tree topper

PERFECT!!!

SNOW DAY, continues...

I guess the FUN never stopped today. As soon as Dustin got home they started working on making this AWESOME snow fort. It took them several hours but the kids where in heaven Lexi even made a little pillow inside and hung out till I finally called her in for dinner 45 minutes later. Dustin says that kind of snow doesn't come around very often, he remembers only one time him and his Dad making a snow fort as a kid :)Perfect Day!!!

Beautiful Clara and the Nutcracker...

We where so excited to get a phone call and a personal invite from some very special friends of ours to the Nutcracker this year. I watched the Zimmerman kids for about 10 years while I was in high school and college, and miss Cristina Zimmerman now age 12 tried out and got the part of Clara in the Nutcracker. Kathryn (the mom) was so sweet to think of us, she tracked me down after several phone calls and offered us tickets and we got to go up to their house for dinner after. Cole couldn't take his eyes off Cristina, and we also got to chat and have dinner with two of the Principal Dancers the Sugar Plum Fairy Heather Hawk and the Snow King Jared Hunt, as well as the Ballet master Alex Ossadnik, and the Artistic Director Peter Anastos. We were in some pretty amazing company so I thought I would drop a few famous names in the ballet world :)The ballet was so good and Cristina did AMAZING. Both the kids loved it so much.