California

Been in California with the family since Friday. Here's some pictures from yesterday!

Home for the Holidays...

I wanted to write this earlier but you know how the holidays can be! So this will be a little bit of a long post.

After 13 plus hours of waiting in a snowed in airport in Kansas City, I finally made it home last Friday! Living 1000 miles away from family means I usually only get home once a year and so I make a long vacation out of it every year.

My first night here was my "little" (he's bigger than me) brother 28th birthday! We celebrated by going ice skating! My niece has been asking to go ice skating and they kept telling her when aunt Courtnie got here they will go, so we didn't waste any time. My brother is a fire fighter and made her wear a helmet while skating so some of these pictures make her look like a special child.

I made it just in time to catch my little brother on closing night in his performance of White Christmas Saturday night. He played Mike the stressed out stage manager and he was phenomenal! I love seeing my siblings perform they are all so talented in so many different ways and I hate that I miss out on so much of their lives living so far away.

Christmas Eve is all about tradition at the Wards. We attend Christmas Eve service as a family, dinner is soup in bread bowls and a cheese and crackers spread, then onto the siblings gift exchange and  Christmas pj's from "Santa's Elves." All this is followed by the hanging of stockings, Christmas story reading and putting out cookies, milk and carrots (for the reindeer). After the kids go to sleep, thats when mom and I usually get to work wrapping and setting out gifts for morning but this year I helped mom wrapping until 4am the night/morning before to be prepared for Christmas morning so this year was actually an "early" 1am night for me. Here are pictures from Christmas eve, Christmas morning and Christmas night (which is always spent at my aunt and uncles for Christmas dinner. Sidenote; there were 22 people there this year and my brother Colin had to miss out due to work)

Christmas Eve!

Christmas Morning!

Christmas Evening!

In closing, Christmas Eve day we went to my grandma "Moosey's" grave (she passed away Dec. 29th last year) and being there was way harder than I had anticipated. You are missed Moosey and Christmas was a little less brighter without your smile.

                           Thanks for reading (this long post). How was your Christmas???

Heartbroken.

Overwhelmed with hurt and sadness hearing of the Connecticut elementary school shooting today. Praying for Jesus' precious perfect peace and comfort for all the families involved. Sweet little innocent babies fell victim to an insane and hurting man today. Our broken world makes my stomach turn. Weeping with these families. Come Lord Jesus come!

Christmas time is fun

Christmas time is fun with preschoolers! There are so many fun things to make to add joy and excitement to their lives and your own. Today we made Rudolph hats and went to the other classrooms and sang "Rudolph the red nose reindeer." They had a blast showing off their hats and their singing ability to their peers! Here are some pictures from our day!