Ringing in the New Year!

Last night, my parents had their annual early New Year's party with all the grandkids.  My dad spent an entire day setting up the basement for the kids.  This year he made the streets of Lincoln with lots of stops along the way such as the zoo, target, grocery store, restaurant, the capitol (with "little red" representing the sower), movie theater and then the suburbs were in different rooms in the basement. Each kid had a place to build their own home or garage for their car. The kids loved it! Callan played with it the most my dad said.  The kids had a pizza dinner and a slumber party in the living room.  They woke up to a waffle breakfast complete with smiley faces.  The kids look forward to this all year and this year did not disappoint. Chad and I also had a great day out.  We went to "Wolf of Wall street" in the afternoon and then met up with Chad's cousin Jeremy and girlfriend Teresa (home from UC Davis) for some pizza at the Mellow Mushroom.  We learned a lot about chemistry and I learned a lot of new things about alcohol.  Those two know their drinks (Teresa was a bartender through her undergrad). The evening was wonderful for the whole Scribner family! We picked up the kids at 11 today and now I am enjoying my last day of vacation (I work the next two nights). Here are some pictures of the the party.

callan stopped at the zoo

Will and callan checking out all the stops

callan and camden building their houses in the burbs (the sewing room)

a little down time before dinner

ready for bed

playing down stairs

waffle breakfast

playing a board game

Frozen

On Friday the Scribner grandparents were nice enough to offer to take all the boys to the movie "Frozen". We had the kids watch the trailer before they left and they were super excited.  It was even more exciting for Callan because it was his first movie in the theater. He of course did great and watched the whole movie.  The grandparents brought some snacks for movie and kids gave the movie two thumbs up.  Their day got even more lucky because they took them to McDonalds after the movie for dinner.  Talk about some lucky kids!  Chad and I took advantage of the time away from the kids and grabbed a quick bite to eat.  Then we came home and watched the top 20 videos of 2013 on youtube and laughed a lot!

ready for the movie to start

waiting on snacks

ready to see Frozen!

all the kids with grandma

playing in the McDonalds playland

Tis the season

I am a little sad to write this blog post because it means that Christmas is over and we have to start returning back to our normal life again.  We took down all the Christmas stuff the other day and I have just one more day of Chad being home.  I love this long break having Chad home.  Not only do we get to spend more time together but we also get to accomplish some of the little things on the list that keep getting moved to the bottom.  I went through the tedious task of taking pictures of all the kids art work and papers, scanning in important documents or things I want to save and also deciding what are keep worthy things.  The kids each have a file box with one folder per year of things I save from that year.  I do at Christmas break, after the school year is over and before the school year begins.  I love it when it is done but I really dread doing it. The good news is, it is done for another five months.  The kitchen basement also got re-organized due to so much clutter and the need to make room for new things.
Now on to all of our fun Christmas gatherings.  We started it off on Monday, the day before Christmas eve at the Scribner grandparents.  We went over in the morning and had a brunch and then opened presents. We stayed and played games, put together legos and ate more food.  We didn't leave until about 5pm.  It was a good day with some quality fun.  Then on Christmas Eve we went to my parents house for a soup lunch and then some present opening.  The kids were still had the Christmas crazies and had a lot of fun playing with their cousins.  We stayed until it was time for church and then came back after church for some appetizers and dessert.  We didn't get home till about 9 that night and put the kids to bed.  Carter was very interested in making the plate of cookies for Santa and he even wrote a note to make sure Santa knew what house he was at (it has our address on the note). They were even more thrilled in the morning when they saw that Santa had eaten the cookies and took the note! We made them stay in bed till 7 but then we started right in with opening our family presents.  We had a nice low key morning as a family but then we went over to Brian and Erin's house for our traditional brunch.  It is full of yummy food! The kids liked seeing all the presents the Niebuhr kids got but we only stayed for a little while so we could get home and have time to play with all our new toys.  Over all we had a great Christmas.  It was nice to have a day to spend with each family and enjoy their company and not have to rush from thing to thing.  I was pretty bad about taking pictures this year.  I am really sad because I forgot to get a picture of the boys in their church outfits. :( Oh well. Here is what I did take.

enjoying their new Berenstain Bears books from great grandma Jewel

Christmas break sleepover

Scribner cousins ready to open presents

stockings!

callan liked mason's toys

enjoying the beyblades

my tree house creation

reaping the benefits of  my hard work :)

kids table ready for lunch

all the cousins

looking at the new legos

callan was so excited about his puppets. he loves them so much! that is all he plays with at the library and it is his favorite part of sunday school (the puppet show)

christmas morning stockings

he started making a bracelet on his rainbow loom he got from santa right away

playing with legos

Christmas brunch with the Hoefs family

the triplets got 2 looms from santa so they were all working on bracelets.

Snow day fun

A few weeks ago we had our first snow. I lost the folder with the pictures in it and came across it the other day so I thought I would post a few photos of the first winter fun the kids had in the snow.  It was super cold out but the kids really wanted to go out and play.  So after school one day the kids went out and played with the neighbors and they had a blast.  I prepared myself for the fact that they would only stay out for a short time but they surprised me and they stayed out for about an hour and a half.  Callan was so happy.  He had been waiting for this day for a long time now.  I braved the cold for a few minutes to get some video and a few pictures of them playing.  

diving on the sleds

scooping the walk

my little ham

the best group photo I could get

ava and callan

sliding into piles of snow

Ginger Bread House

Tonight we decided to put together the ginger bread house.  I told myself that this was going to be for the kids and I was going to let go and let them do whatever they wanted.  Much to my surprise they did a great job there was no rise in blood pressure or yelling involved.  They all waited patiently for their turn and all got to help in decorating the house.  They loved eating the leftover candy the best.  I do love doing festive things with my three little hooligans.

getting close to done

working hard

all done

the completed house. we spelled out Noah in the sidewalk because they wanted their elf to sit next to it, and they wanted him to know it was ok.

Piano Recital - Preschool X-mas Program

Carter had his holiday piano recital on Sunday and Camden had his preschool Christmas program on Monday night.  Here are a few photos from their events.

playing "Jolly Old St. Nicholas"

posing

his cousins were in the recital too!

they had to do a silly one

ready for his program

his brothers came to watch

hanging out with a few of his friends

a picture with Mrs. Brown

doing a little skit

the whole group. he is in the third row on the right