Luray Caverns

I think the kids would have been equally happy to spend every day of the Christmas holidays at home in their pajamas playing video games and relaxing ... but I made everyone get dressed and comb their hair a few times for a few family outings. This one took us on a drive through beautiful Virginia to Luray Caverns. I love few things more than putting my whole family in the car to go somewhere together, and today I captured that excitement in a family selfie. They were good sports and we enjoyed our fun day out.

Luray Caverns was busy, but we didn't have to wait too long before we got in. You can walk through over a mile of beautiful caverns, including underground lakes, stalactites and stalagmites, and "cave bacon." 

 My favorite thing in Luray Caverns is the natural pipe organ. They connected an organ to stalactites that play different sounds, and part of the tour is that they play the organ for you and you can hear it playing on the natural pipes. It's a one-of-a-kind experience!

 I don't know if they kids loved the cave, but they did love the garden maze that we did afterward. We broke into two teams and some of us raced through ... others just tried not to lose anyone in our group. Regardless of who won (Evan), it was fun!

We finished the outing with burgers, fries, and shakes from Spelunkers, our favorite burger place in Front Royal. Everything there is delicious and we always try to stop whenever we are in the area.

Christmas

 Christmas Eve dinner was our traditional steak, funeral potatoes, broccoli with hollandaise sauce, homemade rolls and ribbon jello. We sometimes vary just a bit, but it essentially stays about the same and we love it! Dessert is usually brownies with peppermint ice cream and hot fudge sauce. After dinner, the kids act out the Nativity scene for us. Keeping some of the boys from being silly is always a challenge, but we love thinking about the Savior and reflecting on the gift of the birth of Jesus Christ for at least a few moments on Christmas Eve.

 Christmas morning always feels a little magical as we come down to the decorated tree, filled stockings, and gifts under the tree. I love this holiday!

On Christmas Day we usually play games with the Costleys and eat all their holiday treats!

The kids had a great time building Legos, playing games, and playing with the marble toy that we got for Christmas this year. Once again, another magical Christmas in the books!

December

Natalie lost her first tooth! She was so excited to FINALLY lose a tooth.

December each year starts to look rather similar ... we've found the traditions that we love and are so happy to continue doing them each year. This year, I snatched a picture of Natalie and Michael's letters to Santa before we sent them off with our elf, Danny. Michael was so happy to dictate his letter and share all his hopes and dreams for a magical Christmas. Hope Santa can deliver!

Megan is a freshman and participated in her first Renaissance Feaste with the high school choir. This quality dinner and performance is a wonderful Christmas tradition and it was so fun to enjoy a yummy dinner with dancing, a performance, and music throughout. We are excited to see her do this for the next few years! The Madrigals perform such a lovely dinner program ... I hope she gets a chance to do that in a few years!

For my birthday, Dave and Kara gave us tickets to go to the Shakespeare Theater to see Kiss Me, Kate. It's such a fun musical and a perfect date night!

Every year we decorate the tree with ornaments from our travels. It's one of our favorite traditions to remember the fun places we've been together and to share favorite stories from our travels.

 We try to do something fun and festive each day in December. It gets a little crazy with school, homework, concerts, and evening events, but we do our best! One of the highlights is our crazy utensil dinner. We always make spaghetti and then draw number to see which crazy utensil we end up eating with.

 The kids love decorating gingerbread houses but since they also want to eat them pretty immediately, I don't spend the extra hours making homemade gingerbread. We usually do graham crackers and royal icing and let them put their houses together with all kinds of treats. One of our favorite family home evening activities in December!

And caramel. Every year I make at least a batch or two (or 3 or 4) of caramel. It's probably my favorite recipe from my childhood and makes me think of home and family. I love to share it with friends and hide it in the freezer to eat over the holidays. It wouldn't be Christmas for me without caramel!

Mike and I got dressed up for a work Christmas party!

We had a few days after school got out before Christmas, and one day the kids and I went to Baltimore to explore the Christmas market. It was a gray, dreary day but we had a fun time checking it out and shopping, although much of the imported German items were rather expensive and we looked more than we bought.

