Merry Christmas

(Picture "For Unto Us a Child Is Born" by Simon Dewey)

Love, the Nuttalls

'Tis the Season

While the kids keep busy playing:

Ethan and I keep busy creating:

And we are discovering giving is all the more fun when you've made the gift yourself.

We are planning. We are preparing. We are all anticipating. We are loving this time of year.

We've Had a Birthday

and it was a very good birthday, too.

Hudson requested hotdogs and chips and soda for his birthday dinner (he has a bit of chocolate on his nose from sampling the frosting from his cake).

For months, whenever he was asked what he wanted for his birthday he always said, "a teddy bear." He got his wish.

He got two Berenstain Bears books - his favorite kind of book!

He wanted a chocolate cake. And I cannot tell you how thrilled he was to see me putting sprinkles on the cake.

5 candles for our new 5-year-old.

"For he's a jolly good felloooooow . . . " Libby cracks up when we sing that.

Libby's letting Hudson know which candle he still needs to blow out.

Yum, yum. Hudson picked out Neapolitan ice cream to go with his cake.

This is the best cake! Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake. I found this recipe a few years ago and it's become our choice of chocolate cake. Our other favorite cake: Humming Bird Cake with cream cheese frosting. Hmmm, maybe I'll make that for my birthday.

Libby thinks it's good.

Hudson's Grandma Hawkins made this cowboy outfit for him. We've had a cowboy wanderin' around these parts ever since.

Hudson said he had the "best birthday ever"!

Snow Dough

Last week we made snow dough.

The kids had so much fun creating things.

Maria made a carrot.

Lincoln didn't want to touch the stuff.

But all the other kids had a blast.

It was really fun to see Libby working so intently on one thing for so long.

I used this recipe from this website to make the snow dough. It turned out really well.

The kids had so much fun playing with the snow dough it was the first thing they wanted to do the next morning.

Because sometimes

you just need to eat dinner by lamplight.

Painting

Painting is always fun. And always messy. This was a couple of weeks ago when the kids were painting the first letter of their names to put on their standards.

This was Lincoln's first time painting. He loved it.

This was Lincoln's response when I told him he had to share the color he was using.

I'm not sure how this happened.

The kids had so much fun. The letters are cut from cereal boxes. They loved painting on the cardboard so much I went through the recycling and cut up more cereal boxes. The cardboard was great to paint with, paper is so flimsy and it's easy for the kids to paint a hole into it.

It was a crazy afternoon, chaos and paint everywhere. The kids had a blast.