divide and conquer

our family was all over the place this weekend! it was all fun, amazing stuff...but it makes me realize how often we are all TOGETHER and how much i LOVE that! it felt all "off" to be in different places.

pat left on friday for a guys weekend at JMU (where we went to school...and met!) he had a GREAT time with these guys...i love that they all still keep in touch! 

friday evening we suffered here ;-) by eating pizza and watching a movie (mrs. doubtfire! the kids were ROLLING! it was a great pick!) after letting the older kids do some christmas shopping at target.

saturday morning came quickly...i got up at 5 to run...so that i could be back by 7 am.
rebekah, joshua and bailey were getting picked up at 7:15 am to go to an all-day event with our church. it's an incredible day! hundreds of people are put into teams and go all over the area doing "jobs" for people (that have signed up ahead of time to have teams come and rake leaves/paint/whatever job around their house they trust a group of strangers to do). they pay the teams for their work (whatever they think is fair). the teams work until the sun goes down. then they use the money to go to the grocery store and buy a months worth of groceries for a family. THEN they deliver the food to the family that evening! they walked back in the door at 10 pm. our small group was a team...and graciously offered to take our kids with them all.day.long! i missed them so much...but thankfully was sent pictures throughout the day ;-)

so i was left with these 3 musketeers. ohmygoodness. we had so much fun!! they are so easy! and laugh all the time! and play so well together! we played LOTS of games of chutes and ladders. i did some chores.

we went back to target so that they could buy christmas gifts for their siblings. this is one of our favorite christmas traditions. they buy gifts for each other...EACH kid buys EACH sibling a gift with their OWN money. i was so amazed at how well they knew each other and at how generous they were with their money! precious. it's one of the most special times of our christmas...when they give each other these gifts.

and i surprised the heck out of them after dinner by saying, "let's go get ice cream!" :-)

it was a good day.

but it was even better at 10 pm when we were all back together under the same roof (pat got home a little before the other kids.)