Gatlinburg, Christmas and New Years

I am long overdue for a post on my blog! We have been really busy lately. Let me first say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my darling Kaylen. She is 5 today. The jump from 4 to 5 has seemed huge to me. She isn't a baby anymore. :( I will have pictures from the events later on. Her party is on Saturday and tonight we are going to Chuckie Cheese - her choice, of course!

So here are my babies at Gatlinburg. We had such a good time there. We stayed in a 3 story cabin with a movie room and a game room. The kids loved it! We saw snow and Kaylen went ice skating for the first time.

Kaylen was so excited when she first put her shoes on. She soon got frustrated when she realized she couldn't skate like the disney princesses on ice could.
We did a lot of skating while holding her up but we did all have a blast.

CHRISTMAS
We had a great time at Christmas this year. We always throw a big birthday party for our Lord and Savior. We always read Luke 2 together, bake cookies for Santa and write him a letter. We also track Santa on the computer. This year was funny because K realized that he was getting close (South America) and so she ran upstairs to go to bed and we always say prayers together. So like every night I asked her if she wanted to go first or last. She said last (like she always does) and then said, "wait! I want to go first because Santa is so close. And, Mom, could you just pray for me in your room? He might miss us if you don't." The next day she told us she had a hard time falling asleep. These are the good years. I love that!

Here is what Santa's gifts looked like before the kids found them.
Here we are about to go to bed at a reasonable time this year! I beg Allen to wear Christmas PJ's with me every year on Christmas Eve so that we can all look cute on Christmas morning. So I had to document that he actually wore the outfit I got him. He did it unwillingly but they are on and that is all that matters! :)
Here is my sweet little girl finding out what Santa got her...
Of course the first thing she picks up is one of Tripp's toys!
Then she got into her stash. She loved the puppets!
She knew exactly what to do and set to it. This girl has quite the imagination!
She asked Santa for a learning system. The IXL is really cool. It does tons of different things and it has a read along program. Very cool!
My boy got sick on Christmas morning. He is in his third outfit of the day in this picture. The look on his face says it all. :(This is the first Christmas I can remember waking up in the morning to a beautiful blanket of snow. It really was magical!

We all spent a lot of time playing in the snow. We went sledding, had snowball fights, made snow angels and built a huge snowman! Kaylen was overwhelmed by gifts this year. We really need to curtail the gift-giving. She asked if she could stop getting clothes because she already had too many. UGH! She didn't have too many clothes... there is no such thing! ;) Now toys... that is an entirely different story!
Here is our awesome snowman. He is a little dirty from all the leaves and dead grass. We also didn't have a carrot for a nose so we used an orange. He has a corncob grill.

Here is my sweet little man sacked out. He was sick for days.
NEWYEARS

Well, my sister and I ended up going to different New Year's parties but we had dinner together before we split up. We went to Bonefish and ran into lots of other friends of ours. So it was good to see everyone!

And I am glad to have a picture of Allen and I from that night. I feel like we never take that many pictures of us together. Kids are always the subject matter! They are cuter. And my picture of us in PJ's doesn't count! :)