Christmas Day

We went to get Bastian out of his crib Christmas morning and he had managed to take his shirt off. He was quite proud of himself!


Santa brought Corbin a guitar, which he had really been wanting. Now we just have to teach him how to play it!


Santa put all kinds of snacks in our stockings. I guess he knew we would be taking a long car trip to Atlantic City, NJ the next day! Once Bastian saw the granola bar, he didn't care about anything else. We had finished stockings and moved on to presents under the tree and Bastian was still working on that granola bar.


Hero with a new set of Pet Shops, a whale and a fish.


Naomi, Dave just couldn't contain the excitement when he opened up your package of bag clips! :)






We finished opening our presents under the tree and prepared to have breakfast with Dave's family, then we exchanged gifts with them.



Here we are trying out Guitar Hero, which Dave got from his parents. It is a lot of fun! Dave and I have spent a few nights together playing it.


And for the finale...............Dave's family had gone in together and bought our kids a nice swing set. I evacuated the house with the kids on Christmas Eve, so Dave and his dad could put it together. It was dark when we got home and we had also closed all the blinds and covered the back door window with wrapping paper. After we finished exchanging gifts with Dave's family we told the kids they had a big surprise and to rip the wrapping paper off the back door. They were so surprised and happy. They love the swing set! It will be real nice when we have grass grown or mulch laid down and the kids no longer come inside covered in mud!

Our 11th Anniversary

Dave and I decided we would like to get away for a night this year for our anniversary. With baby #4 on the way we knew it would be our last chance for a while. Dave's parents were willing to stay the night with the kids, so we made our plans. We went out for an early dinner and headed over to the Bed and Breakfast around 6pm. What a beautiful house! Our room consisted of a large living room with 6 windows across one side of the room overlooking their private lake and Pilot Mt., a large bathroom with a whirlpool tub and a beautiful bedroom with the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in! In addition there were two fireplaces, one in the bedroom and one in the living room. They delivered a wonderful breakfast (so large I couldn't finish it) to our bedroom. The people there were some of the nicest you would ever meet! We really had a wonderful, relaxing stay!

The Scenic Overlook Bed & Breakfast

The Living Room

The Oh So Comfortable Bed

The Large and Spacious Bathroom

My Super Cute Husband and the Delicious Breakfast

Me and Dave with Our Gorgeous View

Nana and Opa Come for a Visit

Nana and Opa made a special visit to NC for Hero's baptism. We were all so excited they could make it! It had been over 18 months from Nana's last visit when Bastian was born and the first time Opa had ever visited us in the 9+ years we've been in NC. Nana was here for a week and Opa was able to stay for 2 1/2 days.


Opa's famous reading of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" with all the great voices (it is the story Opa read to us every Christmas Eve growing up).


We made a trip on the way to the airport to Duke University, Dad's alma mater, to visit the campus. It gave the kids a chance to run around after a 1 1/2 hour car trip and we got to see some of the beautiful architecture on campus.



Nana used to make gingerbread houses with us every year and I thought it would be a fun thing for the kids to do with their Nana. Nana applied the frosting and Hero and Corbin put on the candy. They did a great job and had a lot of fun!





We went with Nana to eat lunch at Hero's school.


Corbin took a picture of me and Nana at the airport before she had to board her plane. We loved having Nana and Opa visit and hope they will both be able to come back and visit when the baby comes in June!

Hero's Baptism

What a special day for Hero! I can't believe she has grown so much! She is such a wonderful, beautiful girl!

This is Hero at home before heading to the church.


Hero is enjoying her cake after the baptism wearing a necklace her friend, Morgan, had made her for the occasion.


Hero is here with two of her friends, Morgan and Kaelyn, who sang a song for Hero's baptism. They did a beautiful job!

After Hero's baptism we all headed over to a restaurant called Kimonos for dinner. We enjoyed having some family time with Dave's parents and my parents who were able to visit from out west for Hero's special day.

Bastian is enjoying eating a lemon and making lots of fun faces for us!


The kids always enjoy eating at Kimonos, because they can watch the chefs at work. The chefs always like to entertain the kids by throwing vegetables at the window, squirting oil on the window or making flames shoot up.

Corbin turns 5

We started out Corbin's birthday by going to our local science museum to see their new dinosaur exhibit. We went to see "Bolt" in 3D in the afternoon. We enjoyed the movie, but Corbin was a little tense during the beginning chase scene, which had a lot of 3D effects. After the movie we took the kids to IHOP for dinner, which is their favorite place to eat out, then we came home for presents and pumpkin pie (Corbin has never liked cake much and requested the pumpkin pie.) I had planned on making homemade, but the day got kind of crazy and I ended up running to Costco to pick up one of their pumpkin pie's instead, which was still very good!

Corbin's biggest requests for his birthday were for the "ultimate lightsaber" and a knight costume he loved playing with at a friends house. Dave and I got him both of those as well as the movie "Kung Fu Panda" and a couple of Star Wars figurines. He also received a large lego set, a Star Wars helmet, a Star Wars puzzle and some money he used to buy some TMNT toys. Corbin was very excited about all his gifts!

Happy Times!

I love those happy times when all three of my kids are enjoying playing together. It brings me so much joy! Bastian was having so much fun pushing Hero and Corbin around. They would get to the end of the hall, turn around and do it all over again. I can't tell you how many times Bastian pushed them back and forth.

8th Birthday Party

Saturday Hero had an awesome birthday party at a horse stable in town (one of Dave's Xebweb clients was very generous in offering to do this party for Hero). All the children were able to ride two different horses, C.C. and Turbo, then Hero got a special turn to ride Turbo and steer him on her own, turn circles, etc. They also got to feed one of the horses, groom and lead the miniature pony, paint a horse craft, get their faces painted and get tattoos. Hero had a blast!




I found a picture of a horse cake online I thought I might be able to pull off, but I still thought I might be making a run to Walmart to buy a cake because mine wouldn't turn out. I love doing pretty much all things crafty, but I am not very confident in my cake decorating skills, so I was pretty surprised when the cake turned out better than I thought it would!


I heated hot dogs in a crockpot and we had hot dogs, chips, fruits and veggies. I bought bubble gum machines at the dollar store, filled them with bubble gum, attatched the star balloons, then wrapped them in pink bandanas. These then doubled as decorations and party favors.


I was so amazed that Corbin was so willing to get on a horse (considering I have a difficult time getting him to even pet animals in the petting zoo). He really enjoyed it! I also thought Bastian would be scared, but we got him up on the horses without a fuss. He seemed pretty sober about the whole thing, but didn't seem upset about riding.










Hero had a great time with all her friends! She got lots of horse related gifts - a pet shop horse suffed animal, a petshop horse t-shirt and a bratz doll with a horse. She also received two Disney Fairy books, some littlest pet shop animals and a Target gift card. She loved all her gifts and we were so glad so many of her friends could come! I think they all had a great time!