Christmas 2013

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring...except me.
The middle of the night I woke up with terrible nausea.  I laid in bed for a few hours thinking that maybe I just had eaten too many sweets, or too much rich food and it would pass.  Nope.  The nausea turned into full blown stomach virus.  I was miserable.  about the time the kids started waking up I was in the thick of it and didn't know if I was going to make it for the Christmas morning festivities.
But I got Ben and the girls up (Thank goodness Ben had slept through it all as I needed him the rest of the day to be the parent.)
We walked up and then we single filed into the living room to see what Santa brought and go through our stockings. 
The girls had such a blast.  They were oohing and ahhing at everything they grabbed out of their socks.
After that we went in and ate breakfast before opening gifts.  Rozanne made the traditional Almond roll and I was so bummed that I had no desire to eat any of it.
The girls loved it and their Christmas oranges.
Then off to open gifts!  I did not get too many pictures as I kept having to run to the bathroom but Below are the few photos I got.  I loved watching the girls excitement!

After gifts were opened, I went strait to bed and did not get up the rest of the day.  I had gotten everything out of my system and had put nothing else in so now I was just sick and exhausted.  Ben did awesome with the girls and they had a great day.
That particular strain of virus was a nasty one and hit almost everyone either that day, or the day after.  It was nasty but fast.  It was really only a 24 hour bug.  Emily got it the next night and Ana and Ben miraculously didn't get it.  My sisters family all got it but her and the baby.

Christmas Eve

This was such a fun year for the girls.  They were so excited about the wrapped gifts that we brought out Christmas Eve and put under the tree. We went through the Christmas story and had the production and my nieces and nephews put on a little program with singing and piano pieces.  The girls decided they needed to play a song too, so they went and did their little number on the piano. 
It was pretty funny. 
We then opened one gift (pajamas) for Christmas Eve night.  Then off to bed they went, and Santa came.  Then the adults all ate the chocolate pudding cake that we cooked in the crock pot for supper and forgot to eat!  Then off to bed we went!

Before Christmas Fun

The girls love to play outside and my sister has a huge backyard that always has soccer balls around.  The girls always ask their Da to play "baseball" with them whenever he is around. 
So they went out in the yard and kicked around a soccer ball for a while.  They are doing so well with kicking and throwing! 
They are growing up too fast!

Headed to Christmas in TN

We had planned on going to my sisters house for Christmas since the middle of the year or so.  Ben took the week off work and we were planning to drive out there. 
The few days before we left turned out to be incredibly stressful and there was more than once I almost called and said that we weren't going to be coming.
In the end we made it through those few days and got headed on the road.  Because of the upheaval and turmoil of the past week I was in a very bad mood when we  got on the road.  It was something that I was trying to fix but you know those moods.  Just because you want to change your mood doesn't mean it is easy!
To add to this pleasantness it was raining.  With flash flood warnings.  So it wasn't a nice pleasant relaxing rain, it was torrential waves over waves of hard rain. 
Ben was strained driving because of the horrible driving conditions and I was in a mood and the girls just fed off of that.  Now add 16 hours of this.  It rained the WHOLE ENTIRE DRIVE.  Plus the girls are still not fully potty trained so we are stopping to haul out the portable potty every hour.  In the rain.  And then end up changing wet pants anyway.
Hence no naps were had. 
It was a horrible drive.  I really wanted to turn around and just go home. 
But I had been looking forward to spending time with my sister and her family for so long!
When we finally got to Tennessee it had been after tornadoes had gone through and there were limbs and branches and all sorts of debris  all over the roads it was dark and it was still raining. 
So it was almost midnight after driving all day through that crap and now we had to go through this too! 
By Gods good grace we made it safely.  Rozanne had stayed up and helped us get all our stuff in and set up.  The girls were still sick from this nasty bug that we got while in Idaho so we gave them meds and put them to bed following shortly after.
We woke up the next day to a rain free beautiful day. And we had made it!

Library time

I am so thrilled that the girls still love to go to the library.
We dont make it to story time as often as we used to because of the girls age group.  It has gone from three times to once a week.
Here are a few photos of us at the library!

Ana

Ana and Mom

Kissy face and Emily

The lego table

Building towers

Still building towers

Emily

Sunset

After we worked hard to get the trees done we were blessed with a beautiful sunset.

Ice Storm

While I was in Idaho and Ben was in St. Louis we had a terrible ice storm.  Our roommates let us know that it downed some really large limbs from our trees. 
So when we got home we called the landlord and being the great help that he always is he told us that trees were part of the yard and that we were responsible for the yard.  Lovely man. 
Anyway we called a tree service that was recommend and he came out and told us that it would cost almost 500 dollars to do all the stuff.  So Ben and I decided that we would just take care of the limbs by ourselves and just leave the tree be.
But Ben is still working all day everyday so guess who got to take care of it!
Here are the pictures!
The girls really did help out too.  They hauled the limbs after I cut them and put them into piles.
They loved helping! 
I just left the big stuff for Ben to cut up with his chainsaw.  He finally got that done on New Years Day since he got a day off!

After the funeral

Each of the great grand kids that were at church after Grandmas funeral got a flower from one wreath that was at the funeral. 
Here are Emily and Ana with their flower.  They were so excited.
During the graveside service they also had each of the great Grand kids let a white balloon go up to Grandma to say goodbye.  They were talking about those balloons when they got these flowers.
They were so happy they got a flower because of Grandma and they loved saying goodbye in that way.

SNOW!

When we got to Idaho there was snow and the girls wanted so badly to go out and play in the snow.  So their cousin took them out to enjoy it.  They loved the snow, but they did not love the cold.  They came back in after about 5 minutes!