New Traditions

I loooove traditions and today we started two new ones.  New traditions for New Years Eve! 

Every year, when Christmas is over, we wonder what to do with the gingerbread houses that we love to create.  Well, our new tradition is to smash them with bats on New Years Eve!  We put them all over the driveway, gave each of the kids a bat, and smashed away!

The little ones are the dog-houses!

The second tradition that we started is to have ice cream sundaes after dinner!  I always think that it would be so fun to make them, but haven't ever found a reason to do so.  What better reason than to end the year with such a sweet treat!

Uncle Nate spent the evening with us:)

how cute is this girl:)

Oh, Christmas!

I love so many things about Christmas time.  I love the traditions.  I love the decorating.  I love finding the perfect gift for someone I love.  I don't love feeling like we made it through something difficult once Christmas is over.  The hard part is that everything we did was really fun, making it hard to figure out what to do differently next year.  But, we definitely need to do something differently.  On Christmas afternoon Abby was sobbing, saying "I just don't like my new toys.  They're boring.  Actually, I'm just so sad for those people we met this morning (more on that later).  Actually, I just don't know why I'm crying!"  Poor thing.  It was just too much.  Which shows me that we did not actually celebrate Christmas, because I don't think that celebrating the love of our Creator and the birth of our Savior would leave any of us feeling like that.

Okay, enough of that.  Onto the "our Christmas was so fun and wonderful" part!  As usual, Christmas started on Christmas eve for us, with a wonderful morning with Carey's family.  We had a delicious breakfast, opened gifts, and went outside to play.

Being tickled by Auntie Kelly

Seth immediately took his toolbox and tools downstairs to start "working"!

Abby had so much fun playing "batting" with daddy and Auntie Kelly

Haley and Seth loved the power wheels!

Christmas Eve night our church had a worship gathering and the kids got to sing "Away In A Manger" on the stage.  Haley and Abby were so excited about it.  Seth only wanted to do it if he could drum!

Christmas morning we woke up and did stockings and then made 20 something breakfast burritos!  We went to the worship gathering with our church (since Christmas was on a Sunday this year), with the kids looking so cute in their pjs!  Seth kept saying (loudly in the middle of the service) "I don't want to do Jesus birthday.  I want to open presents"!  Sounds about right for a 3 year old!

Abby helped me make quite a few of the burritos.

 After the service we met our friends, the Hughes, downtown Santa Cruz and handed out the aforementioned breakfast burritos to homeless people that were out and about.  It was really neat to take a minute to meet them, shake their hands, wish them a Merry Christmas, and let them know that God hadn't forgotten them.  We were able to pray with a couple of the people.  It was really special and we will definitely do that again next year.

That afternoon we spent time having a birthday party for Jesus and playing with new Christmas toys! 

Seth told me "but Jesus isn't here to blow out his candles, so we can"!

Christmas evening we went to my parents' house for a delicious Christmas dinner, prepared by good old Uncle Nate.  It was really fun to see Haley and Abby working so hard to crack crab legs and to watch Seth try and pick out the meat!  After dinner we did gifts and then flopped around the living room and watched Elf. 

Christmas Festivities

We have partaken (partook?) in some fun Christmas festivities over the last couple weeks, but it's been so busy I haven't blogged about it.  I thought I'd roll it all into one post, pretty much just because it's WAY past my bed time!

The first one was, of course, decorating the Christmas tree.  This year, Haley was the star decorator, continuing to add ornaments and adjust them long after everyone else was done.

We had a lot of fun going to a Christmas event that one of the local churches hosted, including a 50's diner, live Bethlehem village, a hay-ride, puppet show, bounce houses and a petting zoo.  The Bethlehem village was really neat and all three kids loved signing the census and making their own dreidels.  Seth immediately wanted to leave, though, once a group of Roman soldiers came through shouting "hail Ceaser"!

You can kind of see Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus behind the girls.

The hay ride was a big hit with the wee Webbers!

