Christmas

Before we left the kids got to open their stockings

Caleb and I exchanged our gifts before we left too...buttt I forgot to take any pictures.

Then we started the forever long drive to New York

And while I still didn't get all the pictures I wanted, here's some of the ones I did remember to take.

Italian Affair is the best!

Jo and Anson

helping Papa plow

Christmas with the family.  We were just missing Pat's family :(

ugly sweater party

hot chocolate out of glass bottles, just like we had at my grandma's house when I was little

There was tons of snow while we were there.  The kids had a blast!

The kids each got a little money to pick out gifts for each other this year.  They opened them on Christmas Eve with their new PJs.  Their reactions were so sweet.  I, of course, forgot to get the PJ picture and the traditional one in front of the tree.

Christmas morning

And that's what I remembered to take.  We saw tons of family, so my apologies to anyone who wasn't captured!  I don't have my phone much on our New York visits.

A big thank you to my mom and dad.  They made this one of our best Christmases yet.  We were spoiled to the max!

We had a cold, but beautiful ride home

And Caleb knew I was feeling down from leaving family and surprised me with a date night in.  He is the sweetest!

December

I'm sure i'll have lots of Christmas pictures, so here's the first half of our month.

For the sake of all of our family's ears, we gave one of the kid's presents to them early....a karaoke machine.  They've been asking for one ever since they sang at a friend's house and we got a great deal!

We went to our town Christmas tree lighting.  There was a visit from santa arriving in a fire truck, hot apple cider, and cookies.  The kids loved it.

Caleb's made his famous wings :)

And we unexpectedly got our first snow of the year!  The 2 inches we got, of course, shut the county down for a few days.  Casen and Arya were soo excited.  They played outside for hours.

November

Our November was pretty low key.

I think I say every month that I married the best....but I mean it :)

Arya and I went in for haircuts.  It'd been a year, so we were both long due.  She had the typical little girl over grown mullet happening.  However, the haircut makes her look wayy too grown up!

I had the best stuffing making help again this year for Thanksgiving.

The morning of Thanksgiving Caleb came home from his last night of 12 hour midnight shifts and I woke up to this on our counter.  He is the sweetest and is always putting everyone else first.  He didn't want me to have to mess with breakfast the morning before i'd be doing tons of cooking.  Even on no sleep driving around finding a place open on a holiday.   Goodness I love him!

We had a stay at home Thanksgiving this year.  Gearing up for our big trip home to spend Christmas with my family.  It hasn't worked out for us to go home for Christmas since it was just me and Casen while Caleb was deployed in Afghanistan.  The kids are soo excited.

 Turkey coma

I forgot to take dessert pictures but we enjoyed pecan pie and cookie brownies the kids helped make.