A Storybook of Grace

 I hope Christmas was wonderful at your house.  We had my Dad here.  Attended candlelight service on Christmas Eve and went to dinner at Asbling on the Lough in Kenosha.  They have THE BEST food!  They also had a wood burning stove going and Santa Claus so it felt very Christmas-ey.  Christmas Day we spent time at home all day.  Tried a few new recipes - egg bake that was prepared the night before and left to set in the fridge till morn, a Crockpot chicken pot pie, and a chocolate pie from Pioneer Woman.  All was good and not too much work :) The kids enjoyed their gifts.  They got subscriptions to Kiwi Co and will be getting a crate in the mail each month.  They are enjoying their books, puzzles, and Lego too!   Here is Natalie enjoying (and bathing in) her chocolate pie lol :)  And here is our first stickable snow at the new house.  We got close to two inches.  

  https://youtu.be/kBPXi--kqZ8 https://youtu.be/Y5JgW2jp7hs Here’s Jessica and Addison singing at church today.  All the kiddos did a great job.  We enjoyed seeing our amazing wonderful friends from Tennessee yesterday.  Their kids are good friends with our boys and we surprised our boys.  That was funny to see when they went to answer the door and saw them.  It was pretty sweet.   That’s it for now. 

 I finished my master’s class for this semester and am off for a little over a month!  Yay!  Super excited for that!   Here’s some photos with Santa.  We went to the saw mill in Antioch.  Natalie was not a fan and would not sit on Santa’s lap.  Lucas wasn’t too sure about it either.  We couldn’t get Jessica and Addison away from him!  HA!   That’s about it around here.  Getting ready for Christmas time and doing Christmas-ey things; drinking eggnog, watching Christmas movies, ordering Christmas cards, shopping, etc etc.  But not making it stressful this year.  Well, hope to not be any way.   Photo by Hailey  I leave with this.  I did a bucket list of places I would like to visit in each of the 50 states and then places in each country (not every country in the world is on my list; some we do not desire to visit) I would like to visit.  It was fun to do, my kind of thing, and also a form of therapy durin...

 Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!  My dad came in for a visit from Florida.  It was a real quick visit, but nonetheless it was great to see him and to show him our forever home.  :).  I think this is the first time in a while I have enjoyed doing Thanksgiving and not stressing too much.  We did our turkey normally, but we did mashed potatoes and stuffing each in Crockpots and that helped a lot!  Sean made gravy and the rest was store bought - rolls, pies, canned green beans, and cranberry sauce.  Dad made his famous sweet tea.  Yum!  It was low fuss and so manageable to do the cooking this year.  AND it was tasty! On Friday we skipped the Christmas Parade in downtown Antioch and decided to go to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, but ended up being able to see the parade through their windows. A little gift from God.  The kids enjoyed that.   Saturday we finished decorating the house and the tree.  An 11 foot tree! ...

  Some time ago, the boys started doing most of the Lucas care - feeding him, changing his diaper, bath time, naps, bed time, getting him on and off the bus, babysitting him, getting him in and out of the van, etc.  It was super helpful because I had Natalie to take care of and because of all the emotional issues surrounding Sean and I with Lucas and him with us.  Of course, we were still parenting him and taking care of him; the boys just were just doing much of the daily tasks for him.  So, we had decided to pay the boys a good amount of money.  They were allowed to do with it as they pleased (within reason of course), and they decided to do an overnight with Sean and I and pay for a hotel room at the Great Wolf Lodge!  We were all very excited and got to go this past Friday.  How sweet of the boys, huh!?   The girls and Lucas had babysitters and Sean got off early and spent a couple of hours with them at the water park at the hotel.  I met...

https://youtu.be/SuU0K2G2MQE Natalie has realty started imitating and talking!  It’s super cute and we all love ❤️ it!    

 We’ve got leaves galore and no end to them it seems!  The beautiful gardens are gone, replaced with bare twigs and drooping leaves and we have no idea what and if we need to do anything to winterize our gardens.  But we do know we all need to get out there and rake and leaf blow, but we haven’t been able to because it gets dark so early and this weekend it’s been raining/snowing!  Our first flakes of the season!  Oh well.  Good problems to have I suppose.   Sean had Veteran’s Day off and we enjoyed a tasty lunch at Mission BBQ and nice because Sean’s was free.  He also took advantage of a free haircut at Sports Clips.  :). Friday was the last day of home school for the kiddos until 2022 so we are busy trying to come up with things for them to do to stay out of trouble and we have been getting together our Thanksgiving meal list together.  I think this year we are going to try Crockpot mashed potatoes and Crockpot stuffing.  Yesterd...