Lovin' My Family

My brother and his family have been in town this week. We don't get to spend alot of time with them, so we've been enjoying them! Wesleigh and Gracie LOVE my niece, Madelyn, and with two new babies in the family, I'm sure she has had all the cousin fun she can stand. My nephew has gotten some quality time with all the boys too. It has been alot of fun. Friday we had our Christmas celebration and exchanged gifts. We also took a family picture since we were all together. With 8 adults and 11 children, it was quite a feat. I think it turned out great though! I had the camera on a tripod and I kept running back and forth setting the timer. There was probably a way to do it easier, but it actually kept all the kids entertained.  Richard did admit that he and some of my family (hmmm....), although they didn't want me to fall, would have been happy to laugh hysterically if it had happened :)

I should have taken pics of each separate family so you could see who goes with who. My brother, Darren and his wife Deanna, (by Richard and I) have Madelyn (holding baby Adalie) and Hayden (only blonde headed boy). My brother, Joel and his wife Jennifer now have 4! They have Rylan and Auden. Then they have Ever and Adalie (the two babies). They adopted these two 3 months apart!! So...we have 2 sets of virtual twins in our family :)

So the ages of the grandkids are as follows: 1 month, 4 months, 2, 3, 3, 4, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15. It has been pretty exciting over here the past few days :) Here are a few other pics we took:

The girls:

The boys: The boys win! They were much better at posing for the pics :)


Madelyn and Adalie:


Hayden:


Cade and Auden. They have adored each other since Auden was a baby. Cade had to hold her for the
family pics.



Baby Ever:


Baby Adalie:


I love Wesleigh and Gracie's faces in this picture. They were just a little excited.

The girls got a princess castle for their Disney barbies.

The girls got Dr. kits and LOVE them!!

It was a fun night and the first of alot of family time.  Makes me really wish they lived closer!!

Christmas Day

How about this crew?  They're looking a little rough!



These 2, on the other hand, were ready to go!!  That squeal you heard about 7:30 Christmas morning?  Yep...that was Gracie!!


I love this shirt. If you've been reading for a while, you know that Cade's nickname has been "the beast" since he played tball. I thought this was perfect!!

These were my favorite gifts for the boys. I had these posters made for each one of them from Snapfish. I was stunned at how beautiful they were! They took a matter of minutes to make online. I ordered them already framed and they are perfect! The boys seemed to like them too.

Of course, Cade's was his football season. I just have to give a quick shout-out to our Saints superstar Drew Brees who just broke the record of passing yardage in a season!! I told Cade I wanted him to be sure to watch him do it because in a few years, he would be breaking Brees' record :) I wanted him to be able to say that he watched when Drew broke it!! lol...
Hey...a Mama can dream, can't she???

I love Braden's with that big picture of him catching...kind of makes me ready for baseball :)



And Bryce's with some of his Sea Cadet highlights of the year.

Of course, the stars of the show were these two little princesses. They were so funny! We had a princess explosion over here.  I have the glitter to prove it!!


Bryce got this back scratcher from my parents' stocking. He went around driving everyone crazy with that thing! Here he is playing with Wesleigh. I love the look on his face.

I intentionally didn't crop the "aftermath" from this picture (and this is after we cleaned up). My floor was (and is again) coated with glitter from all the princess garb. It looked like a fairy blew up in my keeping room!!

The girls got these training chop sticks in their stockings. Wesleigh used them to eat her breakfast.   She might not look like it...but this girl can eat!!

The highlight was the trampoline! Cade was the one who asked for it, but it is a favorite of everyone. Even though it was drizzly all day, it didn't keep them inside.

Just being silly with my "little" boy!!

Richard's dad and brother made an appearance.

Then Richard's mom and dad (yep...2 dads :) came. I must have been tired of taking pics at this point because there aren't many :(

And we're not done yet!  My family is coming on Friday to do Christmas.  It's the holiday that lasts forever :)

Christmas Eve

This holiday has been so bazarre. With Gracie and I being out of town, things just haven't been quite right. It got here before I was ready for it. On the other hand, it is lasting forever!! We started with our Christmas service on Friday night, then Christmas Eve, then Christmas. Now we wait until Friday to do Christmas with my family. My brother and his family will be here from Colorado so we can't wait to see them. Usually, I would have Christmas packed away by now, but we have alot of Christmas left!

A quick pic of all my kiddos before church.

Can you believe, this is the first picture of the 7 of us since the airport!!

We went to my parents for our traditional seafood gumbo dinner. Turns out...Gracie LOVES gumbo!! Both my girls seem to love South Louisiana cooking. I think they were both born to be cajuns!! :)

My parents

I took about 10 pictures of this group. In every single one, Gracie was making some crazy face. I just picked the one that everyone else looked the best :)

The kids got to open their stockings from my parents.

It's cute how much they love stockings. (Even the big ones!)

This was our elf, Ethan's, final spot before he headed back to the North Pole for good. We only had a week with Ethan this year. Next year, he will get to see much more :)

I love this Christmas card wreath.
 

We read a few stories, put out cookies for Santa and headed to bed.



Wesleigh kept saying, "I just so es-sited"!  Gracie had no idea what was about to happen, but she's always happy to be part of something "essiting"  :)

Merry Christmas!!

Wishing you all a Very Merry Christmas!!

Finally...A Little Christmas Cheer

I feel like I've totally missed out on the Christmas season this year because I was gone for so long.  I hate that.  I was really looking forward to doing lots of fun things with the girls this year.  That list has been cut down to just a few. 

All of these pictures are awful!  They are either at night or inside where I am horrible...SO frustrating!!

We took everyone to a local house here who goes all out for Christmas.  They've been setting out a huge display longer than I've been alive!  I remember going to the Messengers when I was a little girl.  Wesleigh was so excited she could hardly stand it. Gracie, on the other hand, is still nervous with anything having to do with Santa. She does NOT want Santa coming to her house :) It's a good thing we didn't have our Santa party this year!

Then last night was the girls' Christmas program at school. Gracie missed 2 weeks of practice so I was a little concerned she would turn into a clown. She did the opposite, and cried the whole time! She can definitely turn on the waterworks when she wants to! She would stop and sing for a while and then look over at us and start all over again. Wesleigh, on the other hand, loved every second of it and sang every song. She was adorable and only lifted up her dress about 100 times!

I am so disappointed with this picture!! UGH!!!

This was taken when they were walking in. We were on the 3rd row and she started to come in the row to me. I had to fuss and tell her "no". Everyone around me thought that was pretty funny :)

This next picture about sums it up!

She is so stinkin' cute! After it was over I asked her if she heard Gracie crying. She laughed and said, "Yes, Gwacie cwying...Dediegh singing"

Cade got to see his 4yr. old pre-school teacher last night. How cute is she?? Cade is taller than she is!! She is the sweetest thing ever and I'm planning on both girls having her next year :)

OK...that's all I can do tonight. I can't bear to look at any more bad pictures tonight!!

Go check out my friend, Jennifer's blog!  They're in China!!  If you missed her story, a couple of years ago, she googled "brick floors" and it brought her to my blog.  God planted the seed of adoption in their hearts AND THEY'RE IN CHINA!!  They've got Molly, who is just precious, and I am thrilled!!