Miscellaneous

Rob has a new iPhone so he has started taking a lot of pictures with it. Here are a few from his phone that he took over the last month that show some snapshots of our life recently.
Jack has been working all year to get a perfect score on his Friday folder and we promised to take him for a treat if he did. He chose Outback because he wanted his very own cheese fries.

For MLK Jr. day, we went to Grandma's house in Tallahassee. It was very cold but the kids still loved spending most of the day outside.

Nola is our best eater. It amazes us when she will eat salad and almost anything else we give to her. She is the first kids of ours that has done this.

Hudson loves Santa and anytime we would see a Santa Claus he would get very excited and had to sit on his lap.

This is pretty much an everyday occurance. Nola loves playing with the wipes. She usually just pulls them all out one by one but recently she has started to find better ways to play with them.

Now, she likes to use the wipes to clean her baby dolls.

Santa Claus drives through all the neighborhoods in our town a few weeks before Christmas led by fire trucks and police cars throwing out candy.

I like this picture of Nola because one of my favorite things is babies in footed pajamas. They look so cozy and cuddly.

Callie's soccer coach gave each girl flowers after their last game of the season.

Les Miserables

Rob has been playing the music from Les Miserables over the past year for the kids and they really love it especially Jack. He has almost every song memorized. When we found out that Les Miserables was coming back to Orlando, Jack begged to go. This past Wednesday, was the show and it was a fun night and great to share the experience with Jack.

Christmas and New Year's

On Christmas Eve, we have the tradition to have a family program/talent night. We have done this for the last several years before reading the Christmas story and putting out cookies for Santa. For this year's program, Jack played Ukranian Bell Carol.....

Callie sang "Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer".....
and Hudson sang "Frosty the Snowman"
Christmas morning the kids woke up early and we had breakfast and went through our stockings






The first thing Nola found was Santa's leftover cookies and she finished them off.
The kids also opened the big gift Santa left behind for the family. They opened two basketballs which included a note to go outside where they found a new basketball hoop.
Even Nola was excited about the family gift.

Afterwards, we all got dressed and went to church. After church, we came home and finished unwrapping the rest of the gifts.
Callie's big gift this year was an MP3 player. She says it makes her feel very grown-up.

Hudson's favorite gift was a cookie-eating Cookie monster. He carries it everywhere and sleeps with it every night.
Nola loved everyone's toys and kept busy going from toy to toy.
Jack's one gift he asked Santa for this year was an Ipod touch. He told us that he would believe Santa was real if he got one. Luckily, Nana and Opa were able to help keep the Santa magic alive and got him one.

Also, thanks to Nana and Opa and Aunt Nancy's gifts of state quarters, both Jack and Callie were able to complete their state quarter collections they started this fall.

The whole Christmas weekend went by very fast and we spent a lot of time trying out Pinterest recipes, eating desserts, and watching movies.


For my Birthday and New Year's, my sisters and my parents came for the weekend. We went to the restuarant Ohana at Disney's Polynesian resort for my birthday dinner.



On New Year's Eve, the cousins exchanged Christmas gifts. Everyone was excited to get Happy Nappers.

Then, we roasted marshmallows and ate smores and stayed up to welcome the new year.

Legoland

Before Christmas, we went to the new Legoland Florida.


It was a fun park and the kids and Rob loved all the Lego themed rides and activities.







The Safari to see wild Lego animals




The kids favorite ride by far was Driving School. This ride was little streets with working stoplights and marked lanes that the kids could drive around in motorized cars. It really mimiced the driving experience because the cars were not on a track and the kids could decide where they wanted to go. They also each got a lego drivers license which they were very proud of.




They had a smaller track for kids Hudson's age.

Hudson was the most excited when Santa showed up at Legoland.


In miniland, they have large cities and landmarks around the world rebuilt in Legos. They had a whole Florida section which rebuilt different cities around Florida. In the Tallahassee Lego city, they rebuilt the house where Rob and I had one of our wedding receptions.