gingerbread houses

We didn't have time to do our gingerbread houses for family night last night so we promised the girls we would do them tonight. They had so much fun!  Jeff is so good at helping them construct the houses and the girls love using their creativity to decorate.  They were so cute together and kept telling each other, "Oh that looks great, Savanna!"  and "Wow, that's amazing, Heidi"  (Savanna's newest word she uses to describe anything she finds especially cool).

 Caimbree was super cute helping this year.  She kept holding up the candy and saying, "treat!" and she helped herself to quite a few pieces.  She did manage to get a piece or two on the house.  Gingerbread houses are the best!

hanging in the cupboards

 Oh my little Caimbree.  I have said it a million times, but she is seriously such a delight.  She is just so much fun and we all just can't get enough of her adorable personality.  I cannot believe we are lucky enough to have her in our family.

She loves to climb in cupboards and hide.  She thinks it is the most hilarious thing and so do we.  There is nothing cuter than seeing her little face peeking out at us.  She also likes to hide things in her favorite cupboards.  If we are ever missing something that is the first place we look.  Oh how we love Caimbree.

christmas weekend fun

 Christmas is coming and the festivities have begun!  There are so many fun things to do we are having a hard time choosing what things to do since a lot of them overlap.  We decided to do our town's Christmas celebration downtown Friday night.  We met our friends there so that made it extra fun.  They had all the downtown shops open and they all had little treats like hot chocolate or cookies or little treats of some kind.  There was a tree lighting and a choir.  Santa was there.  There was a live nativity with real camels and there were free carriage rides.  The carriage rides were a big hit with the girls.  It was chilly, but not horrible and we kept thinking, "oh my goodness.  I can't believe we are outside for hours in December".  After checking out the live nativity we went and got hot chocolate with our friends.  It was such a fun night and the the girls kept talking about the carriage rides.  Savanna kept calling them "carousal rides."

 Tonight we went to the stake center, which is next to the Nashville temple.  There was a big nativity activity and choir singing. There were so many cool nativities and the girls really liked walking around the temple.  The girls had so much fun and we had fun just being with them.  After putting the girls to bed I heard Heidi singing Christmas songs to Savanna to help her fall asleep.  It was so cute.  I love Christmastime!

hide and seek

The girls absolutely love to play hide and seek.  It has been so funny lately because Caimbree plays too.  She closes her eyes and pretends to count, she calls out for whoever she is looking for, and she hides with the older girls.  Yesterday they were playing with Jeff after bath before bed and decided to hide behind my nightstand.  The funniest part of the game is that all three of them always hide in the exact same spot.  Jeff and I couldn't stop laughing when we saw Caimbree ducking her head with this funny look on her face like she thought she was so sneaky.  That little Caimbree is such a dream.  She is almost always happy, she is a good little listener, she does the most hilarious things and makes the most hilarious faces.  I can often find her sitting in a cupboard and the latest thing she does is tell secrets.  It is soooooooo cute.  We say, "tell mommy a secret" and she will come up to me and whisper funny little sounds and get a huge grin on her face.  She loves to give people and her baby doll kisses.  If there was a guarantee that a fourth child would exactly like her, I would have another in a heartbeat.  I sure love watching the girls play together and watch their little personalities grow and develop.

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

 After we got home from four wheeling, we pulled out the Christmas stuff.  The girls were so very excited.  I was nervous about our tree fitting in our small house and how to make it feel like Christmas, but it worked out perfectly.  The girls were so cute decorating the tree.  Caimbree is a master at taking the ornaments off the tree and the older two are good at getting pretty upset about it and putting the ornaments higher.  It's a pretty funny process to see played out over and over again.  Caimbree had a hoot putting the ornaments in and out of the ornament boxes...that is her new favorite thing to do with any bag or box or cupboard.

I always love watching the girls this time of year.  I keep telling Jeff that time needs to just stop right here for awhile.  It's moving far too fast and the girls are growing quicker than I can keep up.  I love their excitement.  I love how they bring life to the holidays.  I love hearing their little voices singing Christmas songs.  I know it won't be like this forever and sometimes I find it really hard to stomach that thought.

