A Little Before, a Little After, a New Year

Here's our photo "montage" of the last couple months, starting with Christmas since I never got around to posting any of our Christmas pictures this year.

On Christmas eve my sister and her husband came up to have Christmas dinner and exchange presents. We had a lovely time together!!

We went to bed nice and early (or at least the kids did) to wake up at the crack of dawn and make a disaster of the living room! ;)

No sooner did we clean up that mess, then we celebrated Elizabeth's birthday!!

Oh but the excitement doesnt end there! Shortly after that we invited a new member into the family (no, I didnt have another baby). My sister had her sweet baby boy and we got to go down to meet him and visit a little with Nana and PopPop as well!

We've had quite a busy January with all the snow and ice!!

But the kids found ways to stay warm and busy....

The final news to get you all caught up to date, Abby celebrated her 2nd birthday! Since she loves Sesame Street and is our little "cookie monster" we made it a Cookie Monster theme.

Oh! I cant end this without bragging on little Elizabeth. She has started to learn to read. We are so proud of her!!

Holiday Season

We are wrapping up school this week before we take our Christmas break.

These past few months have been nothing short of BUSY!

In November, we got all dressed up for a special night out at the Marine Corps Ball. It's always a special night. They had rooms set up for the kids, playing games, eating snacks. Elizabeth and Abigail even had a bounce house in their room!!

We also got some much needed family portraits done!

This month is only half started and we have been running non-stop! We took a trip to "Bethlehem" with some old friends.

Had our first snow!!!

Christmas festivities galore!!!

And most recently, celebrated Ryan's 11th birthday with lots of fun and excitement!!

This may be how I feel most of the time.......

....but I wouldnt change a thing! Merry Christmas everyone!

Our First 9 Weeks of School

Our first 9 weeks of school this year have FLOWN by! What a busy couple of months it has been.

We started a new curriculum this year: Tapestry of Grace Year 1. The jury is still out on whether it works for us or not. Personally, I like it. I'm just not too sure how much the boys are retaining from it, maybe I need to simplify it a bit. Or maybe we're just all a little burnt out and ready to take our fall break next week. :)

For history, we have studied the Ancient Egyptians and the Exodus, including the Tabernacle and the High Holy Days.  We had a big project, where we made a model tabernacle. This was a great *free* hands-on project I found online.

Last month was Sean's birthday, so we went out to the Renaissance Festival to celebrate. It was perfect fall weather for it!!

Elizabeth got her first pony ride!! She loved it!! A real cowgirl!

 Then we came home and had a triple chocolate cake that that girls and I made for Sean.

Oh yes, and Elizabeth started school this year too! She loves school!! She is working on learning her letter sounds, writing and cutting.  We do her school up in her room, which keeps Abby happy playing with all the toys. Sometimes Abby will stop playing for a moment to come over and sing songs with us.

 

 As I mentioned above, we are taking our fall break soon. All of us are looking forward to some down-time. We were supposed to spend our fall break taking a few days going to a few local National parks including Washington DC. Unfortunately for us the government has decided to shut down all of that so, unless things change, our plans are still up in the air. I'm sure we'll find something to do. :)