First Riding Lesson

Olivia had her first horse back riding lesson this week.  She has been wanting to do this for months and she was so excited.  She kept asking what day it was because she knew her lesson was on Monday.  Once we got there, she was looking at all of the horses and asking what their names were. 

This is her with Prince, the horse she's learning to ride on. 

She asked a lot of questions.  This is her with the trainer, Ms. Janel.  They were looking at the pregnant horse. It will be so fun to see this horse baby after it's born!

First they learned about safety of a horse and then she got to lead him around in circles a few times. 

 Next she got to get right on.  I thought once she realized how big the horse was and how high up she was that she would be scared but she wasn't at all! 

 She learned how to hold the reins, make the horse go forward, turn and stop. 

 Gray just played in the dirt the whole time.  On the way there he kept asking if he could take tractor lessons.  I'm not sure there is such a thing. 

Olivia literally never stopped smiling the whole time.  It was so sweet to see her so happy and she looked like such a natural on the horse.  I think this might be her "thing" for a while.  She keeps talking about the barn cats and the horses.  She's quite the animal lover, I wish I knew where she got that from:) 

Christmas 2011

 We had a wonderful Christmas this year!  We did so much throughout the holidays it's hard to write it all into one blog and it was hard to narrow down all the pictures. 

We made our annual gingerbread house.  This gets more fun each year!

Here are the kids making cookies for Santa:

 On Christmas eve morning we let the kids open their presents from Mimi. Olivia was thrilled to get an American Girl doll and Grayson got a farm set. 

Then we headed to Grammy and Pappy's for Christmas Eve brunch and present opening.  Grammy has a sign that says "Who needs Santa when you've got Grandma?"  and that is so true!  Olivia just loves playing with Alyssa and they both love hanging out at Grammy and Pappy's house.  A couple of weeks before Christmas she started telling everyone she wanted Santa to bring her a DS.  Santa had already done his shopping but Grammy and Pappy surprised her with one!  She was soooo excited!  When you asked Grayson what he wanted every single time he would say "a remote control car, a remote control lightning, and a remote control motorbicycle."  They got him a remote conrtol monster truck which he LOVES but somehow I didn't get pictures of it!

 Steven and Michael had some fun with Gray's new nerf guns...

 Michael got a cool remote control helicopter which he promptly flew into the neighbors yard.  After staring at the problem for 30 minutes, they finally sent Steven over the barbed wire fence to get it!

 Christmas eve night we headed over to the Cantrell's house.  Liv got some accessories for her doll and lots of art projects and Gray got more nerf guns and lots of building toys. 

 Christmas morning is so fun when they are this age!  It's so fun to see them anticipate what Santa will bring and they are so excited to wake up that morning.  This year he brought Grayson a remote control Lightning McQueen and Olivia a Pop the Pig game. 

 She also got this wheelchair for her doll.  She wanted it so bad.  I haven't quite figured out why but she loves it. 

 Every year I buy them Christmas PJs because one of my favorite things is for them to wake up on Christmas morning in their Christmas PJs so we can take pictures in front of the tree.  Of course Grayson peed on his Christmas PJ's so that didn't work out so well.  If I could have had one thing for Christmas, it would have been for that child to be potty trained!

 After they opened gifts we got them ready and headed off to church.  They were in service with us and they did really well!  Then we headed to Kenny and Tricia's house for the Bippus Christmas.  We did our gift exchange with them and they opened presents from Pops and Grandma. Olivia was especially excited about getting a jewelry box and Grayson was thrilled to get a motorbicycle,  The food was yummy as usual and by the time lunch was over we were all exhausted!  We all came home and took a nap.  It was a wonderful Christmas weekend! 

Christmas Parties

One of my duties as the classroom mom was to plan Olivia's Christmas party.  We had 4 stations: coloring, eating, ornament making and reindeer craft.  I didn't get to take many pictures because I was too busy helping the kids with their oranments but Olivia and her classmates seemed to have a great time!

We've made a birthday cake for Jesus the last couple of years but this year we kicked off the Christmas break by having a birthday party for Jesus complete with decorations and balloons.  I read the Christmas story to the kids and then they all got to blow out a candle on a cupcake as we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus.  It was so fun and I think we'll make it an annual tradition!

This is what he did when I was trying to get him to smile.