Baby Micah.

Before Christmas, on December 20, my twin sister Amy had her second baby, a sweet little boy! He is a little blessing and we love our newest nephew/cousin.

Micah Emmanuel Kearns

8 lbs 5 oz

21"

I love the little baby burrito!

Amy is looking great and doing well...though she is greatly looking forward to the day when he will not be awake ALL night and she can get some sleep.

Our Family Christmas.

We celebrated our family Christmas on December 23-before the business of travel and extended family activities. During the day, Nathan, Ella, and I decorated some gingerbread cookies (taken out of the freezer from Baking Extravaganza). They had different requests for each one...happy, sad, silly, crazy, etc.

Here they are with our little Gingerbread Family. After the cookies were decorated, it was on to dinner. Since the kids are little, and this is a birthday party after all, we decided to make homemade pizza (with Root Beer of course).

Ella also got her haircut this day (her second). I said I wouldn't do it, but she's got bangs!

We then let the kids open their gifts from us-we definitely kept it on a small scale since we knew they would be getting lots of gifts from their grandparents. Their joy, however, was still was big. They were all fun to watch, but everytime after Ella opened a gift, she would exclaim, "It's what I always wanted...Thank you, thank you...I need to give you a hug!". Here she is giving me a hug after opening something, I think it was either a box of fruit snacks or CandyLand. It made giving gifts a lot of fun!

The "big" gift of the night was a sled. Though Nathan has a sled of his own, Matt thought we should be a 2-sled family. He has big plans for our yard. Hopefully soon they'll get to take it for a test drive in the snow, instead of just through the living room!

Baking Extravaganza!

Last week was Christmas Baking Extravaganza...2 adults, 4 kids, 5 1/2 hours of baking, and 10 different types of goodies!

Unfortunately the day started out with a sprinkle spill...my kids know how to clean them up, though it eventually got a little out of hand and had to be put to a stop.

In general, the kids were more about playing in the basement then baking, but certain jobs were worthy of their time. For example, here is Ella making peanut butter balls.

Auntie Amy and the kids mixing up something. It's subtle, but if you look at Nathan, you'll notice that his hand is in the jar of brown sugar.

"Gingerbread boys" or "Gingermen" as Ella calls them, ready to go in the oven.

Here's a display of some of the tasty treats!

The puppy chow and the caramel puffcorn didn't last long, but at least I had the sense of mind to put all the cookies in the freezer (and send a big plate with Matt to work).