Christmas travels

After we opened gifts at home, we drove to Springfield and had Christmas with my family. It was a lot of Christmas in one day, but we had so much fun.
Sweet Christmas toes.

Zachary sporting his new Lego headlamp!

My festive parents!

The next day we drove to Grove and had more Christmas fun!

Watching The Princess Bride with A. J.

Christmas Day

A little late, but whatever! The boys were pretty excited about Santa coming through for them. Aidan asked for a Superhero house and Zachary asked for a net and a candycane. Easy!

We don't usually get Domino anything, but this year we felt a little crazy. She was pretty excited about the frisbee!

Gloves! Easy to please, that kid is!

Christmas Eve

 We have a tradition of opening one gift on Christmas Eve.  The gift is always new PJs.  This is our Christmas PJ picture!

 We read a lot of Christmas book during the month of December.  One of our favorites is Santa Mouse.  The boys have to leave cheese out for Santa Mouse.  The cookies were from a recipe from Aunt Jo.  Santa thought they were delicious!

There is a little known tradition that you leave your gingerbread house out for Santa on Christmas Eve.  If Santa likes it enough, he takes it back to the North Pole with him.  The tricky thing is that he only takes the best of the best.  Aidan was lucky because Santa took his gingerbread house back to the North Pole with him! 

Baking Santa's cookies

 This year for Santa's treat we baked Aunt Jo's chocolate chip cookies.  They were so good.  The best part was, I baked plenty for Christmas and then froze the rest of the cookie dough for later!  I am not sure if that will be consumed pre or post baking!

Those are hefty sized cookies, aren't they?!  We do not mess around when it comes to Santa's cookies!  After this, we put reindeer food in the yard.  Can't forget about them!

Lights of the Ozarks

These pictures were from our nearly annual trip to the Lights of the Ozarks in Fayetteville. The boys oohed and aahed over all of the lights. It was a joy to hear them.

The boys were wearing helmets, cutely camouflaged as Santa hats, to ride the camel.

Riding the camel!

Botanical Gardens Kids Fun Run

We made a spur of the moment decision a few weeks ago to visit a special day at the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks. They have the cutest children's garden there that the boys loved!

They have a cool model train exhibit set up. Since Aidan wants to be a train conductor when he grows up, this was right up his alley!

They even had a free fun run for the kids around the gardens! They asked us if we thought they should run one or two laps around...we told them two! The kids were excited to run in a race with a number on their shirt like Mom and Dad do.

What a fun way to spend a Saturday morning!

Zachary's Christmas program

Zachary had a precious 3 year old Christmas program this month. Look how sweet they are! This picture is with Zachary walking in with his sweet frient, Ava.

They performed in front of the church. Please, ask him to recite his part next time you see him. He would love to give you a performance.

Afterwards, they had a Birthday Party for Jesus!

Team Vagon Wagon!

 This weekend we went to Springfield to participate in our first FAMILY marathon relay.  It was fun to get to do something like this with Robin, Darren, and Darren's brother, Jason.  We did a five person marathon relay.  The race literally went all over town, but my second leg just happened to go right by where the kids were staying!  The stood out on the curb and waited for me as they cheered the other runners on. 

 They saw me and cheered so loudly!  It was great to see them and they can't stop talking about seeing me run in the race!

 Team Vagon (Van Lear) Wagon (Wagner).  Jason's wife, Crystal, ran the Bass Pro half marathon!

We placed third in our division and 9th out of 18 total teams.  We averaged 8:30/mile and ran 3:42 for the 26.2 miles!

Farmland Adventures!

First Field Trip!

Aidan's Kindergarten class took a field trip to McGarrah's Pumpkin Patch last week. I volunteered to go on an adventure to help...along with lots of other parents. It was so fun and I really liked getting to know his classmates. Now, I know who he is talking about when he comes home telling us stories!

First, we learned about the life cycle of a pumpkin...

...by this guy!

Silly boy!

Aidan and his friend, Cade.

Jumping off hay bales is always a favorite with boys!

Aidan and his friends, Cade and Ethan.

The hay ride.

In the "Land of the Giants."

At the relay races the teachers wondered about whose pumpkin was the best shaped for the job. Aidan's class won!

I believe this was many of the kids first time to play tug of war. We had to explain how to play and they played best two out of three. Aidan's team won! They were then reminded to be "humble winners" after taunting the other teams!

The corn maze! We made it out with all 20 kids!

We even made it out of the EXIT. Many teams came out the same place they went in! Aidan was proud of his class. Humble winner was then re-explained!

Mrs. McCulley's class

Everyone brought home their own pumpkin!