Catching up!

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! I certainly did :). what did you all do? I will tell you about my day later on in another post. 

Did any of you go see the nutcracker this year? we did! it was my first time and overall I enjoyed it :). we didn't see the full ballet though just the second act. 

Every year we go to my dads parents and make ginger bread houses ( or castle, manger, train, anything really) well I guess I should say graham cracker houses because only 2 were made of ginger bread :) anyways we have done it every year for as long as I can remember and its always so neat to see how they change over the years but unfortunately only some of us were able to participate in the castle making because we had some sick ones. this year Isaiah and I teamed up and made a castle and a bridge. 

warping cardboard bases 

 of course there is always lots of candy involved 

Paul's sweet train

our castle slowly but surely coming along

 ta-da! our Christmas castle :). I didn't think we were going to be able

to finish it, my partner was pretty antsy to get it decorated before it was

done being built but we toughed it out and thanks to Marys amazing

icing it held the pieces together and we finished it! 

This is Natalie's adorable little manger..she did such a wonderful job

Here is Esther's amazing shopping mall. she even made Olaf (the little snowman from the movie Frozen)! :)

I think she had a hat, barber, and chocolate shop in her mall :)

this is Valerie's colorful creation.

 And Mary's beautiful ginger bread house 

Ok now for or pre-Christmas vacation part 1 I wanted to put all of our trip in this post but as I started uploading the pictures I was thinking nope, nope its not going to happen! because we were gone for a week so I have a looooott of pictures :) so I'll just do it in 2 parts :) we went to Alabama to visit our Uncle Denny and Aunt Betty.

ok so I went back and looked at these 2 pictures and started laughing because the first one (left) I took in the van right before we left and the second one (right) I took once we were in Alabama :) yes did I mention it was lots warmer there?!

their house is was amazingly decorated and it was beautiful!!

Natalie making garlic bread

 Meet one grandson Carson 

 Coffee 

 Mary frying beacon

 curling Mary's hair for no reason really :) we kinda ran out of things 

to do after awhile 

 We had lots of food when we were there so there was lots of cooking :)

 and Mary made Denny 16 apple pies 

 Kate and her boyfriend Micah

 Alaina and Valerie

 Meet their second grandson Knoks he is a little ball of energy 

 one of the days Betty took us for a ride through the woods 

Betty, Mary and I

Ok well I will be back with part 2 and our Christmas vacation to my moms dads :) I hope you all 

have a wonderful day! and God bless!! 

Emily Ann