our weekend

i know, clever title, huh?

i stopped in the middle of our friday afternoon and took a quick picture of the kitchen - fun, huh??
joshua was at a friend's house {he and this friend are SO great together! LOVING that for him!}

when we did our gingerbread houses last weekend, i told the kids they had "free rein" to them. they could eat the candy whenever they wanted. well, by thursday morning, the houses were bare :-)

i had a friend over and was commenting on how i guessed i would just throw them away since they looked so pathetic...UNLESS we just re-candied them!

so, i got a few tubs of icing and bags of candy and friday night we made pizza and re-candied their gingerbread houses!

the "before":

during:

we didn't have these last week. i REALLY wanted them this time and had to go to 3 stores to find them! what in the world?!? does no one use these anymore?

we ate dinner WHILE we decorated...a little pizza, a little clementine, a little candy :-)

last time rebekah made a very creative wreath...this time it was a tree :-) with a yellow star on top (mini m&m) and everything!

they put a LOT more candy on this time!
and i told them this was the LAST time we'd be decorating their houses this year :-)

we finished the night by watching "Samantha". it was the gift they opened that day. SUCH a cute movie.

saturday was busy...but fun. let's go with a list:
LONG run (12 miles - haven't done that in a while!)
pat took the kids to the school to the little shop set up to shop for each other.
then we all did a little shopping (NOT at the school) we're SO close to being done!!!

then we headed to my parent's house to celebrate my niece and nephew's birthdays!

hannah and ayden and sawyer

christy made SO much yummy food!

this pic is a little random - but i LOVE all that's going on in it - you can see ALL my siblings: steve, hannah and phill.
AND my mom playing with a nerf gun with sawyer and ayden :-)

ayden turned 2 and andrea turned 13!

my parents are such great grandparents.
our children are SO blessed with such great grandparents - on BOTH sides!

and....John was there! {hannah's boyfriend! :-)}
the kids loved him...as did everyone else!

and, it's blurry, but this is bailey's outfit she picked out - i love her.

went to a church's "Bethlehem Walk" after the party - it was cute and just a great visual for our kids.

pat and i watched a movie when we got home. it was one of those moments when we sat down to watch the movie that just felt perfect: great day for lots of reasons (good run, good conversations with each other and our kids, some stuff checked off, fun time with family) and then sitting there in our family room with our gorgeous christmas tree and spending time together just doing something fun. i loved it.

and our sunday has actually been restful! at home enjoying each other.
we need it to get geared up for the next 3 weeks!