Our favorite purchase was a puzzle/game from this vendor who let us play all his games. We stayed for at least 30 minutes playing with his puzzles and then bought one of our favorites to bring home.

 We had planned to eat German food for lunch, but the kids got nervous about the new food so we snacked on pretzels and popcorn and then went to Five Guys in Baltimore Harbor for lunch. Still fun! And I had to snap this car picture to remind me that Brooke spends much of her winter attached to the nebulizer to keep her lungs functioning. Sometimes we have to do it on the go!

We went ice skating at the town center on a rather WARM afternoon, and soon every time Evan fell, he was sitting in a pond of water. He was soaked head to toe by the time we finished, but we still had a good time. Michael is learning to ice skate this year. He is a different personality than Evan ... Michael likes to take it slowly, hold hands, watch and learn, and tries very hard not to fall. I'm hopeful this will mean less injuries for my more cautious boy.

Every year we go to the Washington D.C. temple to see the lights and to see a Christmas concert. Often we get to see Shauni and Lindy perform, which is always a treat. We love looking at the creche displays in the visitors center and seeing the beautiful lights. This year we saw Jenny Oaks Baker in concert.

And the kids patiently waited for the 23rd so we could decorate gingerbread cookies and still have them fresh to leave out for Santa. Gingerbread is one of our favorite cookies, but Mom often runs out of steam after all the holiday prep, so I'm always especially grateful to have Megan there to help me bake and keep the decorating fun. This year, we were lucky enough to have Mike around too! We love all our holiday traditions!

Thanksgiving Weekend

 We waited and waited for Ben and Jenn and their family to arrive for Thanksgiving weekend. So much excitement here! We kicked off the food holiday with ... the candy game! Loved teaching this fun game from my childhood to my kids. And we managed to play without too many children bursting into tears. Bonus!

 Dave made a beautiful and delicious turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner, and of course we had ribbon jello and all our traditional favorites. It was delicious as usual!

 We had such a fun weekend getting to know baby Archer and spending time with family we love so much.

The Healys were in town and while we didn't get to see as much of them as we would have liked, we loved our Saturday morning visit and the chance for our kids to reconnect.

We took everyone bowling and had a great time trying to get turkeys. The kids loved it and we don't go very often, so it was fun.

 Duck Donuts ... because you don't have Jenn and Ben come visit without looking for some delicious donuts! These were Henry's birthday treat. It was great to have Henry's birthday while they were here.

Henry got a Rick Riordan book "Greek Gods" and the boys all spent an hour reading over each other's shoulder and enjoying the good books. I love that we've got a family of boys who LOVE to read. Skylander for the Wii was Henry's other fun gift that the kids all had a great time playing. It was a lovely weekend and so fun to share it with family! It's always sad to see them go.

Out with the Old ...

We keep hoping that we are getting closer to opening up the back of the house and starting work on connecting. First our contractors told me we would be out of the kitchen just after Thanksgiving and we would not have a kitchen in December. But we all agreed that January would be a better time to live without a kitchen so we are hopeful they will start connecting upstairs, but then progress is always slower than you think.

However, in preparation we did take a whole bunch of "Before" shots so we can remember our home and what it looked like for the seven years we lived here.

Things we love: the trim on the walls in the family room, the fireplace, the bay window. Most of this room will stay the same, but we will close off the entrance to the kitchen and this will change from being the family room to become the music room or more formal living room.

 Loved our new/old kitchen (we enjoyed it for six years), but we won't be able to keep the cabinets so we are starting over. This kitchen has been SO FUNCTIONAL with the bar that seats four and the lovely "triangle" workstation. But I am excited about more cabinet space and bigger windows/views in my kitchen.

 And I'm definitely looking forward to a little more room in my dining space so we can actually get a table that seats all of us instead of this table for 6 that we've had for so many years.

 I have loved, loved, loved this big window looking out over the pool area and back yard and I am so happy we are putting in LOTS of big windows along the back of the house to enjoy the beautiful view and backyard.