White Christmas

I may have dreamed of a white Christmas but I sure didn't dream of a Christmas without power. It really wasn't too bad but we were without power for almost 6 hours Christmas night. It started freezing rain about lunch and the power went off at 4:30. Then it started snowing. We have a generator and Heath had everything ready to hook it up to the pool house and we discovered we had the wrong type of plug on it. :( So, we closed off all the doors to the bedrooms and lit the fireplace and the candles. We played games to pass the time and about 10:30 the electricity came back on.

This is the view from our back door when the lights came back on and it snowed the rest of the night.

From the front door.

The boys passed the time playing on their new tablets they got for Christmas.

And Zeke slept.

This is what we woke up to this morning.

Snowball fight with the neighbors!

Merry Christmas

Well. Santa has come and gone and we have lots of new toys at our house! Austin and Kamden woke up Christmas morning with one last surprise from our elf, Norman. He toliet papered the door opening of their room and the stairs!

Since he went back to the North Pole with Santa, he left them a note. Incase, you're wondering, elves write backward. :)

I don't have any pictures of Santa's gifts because I was videoing. Kamden got a motor scooter. Hopefully, he won't use it to plow down any mailboxes. :) Austin got a metal detector. Thankfully, he didn't get a shovel to go with it or our yard would probably look like an armadillo had got ahold of it.

Waiting by their stacks of presents (or so they thought). This year I didn't put name tags on the gifts but I wrapped each child's gifts in a certain paper. Since none of them had names, they thought I hadn't bought their gifts yet. Christmas morning they seperated them into stacks and then they had to look in the bottom of their stocking to see which pattern of paper was their's.

Heath's boss, Mr. Warren, sent them a Polar Express Train set. He is an avid train lover so he sends them a train set every year.

Opening some presents.

All the presents have been opened...What a mess!

Well, all the presents but one...Mine! I really didn't expect to get anything since we just bought my car in November but Heath surprised me. I had to go on a scavenger hunt for it.

Here are some of my clues:

I finally found it and boy, was I SURPRISED!!! I had NO idea I was getting it. I'd say he did a pretty good job picking it out-I LOVE it!

Norman!

I just thought I'd post some pictures of Norman's latest tricks.

He decided to have a little fun with the dry erase marker and the boy's pictures.

I guess he needed a little sugar.

Pallet party with his friends in his new LSU sleeping bag.

Introducing the WWE Champion; Norman!!!

From one sport to the other; now he's tackling Drew Brees.

Rocking baby Jesus. Norman knows that Jesus is the reason for the season!

Painting

Last night, I had a girl's night out with some of the other H&P wives from Searcy. We went to Little Rock, had dinner and painted. It was a lot of fun even though I'm not a artsy person. You have to realize, I can't even draw a straight line so I about had a stroke when I walked in and saw this sitting on our easels:

I thought our pattern would already drawn out; but our instructor walked us through the drawing (and painting) step by step. And this is my finished product:

I was pleased with it considering this was my first attempt at painting.

Christmas Parade

Saturday night we went to Searcy's Christmas Parade. I have to say it wasn't all that great but it was a beautiful night to be outside. Heath got some pretty good pictures of the Courthouse Square with his phone so I thought I'd share them.

Climbing the lamp post waiting on the parade.

Christmas House

Saturday, we helped at our church's Christmas House. It is an outreach ministry to those in our community that are struggling financially. We offered medical and dental screenings, flu shots, haircuts, coats, underwear, socks, diapers and 40 pound food boxes. We served about 300 families. Heath worked outside loading food boxes into cars. Austin was a children's guide. His job was to take the kids around to the different stations such as the photo room, the craft and movie area or the game area. Kamden and I were adult guides. We took the adults to the stations that they needed to go to. News channel 11 from Little Rock did a story on Christmas House while we were there Saturday. I'm not sure it will work but here's the link to watch the video:


http://www.todaysthv.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=236954

You'll have to copy & paste it. Sorry!

This is our 3rd year to work in this type of ministry and we really enjoy it. Each time, we leave very humbled and thankful for our blessings the Lord has given us.

Guess Who's At Our House?

NORMAN!

Norman, our elf, came back to our house last night! The boys are so excited!! Both of them asked last week when Norman was coming back. So, stay tuned to see what kind of tricks he's got up his sleeve this year.