There are a bunch of Christmas activities coming up in the next few weeks that we are excited for.  I am also on a mission to really make Christ the center of our celebrations.  It's such a great time of year to teach the girls about service and giving.  I want them to know their Savior and associate Christmas with Him.

I love this time of year and can't wait to spend it with my sweet little family!

Any guesses who the mystery Santa is ha ha ha ha

hitting the natchez trace four wheeling trails

 Although shopping the day after Thanksgiving is always fun, having Jeff home an extra day means one more day we get to spend together as a family.  Let's be honest, shopping with a million people around isn't really all that fun for the girls or Jeff.  Jeff has been dying to get the Rhino out on some trails for a long time and we figured this would be the perfect day.  I'm so glad we did!  Such a fun way to spend time together and the girls love it more and more every time we go.  It didn't take long to get to the trails and we packed a picnic lunch to have while riding so the girls were super excited.  They are always excited at the thought of a picnic lunch.  Once again we were reminded of how grateful we are for warmer temperatures and more time spent outside as a family.

 The trails were fun and the girls had a blast.  We found a turtle in the road by the lake we passed and the girls thought that was just about the coolest thing ever.  They asked Jeff to move it closer to the lake so it wouldn't get run over by anyone and they were in awe watching their daddy pick it up and move it to safety.

 After our fun picnic lunch we hit the trails again and the two littles were out cold almost immediately.  I about died when I turned around and saw the position in which Savanna fell asleep!  I can't even.  I mean, seriously.  How can you sleep like that, especially with it being so bumpy?!  Jeff, Heidi, and I laughed heartily.  We had such a wonderful day together and it may become one of our after Thanksgiving traditions.  We feel so blessed to live here.  I mean, I don't know how we ever didn't live here.  I can't imagine being anywhere else.  We are hopelessly in love with our new home.

our non-traditional thanksgiving

 Celebrating Thanksgiving was very different for us this year.  My brother lives two hours away and I was assuming we would just get together with them.  Every time I would ask them about it, they weren't sure if they were going to visit my sister-in-law's family in North Carolina.  When they finally had a plan, it was that my sister in law would be flying into Nashville on Thanksgiving morning.  She had a car so she would be driving back up to Kentucky.  That meant that me hosting wasn't really going to happen because they didn't want to drive back down here.  They didn't feel like hosting because obviously just got home.  So my brother suggested just meeting and going out to eat.  I really didn't want to, but I also really wanted the girls to see their cousins.  The girls and I went shopping the day before anyway because I had a feeling we were still going to want a somewhat more traditional Thanksgiving meal at some point over the weekend.  I thought this picture Heidi snapped of Savanna helping put things in the cart was so cute.  I love those curls and how she carries "Baby Baby" everywhere we go.

Thanksgiving morning we went to the lake for a run.  Jeff is recovering from pneumonia and because of the antibiotic he is on wasn't able to run so I got an extra long run and it felt great.  The girls had fun at our favorite spot and we were feeling pretty blessed to be enjoying a beautiful 65 degree weather day.  We don't miss winter even a tiny bit.  We love how active we can be year round.

After the lake we showered and got ready to head to my brother's house.  We met them and went to eat.  Honestly, it was everything I figured....not Thanksgiving at all.  The food was mediocre at best, the girls didn't eat a thing, and we couldn't even have a conversation because it was so loud.  We were missing my mother-in- law's looking something fierce!

My brother had a horrible migraine, which I can totally commiserate with, so we visited long enough for the cousins to play hide and go seek a few minutes and then we headed home.  I don't regret going because I absolutely love seeing my girls with cousins.  It has always made me so sad that they have never had much time with any cousins so any chance we can get to see cousins we take.

 On our way home from my brother's house we stopped in Clarksville where they light up the river walkway.  It was so much fun and the girls absolutely loved seeing all of the Christmas lights!  It really got us in the mood for Christmas!

Overall, we really did have a nice Thanksgiving.  I'm so glad my brother lives within a few hours of us.  Next year I will cook and host for sure, but I don't regret what we did this year.  We made some funny memories and the girls were great little travelers.  The Lord has blessed me with far more than I deserve and I am so grateful to have had a day to remember and think about all that I have been given!  It may not have been "traditional", but it was a very happy, happy Thanksgiving spent with people I love!