Happy Birthday Poppy!

This year for my Poppy's birthday my dad decided instead of a big party we would have every family sign up to take Poppy out to breakfast, lunch or dinner.  That would give him some more individual quality time with each of our families and would spread his birthday out over a week.  

I picked Poppy up and took him to pick up Port from school.  Then he decided to eat at Ihop...my kids were thrilled!  My mom came and met us for lunch too.  Poppy "got" to sit by Haynes and Port which allowed him to be kicked, pushed, wiped syrup on, and so much more:-)

We had a great lunch and will have to do it again soon!

Willy Wonka

 Kooper was in the production of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."  Brian and I went on Saturday night to watch him for our date night.  

 The next day I took the kids to see him with their cousins.  They had the best time watching their cousin, it was so fun!

Julie leaned over and asked Haynes if he was going to do this "acting."  Haynes goes "NO!" and then looked at me and said, "You aren't going to sign me up for this?!?"

*All that being said...my kids haven't stopped singing and dancing to the oompa-loompa song:-)

Gymnastics Christmas Performance

 Ella was so excited about her new sparkly leotard!

 She did a great job!  We got a lot of video of their performance, but not many pictures....

 Here's the photo of Haynes:-)

They both did a great job and loved all the attention and affection they got from our family!

Christmas Parade

 This year the Christmas Parade had BEAUTIFUL weather!  We met some friends at the parade and actually made it for the whole thing!

Halle had a great time too!  I realized that morning that Halle didn't have any hats...that's been taken care of now:-)

Fun Fridays!

 This week was maybe one of my favorite fun fridays!  We made the cutest snow globes...but I forgot to take pictures:-)  Then Allison made little wreaths with Haynes because he was SO insistent!

 The kids had the best time playing and the boys even entertained the girls by playing dress up together:-)

Owie LOVED some Halle time too!

Arthur's Christmas

Port had to have some warts removed, which was suppose to be pretty traumatic.  Thankfully the dermatologist we met with put "beetle juice" on his spots and they are slowly disappearing...almost pain free!  I'd promised that I had some surprises for him that day, because I thought they were going to burn them off individually so that's how we go to the movies.  I called Angie and they brought their family to meet us.  We were the only people in the theater, so the adults sat in one row and all the kids sat behind us!

The movie was absolutely adorable and I recommend it to everyone...really sweet message!  At one point Arthur says, "Santa is the best!"  Port LOUDLY says, "No he's not!  Jesus is the best!"  All the rest of the kids agree and add in...God too:-)

Ella didn't make it through the whole movie...if you can't tell.  Brian carried her out and I don't think she woke up once!

The Nutcracker

 We decided that Ella was old enough to go see the Nutcracker.  When I was a little girl, every year my mom would take me to see the Nutcracker with my cousins.  We would get dressed up and go eat somewhere fancy before the ballet.  This year OU's ballet had some of my old dancer's in the performance so we thought that would be the perfect show. 

 My mom came with us too!

 Emma, Millie, and Ella 

These three were SO excited!  

We took them to dinner at Victoria's and then headed to Rupel Jones Theater.  

We weren't sure how long they would last, but they actually made it through the whole performance.  We did have a few treats to help:-)  The girls absolutely LOVED it!  On our way to drop everyone off the girls just giggled and laughed in the back seat...it was amazing!

Ella hasn't stopped talking about "the Crack" as she refers to it!!