Happy New Year!

We celebrated the New Year at a New Year's Eve service at Nana and Papa's church, then came back to their house to wait for the clock to strike midnight.

Grandma and Ashlyn ~ happy to be going to bed before midnight.

Micah and Ashlyn at the church

Micah and Josiah were quite excited about being able to stay up until midnight. Then the excitement only increased once the realized that once that big ball dropped, we were going outside to bang pans and yell. Micah couldn't believe we were actually encouraging him to yell and run around crazy!

He was happy to oblige! It's a good thing Papa and Nana live out in the country and we weren't really close enough to wake up any of the neighbors.

Happy New Year!

Once they got their excitement out, we put the boys to bed and all the adults had fun playing games til the early hours of the morning!

To celebrate New Year's Day we took the boys ice skating

Joshua and Ashlyn stayed home with Grandma since they weren't too interested in ice skating...

but they had plenty of fun rolling around Grandma's room!

More Fun in the Snow

Finally, the next few posts will have the rest of the pictures from Christmas. Here are all the cousins enjoying the snow in Nana and Papa's front yard...

Josiah and his Mommy

Here goes Jasmine

Micah and Mama

Josiah and his Daddy

That was great!!

Micah and Daddy

Josiah wanted to try riding on his Mommy's back

Micah decided it would be fun to tackle Uncle Micah in the snow...

He ended up burying him up to his face! That looks cold!

Christmas in Idaho

In the midst of all the fun in the snow, we also got to celebrate Christmas again, this time with the whole family! It was the first time since Ashlyn and Joshua were born that we were all able to be together. It was a full house, but that made it all the more fun...

Jasmine and Ashlyn all dressed up for church

Ashlyn learned to "patty-cake" on Christmas Eve. It got so much attention from everyone that she just kept on doing it over and over!

Reading Pilgrim's Progress with Nana and Papa

Micah was excited to open his stocking gifts on Christmas morning

Ashlyn enjoyed her fruit puffs

She can even get it in her mouth on her own

Daddy and Micah had fun with a new remote control airplane

Micah enjoyed helping Nana make spritz cookies

He was proud of his yummy creation

Christmas morning

Ashlyn and Grandma looked so pretty in their red blouses

A fun new book from Jasmine!

Josiah loved his new dinosaurs

And Micah had lots of fun with his new tinkertoys

Jasmine was so excited about her own little chair!

And Joshua had fun just watching everyone else

Matching cousins

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

We were very excited to arrive in Idaho and see snow on the ground! And then it got even better when it snowed and snowed and snowed for several days in a row. Nathan and Micah spent most of our first week here, out in the snow. Ashlyn and I even joined in a few times.

Tubing in the snow...

Checking out the current weather from the upstairs window

As soon as he got bundled up, Micah was eager to get outside and bury his head in the snow

He thought it was so funny!

Tubing around the yard behind Papa's tractor

Taking a break to get someone out of the ditch

The boys spent hours piling up snow to make a slide to go tubing on

But they continued to have fun in the midst of their work

And once they finished, all that work was worth it

They also built an ice cave in one of the snow drifts

Here's Ashlyn all bundled up for some fun in the snow.

Daddy built Ashlyn her own baby slide

She was so bundled that she could hardly move though

Micah and Ashlyn tubing together

Daddy and his little girl

Checking out the ice cave

Biscuit even took his turn in the cave

Micah learned that if you lean just right...

you'll fall off the tube. But that's fun too!!!

Micah had fun tubing with his cousin Zach on Christmas Eve