Christmas in Kentucky

We had a great Christmas season in Kentucky this year filled with fun and service and good memories. Here are the highlights!

Ethan and Lydia enjoyed decorating the tree this year. They got a little carried away however and decorated it with their cars, hair toys, and little people. :) Hopefully we got all the toys taken out since we were still finding cars in the tree as we were taking it apart to put it away.

With the MOMS Club we went to an assisted living home and sang Christmas carols to the residents. They loved it and so did we!

Here is a picture of a game that Ethan and Lydia like to play. I cut up apples and put them on the counter and then the apples "mysteriously go missing" as they hide under the table and eat them. They love to ask me, "Mom, what happened to all your apples?" And I play along and they love it. :)


Ethan earned money this month by sleeping without his beloved silly monkey that he's had since he was a baby and as a result stopped sucking his thumb at night. He earned 50 cents each night the first week and 25 cents each night the second week. After paying tithing he used his money for his first big purchase of a Lego airplane and we were both happy. :)

My kids had fun decorating sugar cookies. I was in charge of a cookie decorating MOMS Club activity and let my kids do it at home first so I would be prepared to do it at the library. The cookies were yummy and the activity turned out well. 

Our friends the Huxels invited us to join them in their yearly tradition of decorating gingerbread houses. Ethan decided he was going to build a gingerbread airplane....and he did. :) It was really fun and I would love to do it myself next year.

Jason and I went to Jason's company party again this year and ate a very yummy dinner. It's fun to get all dressed up every once in a while.

Ethan had his preschool Christmas program and this year he was a wise man....very fitting. He was actually going to be a shepherd at first, but I guess the hat kept falling off the other little boy and since Ethan has a nice big, round head, he was immediately promoted to wise man. :)

Ethan and Lydia jumping off Ethan's bed onto a mattress.

One day I took Ethan and Lydia to the Cincinnati Children's Museum with some friends. They rode a Christmas train, sat on Santa's lap, and Ethan built a cool car with the help of a kind engineer grandpa who was there with his grandsons.

We also stopped by Dad's work to say hi since we were just down the street.

I also helped with Ethan's preschool Christmas party and brought a candy cane bead craft and Bingo game. The girl in the picture actually used to live in our house, but they built a new house somewhere else in the neighborhood and she ended up in Ethan's preschool class. Small world. :)

Since our family stayed put for Christmas this year and we didn't have any visitors, we did a few extra fun family things. One was a combined trip to the Columbus Temple and COSI museum. We watched a planetarium show and the kids got to play while Jason and I switched off working at the temple. Ethan loved the cool Hot Wheels exhibit they had there.

Ethan was really excited when he got his disk to keep spinning on a larger disk. He was literally jumping for joy! :)

Christmas Eve we acted out the Christmas story while Dad read it from the Bible, ate yummy cinnamon rolls with hot chocolate and read "The Night Before Christmas."

 Christmas morning we all received plenty of presents and enjoyed playing with them throughout the day. Ethan loved his Legos and Ki'nex. Lydia loved her new baby and doctor's equipment. We were all "sick" many times that day with fevers and such, but she "fixed" us with shots and band-aids. That evening we enjoyed a lovely dinner with our friends the Scotts and the missionaries. It was a wonderful day.

Ethan got a new fort building set that was fun to put together. He even slept under it the first night.

After Christmas we visited The Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky about 45 minutes from our house. It was impressive to see the actual size of the ark as recorded in the Bible and to see some of the ideas of how the animals were taken care of, etc.

 They also had a glice skating rink there that we all tried. It wasn't actual ice so it wasn't as cold or wet, but that made it a little harder to skate on. Still fun to try and the kids liked it.

Over the break Ethan was also excited that he was able to learn to ride his bike without training wheels after learning to balance on his Strider bike. After a while of practicing he also wiggled his tooth out and lost his second tooth. After commenting to him that is was such a big day that he had both learned to ride his bike and lost a tooth he said, "Yep, I'm pretty much a grown man now." Ha ha. Cute boy.

