California or Bust

This Christmas we headed to the sunny shores of CA for Christmas to meet up with the Voss family. 

Dad and Mom Otten gave us their top carrier that they had used on many of their family vacations in the past and it came in handy as we were packed to the gills inside the traverse. 

Our path led us across some open country on our way to Phoenix AZ where we were going to spend the night. Unfortunately though we were caught in the first snow of the year. It stretched our 6 hour trip into a 9 hour trip, but thankfully we arrived safe and sound. 

Overhead in the car...

Elijah: Eva, it looks like you have alien legs!

The two kids belly-laugh. 

David and I turn around, and see that Eva must have gotten a little bored on our road trip to California...

When we arrived in San Diego the first thing we did was go to beach to catch a beautiful sunset. 

Although it was December it wasn't that cold and Eli and Eva didn't waste much time to jump into the water (or at least their feet). 

Peter and Joseph's first beach! They loved it! 

My beautiful wife soaking in the sun and the calm of the beach after a two day car trip. 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

That's my girl

Wrong agency, but right field. That's my girl

Uncle Tim's Magic

Uncle Tim worked his magic on Peter the first time holding him.

Oh, Eva!

"What's that amazing smell? Mmmm. .. Chocolate!" Made Christmas candy with the kiddos today. Princess Anna had a chocolate facial, chocolate hair, chocolate hands... It was crazy. Anyone want to come over and clean our kitchen while I clean the kids? Hahaha!

Also... Grandma gave Eva a princess lip gloss set. Eva says "Thank you Grandma!"

Oh, and no picture, but our neighbor, Tiffany very sweetly brought over soup for us when she heard David was traveling. Eva answered the door with ranch spread like a face mask over her entire face. This girl, I tell you!!

Also Eva:

-spotting her laundered Anna costume: Oh, tank you, tank you, Mama!

-I share my baby blanket wit you!

-Eva and Eli staying in their bedroom, coloring in their coloring books and chatting til the clock glows green at 6am when they are allowed to get up. Eva shouts, every morning, "Cock go geen!"

-singing Daniel Tiger jingles "Babies, you crying? Take a deep breath, nice and slow, count to four and let it go!" And "I YIKE you, I YIKE you, just da way you are!", "Gwown-ups come back!"

Holding a phone and saying "Excuse me Google, GAME! GAME!"

This is how we do it!

Decorating the Christmas Tree

This year we purchased a "permanent" tree (as Jamie likes to call it) because we were leaving for CA for two weeks and wouldn't be able to water it, but still wanted to have the fun of decorating a tree with the kids.

Elijah and Eva did an excellent job with helping decorate the tree. They were very careful with every ornament. 

We found a picture ornament of Elijah when he was a baby and compared it to Peter. There were strong similarities. 

Baby it's cold outside

Peter watching the season change from fall to winter.

An afternoon at the park

The kids and I are enjoying a fun time at the park while mommy is in a Handel Messiah sing along at a church up the street with Mandy and Joe.

Things we're thankful for

Elijah

1. Eva
2. Brushbots
3. Legos
4. Pizza
5. Doing and winning the Awana Grand Prix
6. Bible

Eva

1. Grandparents 
2. Craft Supplies 
3. Trees 
4. baby brothers
5. Elijah 
6. Baby dolls and Anna costume (Frozen)

Peter (with some help)

1. being able to eat real food 
2. having his legs free so he can do his "fancy feet" dance
3. thankful for Elijah and Eva making him laugh
4. for swaddling to help him sleep
5. that he can start to be part of the action now

Joseph (with some help)

1. Bottles 
2. thankful for Elijah and Eva making him laugh
3. toys to inspect
4. the energy in the house that he can watch 
5. for saddling to help him sleep 

Jamie 

1. For David
2. For her wonderful kids JEEP (Joseph Eli Eva Peter)
3. Coffee
4. Outpouring of love from family and friends  
5. Change to homeschool Elijah and Eva 
6. Our new church 

David

1. For Jamie
2. for his wonderful kids JEEP (Joseph Eli Eva Peter)
3. my job and co-workers
4. for all of the people who have visited this year 

J+P 1st swings at the park

Went to the park today. Pushed 4 kids on the swings. :)

Joseph and Peter tried the swings for their first time. They loved it. They kept chuckling!  But after a few minutes, their heads started to nod, and they were falling asleep! Cuties! 

