Christmas is over!

Christmas is my most favorite time of year. I love the Christmas music (yes I am one of those that start listening to it in October), the caos, and especially the special spirit during that time. But when Christmas is over I am one of those that I am ready for the tree and decorations to be put away. The tree is now down and the decorations have been put away until next year. James had a hard time with the tree being put away. He wanted "my Christmas" left up all year. The spirit of it all even effects 3 year olds. Taylor had a blast trying to pull all the ornaments off the tree and was successful with a few of them.

The week before Christmas was Ryan's birthday. Dave and Kim were here for part of it and Easton spent the following week with us. Dave and Ryan were able to finish the dog house for the most part (we have a new puppy and her name is Joey. Cocoa loves her, sometimes). Ryan got a new pair of jeans and a shirt, a Jeff Gordon car model, a gift certificate to Lowes, and some new contacts. We're not really big on celebrating our birthdays as we like to use the money to spend on the things the kids needs but Kim decided Ryan needed a birthday cake. We had the best intentions and even bought the stuff for the cake but sorry to say the cake still never got made. But I think his birthday dinner made up for it. We went to dinner at Rodizio Grill and Ryan loved it.

We had the Horsley Christmas party on Christmas Eve and had a good time. Santa came to our house on Christmas morning and left all sorts of fun things for the kids. We opened our presents and enjoyed our morning together. We went to Bre & Dan's for dinner and to open our family presents there. It was a lot of fun. We also got to go see Alvin & the Chipmunks on Christmas day and the kids loved it. We had a really good year this year. Even with the absence of Ben and our missing him, he made his presence known and we really enjoyed the special spirit of it all.

Merry Christmas to Everyone!!!

Happy Birthday Benji!

I know, it's already December 1st and I am just now posting this but hopefully Benji knows we love him anyways. It has been a crazy month and I'm afraid December isn't going to be much better. We celebrated all the November birthdays with Ryan's family on November 7th and had a great time. Benji loves getting together with his cousins and being able to play with them. The presents are a nice treat to but seeing his cousins is all that he needs. He had a great night there and it was fun to have a family dinner since this was our off year for Thanksgiving. Benji got Wii games which he absolutely loves and we got him a baseball pitch machine which after a few minutes he was actually able to hit the balls. Amazing as this machine pitches pretty fast.

Dennis, Sharon, and Heather were out the week of his birthday. We had a nice visit when they stayed with us on Monday night and then on Wednesday, Benji's actual birthday, my whole family went out to dinner at Olive Garden. He thought it was cool that Grandpa Dennis and Grandma Sharon could be out here for his birthday. He loved all his gifts of course.

That weekend I braved it all by myself and took all my kids (yes, that includes Taylor too) and two of Benji's friends to see G-Force at the dollar theater. It was a cute movie and Benji and his friends had a lot of fun. Taylor and Alyssa were good. It was James I had a problem with. I guess the movie theater was too dark for him so he kept telling me that he wanted to get out of there. He even tried to leave on his own a couple of times. Lots of fun for me with 5 other kids to take care of and trying to hold Taylor but somehow we made it through and ended up having a good time.

Benji is an awesome kid and we're glad we have him in our family. Happy Birthday Benji!