we are still here!

Yes, we are still here and life is still fun and busy and exciting and crazy and good!!  :-)  I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted anything - seriously, I think the last post was November!  Yikes!!  So I'm going to play some catch-up to get us up to speed and hopefully get on a better/more frequent schedule again!!

So, way back in December...

We pulled out the Christmas decorations...

and ate popcorn as we strung it for the tree...

and then topped it off with a star!

After wrestling with our Christmas tree lights and putting the outdoor 
icicle lights on the tree, we realized that it looked 
funny/bad because the cords were white... 
so after the tree was fully decorated, we took the first 
set of lights off and replaced with some 
green-cord lights that looked much better!  :-)

We decorated Christmas cookies... lots of fun!

We decorated a ginger bread house at home.  Josiah got to be 
Roman's guest at his school party, where they 
also decorated ginger bread houses... 
so we pretty much became experts this year!

Santa (daddy!) came to visit us at home!  Jake was asked to 
be Santa for one of his boss' family Christmas.  Roman 
and Josiah were very excited to have Santa at home!

Benjamin was less than thrilled to have Santa at our house, 
even though Santa took off his beard and became "daddy" 
very quickly. :-(  Benjamin still says "Ho, ho, ho, Daddy" whenever 
he sees a picture of Santa OR anyone with a long, white beard
 (ie Santa or Abraham or most men in a children's bible).

We have four shovels in our garage, so all four of the 
Stotts men got to help scoop/shovel when it was time!  

A merry Christmas family picture...
one of our last family pics as a family of five!

... and that was our December, went by in a flash!