This is how it's done! :)

Joseph smiles

Peter loves it too

4 on the swings! 

Note Elijah is eating a corndog... Ha!

"Rest Time"

The babies take a long nap in the afternoon, thankfully. Our "rest time" starts whenever they go down. Though Eva fights it most days, you can see she still is little and needs a nap, too. She fell asleep on the floor, surrounded by toys and craft supplies she had pulled down.

Elijah enjoys rest time as a chance to build Legos uninterrupted.  Creativity abounds.

Stickers!

Eva's favorite thing to do lately is put stickers in a book. She calls it her Beautiful Book. (Boo-full Book.) She especially loves the Frozen stickers from the Target dollar section.

A car of Chocolate

Eli with his chocolate car he won as the fastest car in AWANA. He shared it with the family. 

"I love you, Olaf!"

"I love you, Olaf!" 

Deanna wrote this, and I thought it was so cute:

Frozen at Target, starring Aves and Eves (Averlee and Eva): Once upon a time Elsa and Anna were just chillin' at Target. Olaf showed up, and Elsa was scared. But Anna so sweet and patient, and she showed Elsa that Olaf wasn't scary after all.

Awana Grand Prix 2014

This year Elijah was in the Sparkies section for the first time in the AWANA Grand Prix (as opposed to being in the open section as he was last year because he was too young.) When we were brainstorming ideas for cars he wanted a flying car so we modeled his car after the Land Speeder in Star Wars.

(this is the landspeeder as flown by Luke Skywalker)

Here's the final product! His design won 1st place for "Novelty."

Now I'm a big fan of the child has to be involved in the majority of the building of the car. I'll do the cutting, and make sure we go through the steps that helps it go faster, but he has to do the majority of the work (i.e. painting, sanding, polishing,...). So we were very pleased when our little man ended up winning AWANA Grand Champion (that means winning the Hangliders then the Sparkies and then the entire AWANA clubbers). 

It was a tough race competition and his strongest competitors were his good friends Merek and Kennedy. 

Elijah ended up in the Sparkies finals against Merek and Kennedy.  Elijah and Merek grabbed hands as their cars raced down the track.

Eli's car is the first one, Kennedy's is the pink one, and Merek's car is the third in blue. 

Here's a video of a few of the races (sorry for the part in the middle where I forgot to push pause). 

Here's Elijah getting his first place award for Speed in Sparks. 

It was a great morning and Elijah did a good job of being a gracious winner despite being so excited. I asked him why he thought his car was so fast he said possibly God changed gravity to help it go faster because he like the sign he had made for the race. Interesting possibility. 

Apology

An apology "I love you" card Elijah made for me. The drawing is of him bringing me a bunch of balloons on the left, and "Elijah Loves Mom" on the right. He told me it says "I love you so much as the whole entire earth." This was completely his idea after he had disobeyed me one day. I know these notes are precious, and I want to save it forever.

Play Kitchen

E+E's Cafe, now open for business!

Our play food has been in storage for a while now, and Eva has been mentioning it longingly.  We've been cycling toys as our house is on the market. It's helped keep the clutter down, and we're finding the nostalgia they have rediscovering a once packed-away toy is almost as wonderful as getting it for the first time!

Today we decided it was time to pull out the play food, and while I put the babies down for a nap, they had set up a restaurant! I helped them put the polish on, but the concept and layout was entirely their own.

Elijah set up his own cash register, complete with screen and small notebook for taking orders. I helped him make some play dollars. His role was server and cashier.

Eva manned the kitchen in the back.

Our play kitchen is currently in storage, so I quick made a construction paper mat for Eva to use on the fireplace hearth. It worked amazingly well, and she was back in business preparing tasty wooden and felt food.

World's cheapest and quickest play kitchen. :)

The sign was her idea. "E-V-A, Mommy, you write E-V-A?" E-V-A is the nickname her brother has given her, too. He is so proud of learning to spell! We find that super cute.

Elijah came up with the menu himself. His handwriting has come a long way from August when it was torture to ask him to pick up a pencil, to now, when he grabbed his handwriting chalkboards and wrote a menu, asking only for spelling. The prices he assigned carefully himself, based on effort it took to make the items. Most of the items suddenly became free when I asked him to tally my order!

I made construction paper place mats with a quick outline of how to set a table. Plasticware, paper cups and plates, and I was ready to enjoy my vegetable soup.