My Last Christmas Post!

The kids loved spending time with Nile's sisters (and their husbands, too) over break. We were able to spend some quality time together with his family and made lots of fun memories. We miss you guys already!! We REALLY missed the Heefner boys in Texas, but are so thankful we were able to see you guys in November:)

Annie and the crew (and Justin's arm...so sorry about the lack of
pictures representing everyone! If you all took any good ones, send
em my way)

Sarah graciously stayed home from sledding to start the ball
rolling on our sugar cookies, and stuck with it until the bitter end,
long after everyone else had bailed. You're a trooper, Sarah!

Josie was so tired from sledding and missing her nap that she
fell asleep when Anne was reading a book. She started out looking
so sweet...

...and ended up in this ladylike position.

Sledding in Iowa

Sledding was by far the favorite activity of the kids-they had been waiting forever for snow in St. Louis and we hadn't gotten ANY, though we did finally get some last week here. They could stay out in the snow forever, way longer than Nile or I have any desire to be out in the cold. Well, Nile has actually been fantastic at hanging out with them outside...me, not so much. This was day two of sledding, and I missed day one to meet with a dear friend, so there are no pics from that first day. I hear it was amazing, especially seeing Papa Jim get some serious air after going over a snow ramp. What I wouldn't give to have seen that:) Here are a few pics from day two.

All decked out in snow gear and loving it.

Such a trooper at pulling her own sled up, except for

the two times Gabe asked her if she wanted him to
pull her up the hill on her sled. He is way too sweet

to her sometimes-I finally told him he didn't need to offer

anymore because it was killing the poor little guy.

Aunt Sarah is brave!

Josie and Aunt Sarah

This ride was a little painful over bumps:) Sixty-nine very

solid pounds on my back was a good one-time event, not to

be soon repeated. The next ride down alone, I crashed into a

metal fence post and had shoulder pain for a good week. Josie

asked me when I got back to the top of the hill, "Why didn't

you roll off, mom?!" We had talked to them a lot about bailing

out before you hit a tree, fence, etc. and I didn't follow my own

advice. It was a super fun day at any rate!

Flashback Friday

Christmas with My Grandparents

These pics are from my mom's side of the family's Christmas. I hesitate to post this because one may see this post and think Josie is the favored child. The real story is that she wanted to have a picture taken with lots of people, so she went around and said, "I didn't take a picture with Grandma Doris yet" and then asked me to take one. And because I wanted to have many of my extended family represented on my blog AND the only pictures I had of them happened to include Josie, here goes. Sorry I wasn't able to get pictures of everyone!

My Aunt Cindy and Cayla

My grandma Doris and Josie

My aunt Cindy and Josie

Josie trying to worm her way in to the Garland family.

Jerod, Leah and Cayla

My grandpa Theron and Josie

Papa Tim and Josie

Papa Tim and the boys looking at a Look and Find book.

Snuggling at Nana and Papa's after a long day...

One of my Christmas Highlights

This was bliss for me...Cayla likes me to sing to her, and she just looks up at me and listens so sweetly. Seriously precious. She must have stayed this way for 10 minutes and I loved every minute. I "stole" this picture from my brother/sis-in-law's blog, so thanks, guys:)

Christmas in St. Louis

Here are some pictures of us celebrating Christmas with just our little family, before we came to Iowa to visit everyone. They were so excited to get to open presents early, and excited to put the last advent story-booklet on the tree. But they were also super excited to leave for Iowa to go sledding-we have not had any snow in St. Louis (though they say we may get some tonight), and the boys had been really bummed about that. Sledding pics to come later...

Daddy's idea to get the boys a bb gun-oh boy!

My favorite part was how they were so happy for each other
and interested in what each person got.

I've yet to see anyone that rivals Gabe when it comes to his response
to his gifts. I really should video it sometime so you believe me.
Last year, I remember my mom saying, "He makes me tired just
listening to him use so much energy!" Let's just say he is VERY

thankful for everything he gets.

Pure bliss...

A winter zoo trip

Sorry...more zoo pics, but only a few:) I was amazed at how many animals there were to see even in the middle of winter! I promise I didn't include many of them in this post! And there was practically no one at the zoo, so that was kind of fun. More recent pics coming soon-it's hard to catch up when you've been gone for a while! Oh, and my very favorite quote of the day from Gabe: "Follow me, guys. I know this zoo like the back of my tongue." Nile and I were laughing about that the rest of the day.

I know my head's cut off, but Josie was so excited that we

were "twins" with our boots, so she asked Nile to take this.

You can see the penguin swimming by Gabe's head-apparently
St. Louis has the only (or so the worker told me) penguin house

where you could (but can't!) actually touch the penguins because

you are right up close to them. In fact, Seth and Josie got splashed

in the face when we were taking this pic.