We rang in the New Year playing games with the Huxels and others. It was so fun that we hope to do it again some time. We have been very blessed in 2018 and we look forward to good things to come in 2019.

November--Thankful, Grateful, and Blessed

We have had a full and busy month in November.  Time just passes so quickly it's hard to keep up...or keep track. Here's a quick overview of our activities this month:

We started our month off right with fun date in Louisville. After a trip to the Louisville Temple we drove 30 minutes further to the Mega Caverns. They have underground zip lines and ropes courses. We chose to do a ropes course that included a few small zip lines as well. It was a lot of fun and I definitely felt sore muscles the next day.

Here's a couple of pics from a mini-photo shoot I did with Ethan and Lydia one morning. I got a few other cute ones but couldn't include them all here. I just love how Ethan has his arm around Lydia. :)

Ethan built a tall Lego pyramid with almost all the Legos we have and then built a special train track that goes around it. He had so much fun building it and I love to see his creativity!

We love our local library and they have lots of cool events throughout the year. They have an engineering exhibit set up right now in the lobby that is fun for the kids to play with. They have about 6 different tracks set up for the kids to experiment with and they love it!

 

 

And this is what my kids and living room look like after we come home from the library!

 

 

 

 

The picture below shows another common scene at my house--E & L watching a show from my bed. 

Ethan and I participated in the Primary Children's Sacrament Program at our church. I was one of the main people in charge this year which included writing the parts for over 50 children. It was a lot of work but turned out well. I'm grateful for everyone else's help and for the children that made it worth watching. Ethan did really well with his part. He memorized it and spoke loudly and slowly enough for people to understand. Lots of people comment to us that they love to watch Ethan because he knows the songs and sings them out. :)

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year. We had 8 adults and 8 children together from Nevada, Illinois, and Florida. We were a little cramped, but it worked out fine and it was nice to be together. We ate a yummy turkey dinner with all the traditional dishes including homemade stuffing and rolls. I also included some personal family favorites of candied yams and cranberry salad. We also had 5 yummy pies to eat for dessert, all my favorites. The cousins loved getting together and they got lots of time to play. The weather was mild enough that they got to play outside and we even took a walk to the school park after our feast. The food was delicious, but I think the thing I was most grateful for was that no one was sick during our 3 days together! Yay!

Grandma and Grandpa had recently visited Jerusalem and Grandma enjoyed sharing their experiences with the grandkids.

Lydia and Maisy hit it off and were totally cute together. Here they are taking turns doing each other's hair.

 The day after Thanksgiving we drove an hour and a half to Dayton, Ohio to visit the National Air Force Museum. It was really cool and I think everyone enjoyed it. We got to see lots of cool planes from every war and era. We especially liked walking through some of the old presidential planes that transported President Eisenhower and President John F. Kennedy. The kids ran around happily. The museum was huge and we ended up being there about 5 hours.

We also all got together to see a 3D movie after Fighter Pilot training that was really interesting as well. Ethan said that was his favorite part of the trip.

Saturday was rainy so we played games at our church building in the morning like soccer, the cup game, tag, etc., then we came home for lunch, and played more games in the living room for a few more hours before the Florida and Illinois Burninghams started their long car rides back home. Later that evening we drove around to see some Christmas lights with Grandma and Grandpa too. I just love to see Christmas lights!

The three cousins born within 3 days of each other.

Our Thanksgiving Burningham crew

Sunday we attended church and enjoyed talking and playing games with Grandma and Grandpa. We're grateful for family and thankful for the wonderful time we had together! 

We ended the month with Ethan losing his first tooth! He was pretty excited for the tooth fairy to visit. I was there when it happened. He got this confused look on his face while he was eating his lunch when he bit on something hard. I guessed what had happened and had him get it out before he swallowed it! :) 

We're grateful for all the fun experiences we're having here in Kentucky and consider ourselves very thankful, grateful, and blessed!