We left for the long journey to IN on Friday, Dec. 21 at 4:30 AM.  We arrived in Middlebury, IN, at about 5:45 PM of the same day.  That, my friend, is a LONG TRIP with four young children, in case you’re interested.  But ’tis the price of living far away from family!!  The boys were thrilled to see their Grandpa Norm and Nana Carol and aunts and uncles and cousins Tyler, Aubrey, and Henry.  This was the first I had met Henry, who was born last Christmas in Thailand while we were visiting IN.  

A collection of cousins.

 

One of the fun adventures in IN was the new and exciting cabin that Grandpa Norm constructed for grandchild adventures.  

The boys enjoyed several nights of sleeping in the cabin and an evening of roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. 

 

Other activities enjoyed were S’more making -

 

(Zion was very enamoured of the corn-cob fork he discovered in the silverware drawer that he thought made an excellent marshmallow fork)  

and rice krispy trains constructed with the help of uncles Rusty and Wayne.

Aunt Lynette reads to Layla.

Tim and his faithful companion, Zion.

Grandma Polly came to be a part of our Christmas celebration.  Here is everyone listening as Grandpa Norm reads the Christmas story before we open presents:

Gabriel was very attentive and participatory in this Christmas story telling, as he had just memorized this passage in Matthew at school.  

Henry helps Layla open her present.  

 

Family pictures.

We left at 5 AM on December 26 for Virginia – and drove smack into snow.  

Wet, icy, huge snowflake snow and sleet that kept icing over our wipers.  Eventually, we decided that it was just the best idea to stop and wait a night for the roads to get cleared off.  We stopped in Pittsburgh at a Holiday Inn Express – and honestly had a great time being snowbound.   We watched that marvel known as cable, swam in the pool, ordered in pizza, wrapped ourselves in the curtains,

and had a generally splendiferous time.  

We packed back into the van the next morning and finished the remaining five-plus hours to VA, where Grandaddy, Grandma, Uncle Quentin, and SNOW awaited!!

The boys liked to see how large of snow chunks they could pick up.

 

Gabe was excited that he could even stand ON TOP OF the snow.  He found this quite nifty.

Christmas.  

The plastic-knife wielding ferocious hunters of the house.  They were pleased as punch with these nifty new acquisitions.

Layla’s new stroller and purse set.  All that a little Lucy needs.

Before getting together for the Heatwole Christmas (my mom’s side), we met for our annual grandchildren picture, which is one of my Grandma’s yearly Christmas gifts.

Despite all that we had going on, my camera sat unused and quiet and picture-tired a lot this Christmas.  So I don’t have much of a picture record as I could.  Thank you, parents and in-laws for your generosity and hospitality!!  We love you all dearly! 

We celebrated Christmas as a family the weekend before we left for our Christmas traveling, since I wanted to have a whole day to savor the Christmas goodness with.  Somehow, I ended up with aaaaaalllll the presents to wrap Friday night.  Layla “helped”, and so did Tim.  

We opened presents when we woke up.

Here are the kiddos with their stockings.  I like this picture just because it is the way it is.  

Exploring the contents of their stockings…

 

I was actually lucky enough to find a lot of their presents (especially for the younger two) at Goodwill this year – wahoo for my wallet!!  One of the things that Gabe really wanted that was not at Goodwill was a Wolverine costume.  I loved seeing the expression on his face when he opened it – he was genuinely surprised and delighted. Just what you like to see on their faces on Christmas morning.

All of the Christmas mayhem goodness.

There’s a Wolverine in my living room!!

Yummy Christmas breakfast.

There were all kinds of transformed creatures running around outside that afternoon.  Scary and ferocious, indeed.  Super Mario man, I mean…

 

Also this cute little critter…

We got Layla a little kitchen for Christmas, and all of the kids thought it was great.  She actually got rather frustrated because her brothers were so busy “cooking” and opening cupboards that she could hardly get in to play with it herself. 

 

After a full day of playing with toys and having a greatly relaxing afternoon, we had a yummy snack supper.

