Zoo lights! Too bad I didn't get any pictures of the lights themsleves!

Everytime Avery sees a pillow she lays down and says "night night"

The kids first try at horseback riding. After going with us my mom wants to buy a farm!

All the cousins hanging out. Avery and Mackayla were so cute in their matching pants! Avery has been giving us this little sassy face and saying "no" lately. She is going to be a handful.

Happy 4th Birthday James!
We had my family over for breakfast and presents first thing Saturday morning. James got totally into it this year and got a lot of fun stuff. He's been interested in knights lately, mostly because his friends are, but we still thought pirates were his number 1. Well on this particular day we were wrong. My parents had bought James this really cool Jack Sparrow costume from the Disney store that he had been asking for since Halloween. We thought that outfit would trump all the other presents but he barely looked at it twice. He was too excited for the castle that Ben and I had bought him. It wasn't until he had gotten all his castle exploring out of his system that he paid any attention to the other presents he had gotten. Don't worry that Captain Jack made his eminent return the next day!

We decided to do cake at my parent's house Sunday night. I spent hours on his cake - with James checking up on me every few minutes to make sure I was doing it right. The cutest was while I was cutting it he went around and asked everyone what part of the pirate they wanted and then brought everyone their cake. He is so sweet.

Merry Christmas Eve!
We thought it would be such a good idea to dress all the kids up and take their picture in front of the tree. You would think we would have learned by now! James did a good job of staying still and smiling and Sean was totally chill but the girls were all over the place, especially Avery. I think all the pictures are hilarious and they tell a great story.

We haven't had a picture of the six of us siblings since Jon's wedding and a lot has changed since then! From the left - Bethany, David, Michael, Jonathan, me, Paul and Ginger on the floor.

Once again we got lots of video footage of Christmas morning and practically no pictures! It was pure chaos. Ben and I opened up Santa presents and stockings at our house and then headed over to my parents to open the rest with everyone else. Of course the kids had the most presents so the rest of the day was spent playing. We did manage to have a somewhat white Christmas! It lasted about two hours.

Happy New Years!
We woke James up at 11:30 so that he could party with us. We watched the ball drop and drank sparkling cider. Ben noticed that there were fireworks going on in the park behind our house so he bundled James up and walked over there. James thought it was awesome, the only problem was that once we got him back to bed he would yell for us to get him everytime he heard them again. I don't think he fell asleep until almost 2!