Yeah, I know, I’m almost two weeks behind.  But, at least, I’m posting.

Starting with Ceili Rain, we have been passing around a cold bug.  It includes a fever for twenty four hours and ends with a cold…stopped up nose, sneezing, and coughing as well.  Christmas day we were all still dealing with the congestion, but no fever.  Mid morning, Josiah came up to meet and told me he was tired.  Checking his temp, I realized he was feverish.  So, he spent the afternoon on the couch.  Thankfully, it was a pj day!

The day before, we made a gingerbread house.  Okay, we decorated one.  I bought the kit at Wal-Mart and it included a pre-made house with the icing and sugary treats.  Can you spot the chewed up gumdrop???

We set out their St. Nick gifts this year.  They included Trios Castle and paraphenalia for the boys and a doll house for the girls.

That bruise on Ceili Rain’s cheek was a gift to her from Josiah as he tried to give her a hug which turned into a tackle which the doorframe stopped.

 Ceili Rain got hairclips from her sister.  This year, the kids drew names and chose gifts from our Sib Shop (things I’ve gathered at extreme discounts throughout the year and stored away for them to shop through).

Josiah tickled us this year. He drew Zoe’s name, but as I helped him wrap his gift, he kept looking at all the things and saying how one would be good for Ace or that one would be good for Liam, etc.  He never once grabbed one and said he wanted it.  When Zoe opened her gift he was right beside her and when she smiled and told him thank you, he got so excited and gave her a hug!

When I said we liked to travel, I didn’t realize we’d be traveling two weekends in a row.  The second weekend in December was a trip to Alabama to a wedding.  Now, about halfway there we realized that we had forgotten the extra batteries in our camera and the current batteries in it were dead.  So, we got zero pictures while there.  We also celebrated Zoe’s birthday with Papa and Grandmere.  Let’s just say, the wedding was beautiful and my kids were too!

The next weekend was a trip to Granddaddy and Ge’s to celebrate Christmas and Zoe and Liam’s birthdays.  We had a blast.  I think my favorite parts were my nephew Ethan being stoked with his gift (two airsoft guns with lasers for his dad and him to use) and staying up after the younger kids went to bed to play games with the older ones. 

While we were there, Mark got a call (that lasted at least an hour if not more).  We had just handed out presents and were waiting on him.  Ceili Rain took the time to stack and restack all the packages.

Mark couldn’t get off the phone and the kids couldn’t wait so we let them all take turns opening gifts…

Zoe and J-bug planned it out to open gifts that looked the same at the same time.  This meant their gifts were the same if not similar.  They thought it was funny.

Bryant was just a little sleepy.  Turn your head, or not.  I look better sideways!

New Year’s Eve seems to be the appropriate time to post pictures from our annual Tree Hunt.  It was extremely cold this time!  We didn’t go right after Thanksgiving because we knew our friends were coming in town and a large tree in the living room would be hard to navigate around when we’re also stepping over 10 children.  So, we waited until the first weekend in December to head out.  We quickly found our tree at a decent price and while Mark worked on getting it, I took the kids over for their annual hot chocolate and popcorn.

Then we loaded on the trailer for our annual hayride (the kids voted to do it even though we were all soooo cold), and headed home. 

I have been asking Mark if we could schedule a camping trip sometime before the spring. We never really could settle on a day and he wasn’t really looking forward to sleeping in a tent with a newborn (at least until we knew how well he could sleep). After oogling over camping gear at a store one night, we finally agreed to plan a trip and settled on the weekend before Thanksgiving.

And we had a blast! It was nice and cold at night (which meant lots of snuggling) but just beautiful during the day (no coats needed). We traveled to Hunting Island, SC, which turned out to be not too far from home and the towns we passed on the way were very nice. Hunting Island is a state park so there was a lot of naturalness to it. The campsite was full and we met a lot of nice people too (most of them couldn’t believe we were tent camping with ten kids!).

Ceili Rain and Josiah were in heaven with all that dirt and sand!  And Ceili Rain has clothes that will be thrown away to prove it (thankfully they were one dollar or less clothes).

We utilized our dutch oven this trip.  It was given to us by some camping friends and I love the oven.  Unfortunately, we forgot coal briquettes and had to purchase them at the camp store.  Anyway, the above picture is of a most extremely yummy apple cobbler deluxe.  It was awesome!

Okay, so the weather was nice but the water was freezing!  That didn’t stop our water lovin’ children.  They kept wading in more and more until they just came out plumb soaking wet!  And grinning from ear to ear.

Ceili Rain was still a little timid around the waves but loved playing in the foam they created.

And finished with the dirt bath!

I was bound and determined that they were not going to take a shower while we were there (that’s just a lot of work with all the kids) but by Saturday night, we couldn’t stand it any longer and threw Ceili Rain in to be washed.  The next morning, she got up and within five minutes we could no longer tell she had a bath the night before.

Zoe has been learning to cook and her first task was learning to scramble eggs.  She does a great job (even if she’s on pins and needles as she works because she doesn’t want to mess it up)!  She loved helping out during breakfast time. (Check out Mark’s “Love Me Tender” pj pants…oh yeah!)

And the coolest thing that we barely caught on film occurred Saturday night.  We were eating supper and I heard a noise in the leaves beside us.  I turned and saw three deer.  One doe and her two fawns.  They were just standing there and then slowly walked through the camp.  All of us were in awe!  I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to deer before.

Our local homeschool group had a field trip to the state park.  It was a ton of fun and the kids reviewed a lot of what they’ve learned about life cycles of various animals.  Zoe and Ceili Rain are pictured above with some friends from church.