and now the magic begins....

Thanksgiving time means Christmas time for my family!  Most years it is the time we get together with my mom's family to celebrate Christmas.  I really do find a lot of pride in the fact that my grandma has been gone for over fifteen years and the family still gets together each year to celebrate Christmas, Grandma would be so proud of the effort her kids go to each year to make it special!  Year after year there are more there than missing...I leave the celebration each time thankful that we are able to still be together.  I know many families who do not make it a priority, so I feel we are pretty special!  We had family from Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota,  Iowa, and Nebraska this year!

But, before we celebrated Christmas we did enjoy thanksgiving!  We had several hours at the farm with my family before heading to Chad's sisters house to celebrate with his family.  Thanks to a lot of play with cousins Harper can now run up and down steps while bending his leg.  I would say he is about 90% (or more) with his walking now...each day is more progress!

the kids had a lot of fun playing in the corn field at Grandpa's house!  Harper really thinks Grandpa hung the moon, so there is nothing at his house he doesn't like.  Harper walked the field more than once to find corn left behind from the combine, but had a hard time finding any, what a bummer!

a few of the cousins though it would be fun to pose by the pivot...Colton rocking his spiderman hat and red cowboy boots ;-)  He looks like a total cowboy with one leg in and one leg out!

Harper nailed his head on the rim of the tire!  they thought they could just lean back and fit inside the tire...it worked for Charli, not to much for Harper!

Fast forward to our Christmas celebration in Iowa!  The grandparents bring gifts for the grandkids...and Charli was super excited to get her blue Doodle Bear, "sky" as her first gift this year!  She was SO excited!

She could not wait to color on him.  First his name was Nick, than Peyton (named after one of her favorite cousins she played with this weekend who she sees once a year!), and then decided to go back to 'his' original name, Sky! 

with equal excitement Harper opened a new dump truck and backhoe...when you are a dirt boy you can never have enough backhoes! 

I have yet to figure out who gets more excited over these toys, Chad or Harper.  Lucky for Harper, Chad does share.

Macey and Charli having so much fun with their new toys!

Sky even came with stencils, Charli has grown attached to him!

Two proud girls!

Harper and Aunt Rachelle became best buddies over the weekend.  Speaking of buddies, and I will have to post pictures later once Aunt Kara shares them with me, Harper was SO attached to baby Reid.  He held him while he was awake, held him while he was a sleep, helped read him a book, brought him toys, tried to feed him cookies...he was a great big cousin to him!  Harper wanted to take him home, and said he could sleep in his bed!  I am sure he will be excited to see him at Christmas again.  I tried to tell him that next Christmas he would steal his toys, but he was okay with it now!  :D  So fun to have those babies around!

snuggles with Grandma after a long day.  Surprisingly enough he did find enough energy to swim a little while later.  Funny how that works!

I came home to a happy surprise, our Christmas tree was up!  Chad said both kids were so excited to see it come up the stairs and loved to see the lights come on for the first time.  They had a lot of fun putting decorations on.  We sang songs, the kids played, and everyone helped cover our tree.  I have a ton of decorations from when I was a baby.  I have many of my own decorations, add them to the many each child gets each year...our tree is full to say the least!  I love the mixture of new and old, handmade and bought, shiny and rustic...most importantly it is ours and that is the best part!

We hope everyone starts off their holidays with lots of joy and HOPE!