My puppy continues to grow and is such a funny puppy. She is very affectionate and loves to be close to people and petted and praised. We were laughing so hard at her trying to sit as close to Chase as possible and he was still trying to read his book.
We were in the bank line while taking these pictures :P
December 21st I decided to host a cookie decorating/exchanging party at my house! I was feeling like I wanted to do something really fun and Christmassy this holiday season since we had been moving all last year during the month of December and didn't have time for any of that fun stuff.
The kids helped me make the shape cookies for all the kids to decorate when they were at our house.
We ended up having 15 kids and 4 moms. The younger kids liked decorating the cookies but I think the older boys could have stayed outside playing the whole time and been perfectly happy :P
I did make them come in and decorate some cookies for a little while though.
Each of the mom's also brought 2 batches of already baked cookies and the kids helped assemble variety boxes of cookies. Each family ended up being able to take home 10 boxes of cookies to give out to neighbors or teachers, etc.
It was a lot of fun and my mom friends helped with the cleanup before they left too :)
The kids got gifts for each other again this year and decided to open them on Christmas Eve
They were so excited and grateful to each other it was really cute.
We've been working on training Honey to pheasant hunt and took her out 3 times during the break.
She's getting the idea very quickly and is such a quick learner. We haven't found any live pheasants yet but we're not sure if there are actually any there still, it's public land that gets hunted pretty heavily.
She is doing well and staying closer to us and also coming back when we call. I want to start practicing on getting her to hold when she spots a bird so the gunner can get into position.
Ricky and Chase both carried guns but I didn't because I am more concerned about training her.
She just goes and goes and goes and then falls asleep sitting up on the way home :) It's so neat to see her work and do what she instinctually wants to do.
I was actually using one of our chickens to train her better on retrieving. She did good with it and the chicken is no worse for wear :P I'm taking her to a trainer next week to hopefully get some more tips and tricks to improve her training.
Christmas eve we all piled in the car and drove around looking at Christmas lights. Ricky wanted to stop and get a coffee at Sheetz so I snuck some pictures.
The kids made me drive though because they thought Ricky wouldn't drive to enough places and go slow enough 😂
Christmas day we spent at Patty and Dexter's house all day. We had delicious brunch around 11
My mom was able to come up too and that was nice.
My favorite christmas cookies...
The girls breaking in their Christmas gifts:
I went home once later in the day with Chase to exercise the dogs and feed and put away all the other animals. There were more people that came over in the evening and we had soup and sandwiches and snacks and then played games.
The next day Patty and I took the kids and Memaw to see Mary Poppins Returns in Reading.
The movie was so good, I loved it so much and so did my kids. After the movie we needed to stretch our legs so we went over to open skate at Body Zone. Talento is from Mozambique and staying with Patty and Dexter this year so it was his first time on ice skates. He loves trying all the new things in America and thought it was a lot of fun :)
Friday after Christmas I actually made the kids do school. Ricky left to go to the shop for half a day and it was raining so I thought it would be good for everyone to get some sort of semblance of routine back.
We've seen this river flood several times this year, Apparently it was the wettest year on record for Lancaster County. We always watch this field with great interest when the creek gets so high. It doesn't last very long though.
SweetPea didn't seem to find either the flooding or school very interesting and took a nap in Chase's bed.
Monday, New Year's eve we finally had my family's Christmas party. Dawn and Tom came matching in flannel shirts in honor of Dad who we all missed greatly.
We had brunch again and we all managed to get there close to when we had wanted to.
The young cousins did their own white elephant gift exchange and had fun doing that right after we ate since the adults didn't feel like moving right away.
Apparently a lot of trading and bartering is involved in their version.
We then opened all the gifts and then did the adult white elephant exchange which is always fun. Grace had received a game called Code Names that we all played and it was a really fun game.
It was sweet time together. We missed dad but have fun memories of him at other Christmases and family gatherings. Christy found some very old home movies of him and a toddler Grace singing and him talking and it was nice to see and hear him again.
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