December 2013

Still trying to play a little catch up with the blog here so here's the whole month of December, minus Christmas, that will be a separate post.
The begining of the month was spent decorating the outside of the house.  I decided to make a wreath for our front door this year.  It's not very fancy but I was super pleased with myself :)

The Frosty and Santa sat together on our porch all month.  The Santa was offered to Ricky for free and he took it because he knows how much I love Santa Claus (sarcasm).  I put it out though because it makes me laugh and the kids like it :P

 The kids helped me decorate two of the trees in the front.  They looked so fun. (yes, I know my hanging tomato buckets are still up :P )

 I'd like to get some more lights next year for outside I just need to buy things slowly, as the budget allows.

We made a gingerbread train this year instead of a house.  It worked out really well because each of the kids got to decorate their own train car.

They were all very serious about it too!

silly kids:

We got snow in the beginning of the month that I was so excited about. It felt like all the earlier snow storms had just missed us and I was starting to feel slighted, so this cheered me up :)

 the kids had a ball "sledding" down our little slope.

 and even the big kid too :P

 Joanna was really into the snow this year. 

We continued working on our backyard ice rink and got it finished too!   It needed to be shoveled out before we could lay the tarp down over the frame.

 little snowman:

 all done and filling with water!  It took over a week to fill the whole thing.

I took Chase sledding at our local park that has a big hill.  He had been begging me to go there and so I obliged.  It was fun watching him go down that big hill, he had a ball!

He went up and down so many times he could hardly walk by the end.

 I kept trying to talk Joanna into going down but she wasn't having it.

Katy thought it was playground time :P

We also brought home a new puppy in December! She's been with us for 2 weeks now and is doing really well.  Housebreaking is going pretty good, I forgot how often puppies have to go potty!

Her name is Peaches, she's a labradoodle and loves the kids and Ricky and I... she also loves the snow and sleeping, and any yarn items she can get a hold of :P

Some of you may recall that we had a labradoodle a few years ago and you would be correct.  We had decided not to breed her anymore (it was just too much for me with the kids and everything going on), so we gave her to my friend who wanted to get into breeding labradoodles... this is one of her puppies.  We're going to get her fixed and she'll be just a pet.  We love her so much already. 

I actually surprised Ricky with her.  He is a very hard person to surprise but he was seriously shocked.  It was pretty awesome to be able to keep this a surprise from him, especially since the kids and I knew we were getting her for 2 months before bringing her home!

 

Yes, I needed to make her a fun and colorful place mat :P

I haven't made her a sweater yet because she is so ridiculously soft I don't want to cover her up with a sweater!
We got quite a few snow "storms" in December.  Ricky's been trying to keep the rink clear of snow but it's been difficult since it's still not strong enough for him or me to go on it. So we have to try and rely on Chase to clean it off and you can imagine how that goes :P

Peaches thought maybe she could help :P

Ricky had a lot of vacation time during December too and it freed up some time for me to work on organizing things that hadn't been organized in a looooong time.  Like the kids' clothes, for instance.  I went through every bureau and every container and sorted and folded every scrap of clothing!  It took pretty much all day but I took 6 large bags of clothes to goodwill and one large bag to a neighbor, plus a bag of stuffed animals!  This is Katy's "dresser" before and after:

Last weekend we went to a Reading Royals game with all the kids and Dominic too.  We had gotten tickets from a fundraiser, for a really good deal and ended up getting seats right up close.  Ricky thought for sure we had to be in the wrong seats, haha!

They lost but it was a very fun night!  I was so happy that we were able to stay for the whole game and the kids did really well too!