A lot of fun.  Also a very full day for a mother.    Such a busy day if you want to have yummy food.  Phew.  I didn’t even get around to everything I had planned on making, which was fine.  The soft pretzels happily waited for another day, as patient as could be.  Merry Christmas, us. 

December was properly full of all kinds of Christmas activities, and good days in between.  We had a warm start to December, and Layla and her daddy had some good time outside.

 

There were babies to “get” on the bed…

  

Fall pictures to take…

 

Music to make…

Christmas parties for mommies to attend…

and for baby girls to “help” with…

Christmas concerts to attend…This was Israel’s kindergarten class readying themselves for their part.

Here was a little shepherd I found that I knew and took great delight in…

Here Israel and his buddies sit and wait for their part.  

And then there was the gussied-up second grader…

and the four year old who wanted to get dressed up like his brothers…and whaddya know, I had just the thing…

He was quite pleased.

Gabe sitting with his class.  That is his teacher, Mrs. Lowe sitting right beside him.  

Israel’s turn in the spotlight…

And then Gabriel’s second grade class…

and then the whole of the elementary grades…

The boys enjoyed the songs they learned for their program.  Israel in particular sang his songs a lot before and after this program.

I was completely delighted to find a day of drastically reduced ticket prices for one particular show in Salisbury that I had my eye on, wishing I could take the kids. It was called Cirque Holidaze and was at the Wicomico Civic Center, and was basically supposed to be kind of like Cirque De Soleil with acrobatic feats.  It was our official “Christmas event” for the season and was a lot of fun.  We sat in the nosebleed section, which was just fine with me.

  

I had plans to try to get at least one good picture of the action…but…I had this little lap-inhabitator that made that job virtually impossible.    She INSISTED that Mommy be the one to hold her and was a very busy little squirmer.  She nursed through the entire first half of the show.  Seems to be what one does when it is evening and one is surrounded by darkness and one is one year old.  Apparently.  

At the intermission, we took the wee chillun’s out into the empty corridors and let them loose so as to work some of the wiggles out.

 

Layla decided she was just plain done after the first section of the show, so I took her out and we rode down the down escalator and hold hands and she would run across the floor and then we would go up the up escalator to her heart’s content.  

One funny memory is that after the show was over I took her back in and pointed up to where her Daddy and brothers were to show her, and then she caught sight of a woman with brown curly hair who was kind of turned away, and she pointed at her and said, “Mommy!!” and sort of fussed and wiggled to go to her.    Ahem, child.  

We finished the night with ice-cream sundaes for the drive home.  A fun, good night.

Here’s a picture of the Confused Child with her ACTUAL mommy:

Tim was out of town this week from Tuesday evening until the wee hours of Sunday AM.  During this time, Layla didn’t notice he was gone, even though he is normally very involved in her care from day to day.  Saturday night, she was tired and cuddly, and sitting on my lap at the computer.  She leaned back from me to point at my black rimmed glasses, and said, “Daddy’s!”, because they look kind of like Tim’s.  

“Do they look like Daddy’s?” I asked her.  

She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, and I saw the dawning realization in her eyes.  Waaaaaaaiit a minute – where is that Daddy??  ”Down!” she insisted, twisting to get off my lap.  ”Down!”

I let her down and she began tromping busily around the house, searching.  ”Daddies!!!” she called.  ”Daddies!”  She turned to look at me and said conversationally. “Daddies.”  

“Yeah, Daddies.”  I nodded.  

In the doorway of the living room, she stopped and beckoned me.  ”Come!  Come!”  

Mommy dutifully got up and followed her into the next room as she looked around.  ”Daddies!” 

“Where is the Daddy?” I asked.

“Daddies!” she insisted, a little angrily.  

“Daddy is bye-bye,” I told her.

That was too upsetting.  She whumped down angrily and began to cry.  

I carried her down the hallway to her room.  ”Daddy is in his car,” I said.  ”He’s in his car and he’s going to come home.”  

She laughed happily.  This was good enough for her.  She settled down to the business of getting to sleep.

Girl Baby loves her Daddy.