Christmas Continues in the Goodman house......

Christmas continues in our house.  It is such a fun time of year, although it seems to get busier every year!  Here are a few more pictures of what has been happening in our lives the past week.

Lee came home one evening and took us all to see Christmas lights!  This is the first year that Marlee really enjoyed them!

Zeke went to school!  The Tuesday before school got out for Christmas vacation, lots of elves went to school.  The kids walked in to see their elf somewhere in the classroom, with a name tag on.  Because we all know that the elves all look the same, but the kids don't seem to mind that at all.  

When Zeke went to school, he sat on Santa's lap all day long.  

This mommy is no artist, but I saw these on Pinterest and wanted so badly to give them a try.  The kids and I sat down one evening and mixed the salt dough, by the recipe.  I traced their hands on a piece of paper first and used that to cut out the dough.  They aren't exactly like the picture, but turned pretty well, I thought!  This serves as a great reminder in the years to come of our babies hands in the year 2012!

 I know next year to make them thinner, Trey's hand needed more than one branch to hold it up!  OOOPS.... didn't think about that ahead of time!

Oh my Goodness!!! Zeke is a gator fan too!  Trey go a big kick out of this one!

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and the "bouncing" begins for our family.  We have so many people to see and we try our best to make it to everyone's house.  Keeps us very busy, however, what a blessing it is to have such large families on both sides!

Our Little Slugger

Our little slugger experienced his first baseball battle wound last night.  Mommy was in the stands socializing while daddy was on the field.  Next thing I know I hear crying and you know how a mother knows her child's cry.  I am proud to say that I didn't completely overreact and let daddy handle it on the field.  But........ of course my baby wanted his mommy and quickly came to receive his dose of mommy compassion and love.  He did survive and got back out there to practice!  He is our tough little man and we know that this is first of many, sport related "battle wounds". Oh, how we love him!!!

Christmas Time is Here!!!!!

I love Christmas for so many reasons!  I love the traditions, decorations and how excited children are about the festivities to come. We always put our tree up the day after Thanksgiving, Trey just can't wait until it is up!  Another tradition we started last year is the Elf on the Shelf (picture courtesy of Angel Bowen).  It is so much fun and the kids LOVE it!  We don't put too much emphasis on Santa, society does that enough for us.  Our elf, Zeke, leaves notes for the kids, makes messes in the house, prays and reminds the kids to pray with an occasional scripture verse to start our day.  We want our kids to enjoy Christmas, but to also understand the TRUE meaning of the holiday.  
This is also the first year I have taken the kids to see Santa, at the mall of course.  I hadn't planned on going this year, then my friend Tammy called and invited us to go. Trey was so determined to go, that I gave in and off we went.  It was on a school night and we are driving to the Lakeland Mall at 6pm  with a six year old, 7 year old and two two year olds (you probably already see what our future holds)!!  We get there, go up to Santa and of course the girls want NOTHING to do with him!  So, as you will see in my picture below, mommy sat on Santa's lap this year too!  

Oh, the things we will do for our babies!  

It's the Small Things in Life!

Do you remember when all a child wanted were crayons and a piece of paper?  I remember when crayons were all that made me smile.  Not that I was ever very artistic, Cheri got all the "artsy" our family had!  But, it was so much to see the colors transform that piece of white paper.  Trey never was one that liked to sit and color, however Marlee enjoys coloring and that makes me smile!  We spend a lot of our evenings outdoors and the crayons sometimes have to join us on the porch.  I am keeping my fingers crossed that she inherited some of the "artsy" genes from the Bryan family........