Christmas Day

We had a wonderfully chaotic Christmas this year. Santa came, we had a delicious breakfast, opened presents from Gammy, and had a feast for lunch! And then nap time for kids and peace and quiet for the adults!!

These are not in order but you'll get the idea!

these 2 are into the same things...can you guess their main interest?!

singing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus

presents from Gammy

and presents from Santa - plasma cars for the big kids and a new lawnmower for Graham!

Brent got hooked up with some Alabama gear by his sister

Christmas Eve

As mentioned in the last post, we had Brent's sister Cara, her husband Clay, and their 3 kids in town from California for Christmas. (in addition to Gammy). Their kids are 4, 2, and 1. So we had lots of chaos, lots of noise, and lots of excitement in the Parnell household this weekend!

Thankfully, the weather on the 24th was absolutely beautiful. The kids were able to spend most of the day outside. They did crafts, played games, rode bikes, and played on the playground. That evening we went to the 5:00 service at church, had a heavy hors d'oeuvre dinner, sprinkled reindeer food on the lawn, opened presents from each other, and left our cookies for Santa. It was a busy day!

cheers! (griffin 4, cooper 4 1/2, avery 5 1/2)

spiderman's new pajamas

avery is so proud of her new gown and real slippers!

this was the first gift graham opened - and for quite a while he refused to put it down to open anything else! he was precious!!

enjoying opening gifts from each other

gotta love the enthusiasm!

getting ready to sprinkle our reindeer food in the yard

(griffin, cooper, avery, cohen)

and finally, setting out the cookies and milk for Santa before heading to bed

Christmas Activities with Gammy

Gammy drove up from Mobile last Monday and spent the week with us. She helped me entertain kids, menu plan, and grocery shop before Brent's sister and her fam arrived on Thursday. The kids love to play with Gammy - she always comes with crafts to make and plays things like "london bridge, may I, leap frog" and other games I would never think to play.

Graham is watching the craft making

making snow globes

We made and decorated Christmas cookies with Gammy too...

note that Griff's look like a pile of sprinkles and Avery is actual making faces and stuff on hers!

taking a turn mixing the batter

Snowflake Showoff

The kids gymnastics classes had a " Snowflake Showoff" on Wednesday night. The parents were able to come out onto the floor and around the other equipment to watch their kids. The older classes marched onto the floor in lines like they do in real gymnastics competitions. And they got ribbons and certificates at the end. Brent was able to make it so we split up and tried to divide time between kids so that everyone had a parent! (not sure how this is going to work once we have 4 kids involved in stuff!)

Here is Avery's class lining up to march in...

ready to show off!

cartwheels on a line

backward rolls

posing for a picture after receiving her ribbon

and here is Griff's class - they use the smaller gym in a separate building (there are 2 other boys in Griffin's class but just not in this picture!)

working on their stretching

the high bar!

doing bunny hops on the big beam with miss april

School Christmas Program

We have had a busy week in the Parnell household! Christmas party for dance tuesday...school Christmas program wednesday morning..."snowflake showoff" at gymnastics wednesday night...goodbye party for avery's teacher thursday...and school Christmas parties on Friday! Whew!

This is from Wednesday morning at Avery's school program. The K4 and K5 classes participate. And the 3 year old classes get to sit with their classes to watch. Each group sang several songs and the K5 dressed up and acted out the Christmas story. My pictures aren't great but you'll get the point!

Garrett and Griffin waiting patiently...

here comes our angel down the aisle

our angels is top left...hark the herald angels sing...


here is the whole crowd

quick shot with mommy

even daddy snuck away from work so he could make it!

Christmas Show and Party at Ballet

Today Avery's dance class had a Christmas "show" - really just watching what they do each week in class - and a little party. Brent worked late so I had both boys with me...but they did phenomenally well! I brought Graham's booster chair so that I could just buckle him down and feed him treats the whole time. Avery enjoyed it and smiled over her shoulder at us constantly.

doing their stretching

they use the french word for everything so I won't even try to type what they are doing!

walking on tip-toes

Lights of the South

We had a family outing Friday night so see the Lights of the South (http://www.lightsofthesouth.com/) in Grovetown. We had dinner at a local "meat and three" type place and then bundled up for the lights. We rode on a hayride, played on the playgound area, and roasted marshmallows.

Avery and Griffin inside the Gingerbread house

Sitting in Cinderella's Carriage

We rode on a hayride through the light displays. We saw everything from a nativity scene to Dora to spiderman and batman!

Even Graham got into it! He would point at things very excitedly!

Standing across the lake from Cinderella's castle

Gingerbread Houses

The kids and I decorated the house and the tree on Saturday while Brent was on call (at the hospital). One of the things they were looking forward to the most was decorating their own gingerbread houses. Publix had kits that had houses that was already put together - so all we had to do was decorate!

I am 100% confident that more icing and candy made it into Griff's mouth than onto his house...

and Avery was just the opposite...

here is Avery's final product - you can see the initial "BP" on the side - her "A" is on the other side of her house!


and here is Griff's final product