Hotrum Christmas

This year I was lucky enough to host Christmas at my house! So as everyone descended on the house the pile of presents grew to astonishing heights! It was a wonderful day of food, family, and of course the presents! After dinner, and a little nap for Jude we decided to tray and get a picture of the 4 kids together. You can see how well that worked out! We are so blessed to have such amazing family to spend the holidays with!

Merry Christmas

We always spend Christmas morning with just the 4 of us. This year was no different. Its nice to have a couple hours to just open our presents to each other, enjoy breakfast and be together. The kids were most excited about oping the presents they got each other, Dylan so much that after he opened the presents from Ally he wrapped her up in a HUGE hug! I am so lucky to have such a wonderful husband and two amazing kids! Merry Christmas!

Hass Christmas

Tonight we celebrated Christmas with my side of the family like usual. This year though we were blessed to be able to go to the candle light service at our church. It was wonderful! We then came home and ate a wonderful yummy dinner of Ham, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and of course rolls! Then it was time for PRESENTS!! Unfortunately my brother and sister in law were not with us this year, but we celebrated with Poppa Mike, Grandma Jo, Uncle Roger, and Grandma Winnie! The kids had a blast playing "Santa" and handing out all the presents. They were spoiled this year!

Church Christmas Program

This year the church did a musical. Neither of my kids were old enough to be in the main program but they did get to be animals in the Nativity and sing on the last song with everyone. They both sang out great and had a wonderful time! The second service when they did it I was sitting on the ground a few rows back and could hear Ally belting it out above the rest of the kids! I was so glad they were able to participate and have a great time! Here are my little sheep and bull!

Dylan's School Christmas Program

This was Dylan's 3rd year doing a school Christmas program and every year he gets a little more comfortable with it. Notice I said "a little," he still tends to lean towards the shy side but it makes everything that much cuter! They sang "Happy Birthday Jesus" while holding pieces of cake with candles! It was so cute and very uplifting.

Ally's School Christmas Program

Tonight was Ally's first Christmas program at school and she did so well! She sang and did all the hand motions. It is incredible how God uses our children to bless us and remind us to have that childlike faith. What a blessing it was to experience all those children singing songs about God and reciting memory verses!

Soap Making

Today we made some soap. This is going to be little gifts for the kids teachers this year. They got to help with putting the glycerin in the pan and then we just let it liquefy, added a scent and some food coloring. then poured it into our little snowflake molds. After letting them cool a few hours we popped them out of the molds and....TA-DA!

Christmas Tree!

We went and got our Christmas tree tonight. We always go to the BiMart parking lot to get it. The one year we went and actually cut our own tree down it fell down 3 times. So we stick with what works now. This year we got a 6 foot Noble. Here are some pictures of decorating and my little elves.

Thankful

Dylan put together a Box of Thanks at Grandparents Day at school. I wanted to share what he is thankful for.

I am thankful for my family
I am thankful for Roscoe and Wilson
I am thankful for a fan
I am thankful for paper
I am thankful for my bed
I am thankful for a star
I am thankful for Grandma
I am thankful for my house
I am thankful for cousins
I am thankful for Jesus

What a great reminder to be thankful for all the little things. But especially to be thankful for Jesus and all he has done for us and provided for us. I am trying to remember to be thankful in all situations.

Pumpkin Patch and some Carving Fun!

Today we headed out to Davis Family Farms for our annual trek to find the perfect pumpkin.

Since it was the weekend before Halloween it was very busy we had to wait quite a while for the tractor to take us out to the field but Poppa entertained the kids pulling them around in the wagon and making them laugh.

FINALLY the tractor arrived and we squeezed on all nice and cozy

and made our way out, noting along the way the various farm animals. We made it all the way out the the very farthest field, unloaded ourselves and the search began!

The rule that my parents had always growing up was that you had to be able to carry it out if you wanted it...I managed to haul a 43 pound pumpkin out of that patch all by myself! We got back to the barn, got our pumpkins weighed, and let the kids pick out gourds while the grandmas were busy buying doughnuts and cider. We got all of our loot loaded up in the car and then let the kids run and play on the hay stack for awhile to burn some energy.

Finally it was time to say goodbye to the pumpkin patch and head home to a yummy lunch of warm potato soup made by Grandma Janice and a pumpkin cake made by Poppa and Grandma Jo.

After getting all the lunch dishes cleaned up we settled in on the floor to carve some pumpkins! This is the first year the kids have really gotten their hand in on the pumpkin cleaning out process, but they really enjoyed it this year!

After getting all the gunk out Poppa, the master carver, helped the kids carve theirs with whatever they wanted and then managed to whip out and AWESOME cat design on his!

My monster pumpkin had a scared screaming face

and Grace's had a happy face.

It was such a fun time to hang out with family, relax, and get our hands a little dirty with some good "clean" fun!