This Morning at our House~

This is where you can find Charlie most any time of the day.

From the time he comes downstairs in the morning, 'til it's bedtime, he's pretty much in the red chair.  Reading.  This guy LOVES books! 

And this morning, Kate joined him.

They both LOVE this, and can often be found reading together.

And then there's the piano practicing that needs to be done~ Christmas carols to be learned for a program at the nursing home.

Just a typical morning at our house!    

  

The Boys~

Here they are!

Together again!

This time at Pike's Peak.

I might have laughed at Son #1's hiking attire.  The button down shirt.  Need to ask if he's wearing his hiking boots or his brother's. But I am loving seeing them TOGETHER!

Looking very forward to seeing these 2 guys in a couple of weeks.  We haven't seen Will since last Christmas.  And that is just WAY too long.

Glad you're enjoying your brother time, guys!

 

Family Game Night~

Better late than never, I guess.

After all these years of parenting, we've FINALLY decided to implement Family Game Night.

And Emily, this is in honor of you! Our girl who LOVED to play games, has always said that's one thing (among many, I'm sure) she would have changed about her growing up years.  We didn't play enough games.

I LOVE the idea of playing games.

I love all that the children learn while playing games.

I love the family togetherness. 

 

 I LOVE the idea of family game night.  

But actually doing it????

Well, that's another story.

BUT Bill and I had talked and decided that TONIGHT would be THE night.  And once we told the children, we KNEW there would be no turning back.

So, this morning at breakfast, we told the kids that TONIGHT would be.....

FAMILY GAME NIGHT!

We all got in jammies, turned on Christian radio and then started our evening with a pizza dinner.

Then we moved in to playing our games!

The first game of the evening was "Drop the Bean into the Tin Can."  What, you've never played that game????

Well, I will tell you, I wasn't sure if we'd be playing any other games tonight, because they LOVED this game and kept wanting to play.  (Charlie was working on his Wolf badge for Scouts and needed to play a homemade game.  This one was one of the suggestions and sounded easy enough, so we tried it.) 

Here's Grace taking her turn.  Can you see the concentration on her face? 

Next we played Uno.  We chose this as it's one that we could all play together.  Team Ellie/ Daddy were the winners of that one.  Ellie actually did a lot of the playing since it's just basically matching colors and numbers.

  

After Uno, we divided into 2 groups.  I had the 3 younger children, and AC and Grace played games with daddy.

Ellie chose her new Elephant's Trunk game.

Then Kate chose Orchard.  We are big fans of Haba games in our house! This is a REALLY cute co-operative game that Ellie could play as well.

 

 And  here's Charlie with his choice. A race car game~ just perfect for our little man.

  

Meanwhile, AnnaClaire and Grace were busy playing Grace's choice of the Great States game.  I think they were playing the Jr. Version tonight, though we have both.

  

Then it was time for our "Special Dessert!"

Although I had visions of baking a special dessert, in the end I made things easy on myself and we served Root Beer Floats.

This was a first for the children and they LOVED them.

Except for Kate, who announced that she doesn't like soda, "like Sissy."  Ok then.  She enjoyed a dish of vanilla ice cream.

   

After dessert, Baby Sister headed to bed, and we played one more round of games.

AnnaClaire chose Trouble.

    

And Charlie, Kate and I played the pirate game. The name is in German, so we just call it The Pirate Game!  For some silly reason, I REALLY like this one, so this was my choice!  

We all had SUCH fun.

Want to join us next month?  We'll be having Family Game night the first Saturday night in Dec.  Not sure what our "special" dessert will be, but we'll be having pizza again for dinner.

It's already on the calendar!