 I think one of our favorite Christmas traditions is making gingerbread houses.  Uncle Nate (my little brother) always makes some great houses for us to decorate, and this year was no exception.  In fact, this year, not only did he make house but he made dog houses, a church, a school house (complete with bell tower) and a manger.  We had such a great time decorating.  I don't have pictures but I actually managed to make a tether-ball in the school yard, and it's still standing, along with the flag that Laura made and the basketball hoop that Nate made!

This is the roof of the manger, which Haley decorated!

Abby spent a long time making a Santa to go on the roof of her house!

A new thing that we tried was making some Christmas gifts.  I found a recipe for birdseed ornaments, so last night Carey and I helped (hardly at all, actually) as the kids made a mess and some fun birdseed ornaments (of which I don't have pictures of the finished product)!

It's The Little Things!

Here in the Webber house we've had some wonderful things to celebrate.  To anyone else, they may seem like little things, but in my world they are a big deal and definitely blog worthy!

• We've now had two nights in a row of all three kiddos sleeping through the night (other than Seth coming into our bed at 4)
• Yesterday morning Seth slept until 6:30 (as opposed to his current normal, 4:45)
• Yesterday I took all three kids to Costco and we had a completely successful trip.  I was even getting looks from people that were like "oh, your kids are so darling and well-behaved" instead of the more common "I'm so sorry" or "I've been there too" or, the worst "just get out of Costco"!
• Two morning ago I was doing laundry and the kids played nicely together for a good 15 or 20 minutes.  It was a game they named "Throw things at Seth and he bat's them".  Haley and Abby were on the top bunk of the bunk bed throwing stuffed animals at Seth.  Seth was laying on the floor holding a bat, which he was using to "bat" the stuffed animals!
• When they were playing that game together, it didn't end in someone crying! 

Christmas Tree 2011

The Sunday after Thanksgiving we went to Johnson's farm to get our Christmas tree.  While we were there we ran into some friends, the Hughes, which was a fun surprise.  The kids loved feeding the chickens and the goats with their friends.  Once it was time to find a tree, Haley found a great one named "Gumdrop", but we decided it was a little too sappy.  Then, Laura found us a good one named "Buttermilk" and she was the winner!  So far, Buttermilk has been a great tree, although she is yet to be decorated!

We got yummy cookies and cider at the tree farm.

The kids with their friend, Aubrey.

Looking for the perfect tree!

The girls and "Gumdrop"

Here's our tree!

Taking the tree to the car

Happy 6th Birthday

Yesterday was Haley and Abby's 6th birthday.  I can't believe my sweet baby girls are 6 years old!  I'm going to let the pictures (and my captions) do the talking:)

They each individually told me they wanted to spend some of their own money to buy their sister a present.  They were so excited to exchange them:)

It was pj day at school, which they thought was a fun bonus to their birthday.

 

They LOVED their gifts!

Haley and Abby wanted a fairy, unicorn party, which Laura and I had SO much fun planning and putting together.  The girls got to decorate fairy wings, play fairy freeze dance, hunt for and then paint little fairy houses and run around and have lots of girly fun.  Each of the girls got to take home a cute little unicorn wand that Laura and I made and a little jar of "fairy dust" (aka glitter).

You can't tell how cute those streamers are, but they are real vines wrapped around tinsel garland.  Laura did an awesome job making them (and cute little tissue paper pom poms as well)!

Abby wanted a cake in the shape of a unicorn.

Haley wanted a cake with a unicorn on it!

I'm pretty sure Laura and I were more into the whole theme than the girls.  They loved the party, of course, but we loved the planning and decorating.

My friend Nicole was our AWESOME facepainter ((check her out on facebook))

Haley and her buddy are holding the adorable unicorn wands that Laura and I crafted.  I forgot to take any pictures of the wands.

All ready for cake!

Getting ready for the pinata!

This pinata was huge (as you can tell from this picture) and before the party it kept startling us when we would walk into the room and see it!  Carey actually kept putting it places to purposely startle Laura and I!

Picking up all the goodies from the huge pink unicorn that was destroyed!