We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

When we heard that my brother Ira and his wife Teralyn were coming for Christmas Scott and I thought that this might be a good chance to  get away for an anniversary trip.  All the times I complained about having a anniversary during Christmas break...it worked out this time! They were more than willing to take the kids and let us play.  Scott found that he could use up his Skymiles from United for a stay at a fancy hotel downtown!  So we found The James which was in the thick of all the fun, and was within walking distance of all that we wanted to do.  It was pretty nice and chic!  We had Teralyn drop us off at the train station at the next village over since they needed our car to get around with the kids, and there was no way we were taking Scott's monster truck downtown! We packed everything we needed in our backpacks and loaded up on our train, but it ...

For Christmas Eve we like to have a big dinner then act out the Nativity.  Ian was our Joseph...(don't mind the sheep in the background coming down the stairs :)   Had to get one more picture of Joseph, what a cutie!   The Sheppard and his sheep.  Madelyn really wanted to be a sheep, nothing else, and she was "Baaa-ing" during the whole thing....the Angel had to tell her to be quiet (I was the angel and the photographer so there are no pictures of me.)  Scott will forever be our narrator because he is too much of a party pooper to ever dress up.  Here he is delivering the WORD!  M'Lynn played along and was Mary  Admiring the baby Jesus  Then we listened to the Handel's Messiah and the Halleluiah chorus.  Love that music.  We put the kids to bed then M'Lynn and Scott had a secret mission to the airport.  I cannot believe that we kept the secret this long from the kids.  We ha...

 Moving over here in the middle of the country the one thing that made me feel at ease was that we would be near some family...6 hours away from Scott's sister Breezi!  They have lived in Ohio since they were first married so they have been away from us for a long time.  We knew we had to have one of the holidays together this year, so Thanksgiving it was!  They arrived Wednesday night just in time for Breezi to give me a turkey lesson.  She showed me how to prep it, we seasoned it and then we cooked it over night.  My first turkey!  Scott is a champion mashed potato maker. . .   Alli and Rylan made these turkey centerpieces and put them next to the flowers  We have to take a mashed potato picture...it's a Hoogland tradition!  All these pictures on this post were taken by Breezi (thanks sis) with her new camera, she captured this cute one of Maddy!  Since we were all together, Grammy back...