Let the New Year begin!

The day after we got back from Leavenworth, we let the kids eat their beloved gingerbread Bethlehem. It was the longest activity ever. They didn't just eat it, they demolished them with butter knives and then reconstructed one huge house. Actually, they said it was a church, with stables for animals and they included the elements of Passover for some reason. 

Creative, dangerous boy with cute puckery lips yielding a demolition weapon.

January 4th - Our sweet hearted Jasper finally got to use the 40 Special Helper 

Rockets he had been earning for a loonnnngggg time to take the family to Charlie's Safari! This has never been done before in Special Helper Rocket history. Usually a child earns 20 and can go somewhere alone with just Mama or Dada all to themselves. Jasper wanted to be able to take all his brothers and sisters somewhere special, so we told him if he could earn 40 he could take the whole family. He's been working so hard to help out around the house without complaining and earn more rockets so he could pay everyone's way. His brothers and sisters were so thankful that he included them in his reward!

Sharing with other makes his day. I think he was so happy to get to spend this day with them and enjoyed it so much more knowing he was giving this gift to them.

Our new 2013 plan is to get doughnuts on Sundays as a special treat for the kids and me (I love sugar!) so we can look forward to the Lord's day, have fun as a family, and let others eat the cookies that are offered at our church. It's not a healthy goal, but it's a fun one. We finally got to try out this plan on the 6th. I love this picture of Peter in Opal's bow at Krispy Kreme and Opal with her finger in her nose in the background!

 Since I'm on funny pictures of Dada, I like this one too of Peter figuring out how to take video on the iPad. Plus it shows how much we all love this years Christmas jammies. They are the most worn jammies to date! We'll have to do the converting blankets to jammies plan again next year!

On January 13th, we were able to attend Grandma Lee's 95th birthday party in Federal Way and meet up with lots of people from Peter's side of the family. The kids even met a lot of cousins they didn't know they had.