Ice Skating!!

The weekend before Christmas we had a fun opportunity to take the kids ice skating for the first time. Our sweet friends, the Helms brought their daughter up and we had a little 4th year birthday celebration for Kinsey. All she wanted to do for her party this year was go ice skating and all of us had a blast!

Here are the kiddos with Kins - Happy birthday, sweet girl!

How cute are they with their little ice skates on??

LOVE these friends!

Daddy ice skated with our two older A's while I chased Ains around and took pictures. :)

Good job, Audrey! She wasn't so sure about this...

She went around a couple of times with Daddy and then she was done.

Austin was a different story. He loved the challenge of learning to ice skate and did such a great job for his first time.

Ains even got a ride on the ice with Daddy. :)

Go, Austin go!

Daddy was tired by the end of our time on the ice. :)

Kinsey was loving every minute on the ice and being with her Mommy and Daddy all be herself (baby brother stayed home:).

A town was a determined fellow and after announced that he wanted to be a hockey player when he grew up. :)

LOVE this pic!

We went to a little park afterwards and had some birthday cake and played for a while in the FREEZING cold! The kids didn't mind though. :)

It was a great time and a fun 1st experience 'on the ice'. I am sure we will do it again some time soon. :) Thanks for inviting us Helm family! Love you guys!

Fun Christmas Surprise

Grandpa and Grandma Werley came into town to spend the weekend the week before Christmas and brought with them a fun surprise for our kiddos. :)

THIS!!


While Grandma and I kept the kids busy inside, Daddy and Grandpa were busy little elves putting this adorable little house together.

And here are their sweet and priceless faces as they saw the house for the first time. I can hear the gasping and screams just looking at this pic. ;)

The girls were LOVING it!! (Austin loved it too, of course but like a normal boy he was excited to play in the huge box the house came in. :)

Audrey is in heaven! She even woke up the next morning worried that the house wouldn't be there for her to play in and decorate with rocks so beautifully.

Mommy always makes them take time out of playtime to take a picture or two. ;)

Thank you, Grandpa and Grandma! It was the perfect gift for our A-Team this year! We love you!

Christmas Fun Part 4 - Happy Birthday Jesus!

Our Church also had a little Christmas program where the kids sang a couple of songs about baby Jesus.

Austin is in the middle back row and he did a great job!:)

Audrey didn't sing much, but she did look oh so cute. ;) She was so excited to wear her Christmas dress to Church.


Our 3 little cuties in their Christmas outfits.

And this one kept telling me to "take more pictures of me, Mom!" We had a great Christmas Eve service with our Church this year. We were told that it was the largest attended Christmas Eve service attendance to date. Big numbers are great, but we were just so excited that so many people got to hear the good news of Jesus! We know how very blessed we are to serve at such a wonderful place with so many loving people!

Christmas Fun Part 3 - Parties!

Christmastime means parties and a LOT of them! It is always a busy time, but also so much fun! This year both Austin and Audrey had parties at their preschool on the same day an hour apart from each other, so I got to go to both. :)

Santa came to visit Audrey's classroom.

As you can see from her face, she was very excited. :) We don't do Santa at our house, but there is no getting away from all the fun Santa movies and such, so our kiddos know about Santa (St. Nick) and all the wonderful things he did for children a long time ago. I absolutely LOVE what this Santa did! He read a book called 'What is Christmas?' to the kids. In the book it asks a lot of questions like is Christmas about the lights, presents, reindeer? They would all shout, NO! Then he asked is Christmas about me? They all screamed YES! and then this Santa said no, Christmas wasn't about him, it was about Jesus. It was amazing to know that AGAIN, this school is such a blessing to us. Santa sat there and told these sweet children that Christmas wasn't about him, but about the greatest gift of all - Jesus. He shared the gospel and then told them that he would try and get them what they wanted this year, but that Jesus was already the best gift. I was so glad I got the opportunity to share that time with Audrey and even more thankful that I have a husband who works so hard so that I can stay home and be able to go to things like this with my kiddos and share these special moments.


Audrey and the best Santa EVER! :) She was being very shy and didn't say a word to him about what she wanted until right before she got off his lap. Then she whispered to him, "I want a Rapunzel doll." It was precious!

Audrey with one of her sweet friends from class.

We had a great morning together and she was so excited to have her Mommy there.

Then on to Austin's class party. He was so excited about the menu of pizza and cupcakes. :)

He was also very excited to see Santa and couldn't wait to tell him that he wanted a Slinky Dog from the Toy Story 3 movie. (Which I went out that afternoon and bought for him from Aunt Zuzu.;)





We also had a party for our home group at our house this year. It was a fun night with almost 40 people in our house (around 20 kiddos!)

Ains and her sweet friends at the little kids table.

Some of the kiddos watching a Max Lucado Christmas movie.

My hubby and some of the guys playing pool upstairs (while all the ladies hung out downstairs chatting and maintaining the chaos. :)

I didn't get a chance to take many pics that night, but I thought this one was so cute of Ains with one of her sweet friends wearing Santa hats. It was a great night! We love out home group!

Merry Christmas 2010!

Happy Birthday, JESUS!!

"Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name; worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness." Psalm 29:2

Christmas Fun Part 2 - School Program

The kids had a very sweet Christmas program at school last week. I can't tell you how much it means to me to have all 3 of my children attend such a wonderful christian preschool where they talk about and reinforce the same things we talk about at home. It truly is priceless and we are so very thankful!

Here is our sweet Ainsley in her very 1st program of any kind. She did amazing and was so excited to be on stage shaking her jingle bells. Precious!

Look at that sweet face! I love the joy that is just naturally in her. :)

Austin did a great job this year too. Last year he was the kiddo busting out his dance moves, but this year he was much more restrained.

And still just as cute and silly as ever. :)

Audrey is our shy child, so she was definitely a little apprehensive up there on stage. (She is the 2nd girl from the right on the 2nd row.:)

She didn't sing AT ALL her 1st performance. Her teacher said she couldn't believe it because she sings in class all day long (just likes she does at home - we call her our little song bird.)

She was still as adorable as ever though!

We are crazy about this little cutie!

Luckily there was a 2nd program time that yes, Andrew and I stayed at to enjoy it again. We were worried that they would look for us during the 2nd program and be upset about not seeing us. ;) I was able to go to Audrey's classroom in between and talk to her about singing the song she had been practicing for so long. She did great the second time! Both of us were such proud parents that day. Nothing better than watching your kiddos sing praises to Jesus! These are days I want to remember forever!