Ethan's Birthday and Our Own Live Nativity

Ethan turned 9 this week. He's got the easy age to remember because he is the age of the year. It was a fun, but frustrating week of anticipation and dealing with emotions. This child lets things get to him a little too much, whether they be good or bad. I used to think he was my even keel child. Not so much anymore. It was like a roller coaster ride with him. One minute he's happy, the next he is convinced everyone hates him, the next he's bouncing off the walls with excitement. It drove me to near exhaustion. Luckily, he is also a little carefree when it comes to preferences for things. Where as the other 2 have planned out the exact cake they want, Ethan usually says whatever, so this year we came up with the idea of ice cream sundays. That made it nice for me. He also always chooses pizza for his dinner, another easy thing. When all is said and done, I am very glad Ethan is part of our family. He is very loving and thoughtful and brings a lot of joy into our family.

Here was our own little 'live' nativity Sophia created and we happened upon. She never even called us to come and look. She was just sitting there like this when we went to see what Clara was up to. Try and guess who all of the animals are. I'm not sure if I remember all of them. The bear opposite her is Joseph and the bear behind him with the yellow blanket behind it is the camel. There are 2 animals hiding in the blanket to make the camel's humps. I thought it was pretty cute and pretty imaginative.

Playing Host

For the past 2 weekends we played host to some welcomed visitors. Our guest bedroom has come in mighty handy. The day after Thanksgiving the Taylors came to visit us from Nashville. You know when the stars align and you meet a family where there is a friend for everyone and everyone really likes each other, even the parents? Well they are that kind of family and that's why we really miss them. As you can see, everyone has a playmate and the parents like to play games, so you can guess what we stayed up too late doing every night. We also took them out to Stone Mountain Park for the day, which was a lot of fun even if we picked what was probably the busiest day of the year as their Christmas Village stuff had just opened that day. Instead we avoided the crowds, had a picnic and walked across a covered bridge.

The Boys
The Girls
And Clara (she's kind of the odd man out in this idyllic arrangement).

She's dancing on some granite and you can see Stone Mountain in the background.

A week later, Grandma and Grandpa Budge came into town. Again we stayed up late playing games and hanging out, but we took them to Stone Mountain too (really it's pretty impressive and compared to all of the downtown stuff, rather cheap so we like it).

We also hosted our annual St. Niklaus celebration with gingerbread house making. For those who don't know, Dec. 6 is St. Niklaus Tag in Germany and it's become a tradition (I think this year was our 10th!). We have a couple families over, decorate the houses and St. Niklaus comes to leave candy in the kids shoes, if they've been good.

The kids decorating their houses and the finished products.

And every year I save a house for me and only me to decorate. Usually I do this after everyone leaves (I have stayed up way past midnight doing this a couple of times). This results in a well decorated house and some creative satisfaction for me. Plus I'm usually too busy playing hostess to decorate while everyone is there. Here's this years.