We decorated rice krispie houses this morning together. Kate calls them "gingerman houses." Adults took control of the icing, and the girls decorated with gum drops (V called them rain drops), and little hard candies.

Aaron was serious about his design and artwork!

Vivian was also concentrating well.

We ate the masterpieces immediately. Just a few bites, though!

So much fun!

A few more funny things they said about the project:

When I told them what we were going to do, Vivian exclaimed, "Mom! That's amazing!"

And when we were waiting for Aaron to come downstairs to start, we heard his footsteps and I said, "I hear him!" Vivian said, "Hey Mommy, here comes our handsome prince!"

Ha!!

Here are the rest of the pictures I took at the Grubb's Sunday School class party on Friday night.

We met at The Homeplace first for a great dinner together, and then went back to Jerry and MaryLynn's house for games and snacks.

Vivian and Kate had a fun evening as well, making and decorating Christmas sugar cookies at home with the babysitters :)

We love our hilarious friends!

Can you imagine what we were doing Friday night with our beloved church family?

More to come!

On Friday V and I had another "special day" together while K was in preschool. This is what she has started to call Fridays with me. And don't worry...I also have a special day (Mondays) with K, too...in fact, this morning we were at Chuck E. Cheese playing together while V was in preschool.

This past Friday we went to the mall to ride the train and get a Christmas dress.

We had a girly lunch at Panera Bread (I think I crave their mac and cheese at any given moment). After we ate, we had lots of extra time to sit and work on writing letters.

I really enjoy spending one-on-one time with each of them!

On Saturday Aaron and I were able to take them to see Elmo Live here in Salem. It's so fun as parents to see your kids enjoy something so much. When the show first started, Vivian was squealing to the point that I thought she was going to cry because of the intensity of emotion :)

Kate's gaze was glued to the stage...she loved every minute of it. Her favorite seemed to be Ernie...whenever he wasn't out on stage she asked about him.

There was lots of dancing and smiles.

Messy, and exciting at first, but now a little rushed to get the house settled and clean once again!

I meant to post this on December 1! We've started talking a lot about Christmas around here, and we're doing two types of Advent Calendars. One is just this fun countdown of the days that is easy for them to understand. After dinner each night they take turns opening the door for that day and find a treat.

We are also using the Jesse Tree that our children's director Jill gave to us last year. This Advent resource is for teaching about the coming of Christ and our anticipation of His redemption. It starts from the beginning and moves through the Old Testament to show God's provision for His people through the gospel of Christ.

You can do Jesse Trees in so many ways, but ours is a picture of a tree on the fridge that gets new "ornaments" every evening after we read the selected Scripture and lesson.

The girls enjoy it because they get to dig through all the choices and find the correct ornament. They aren't understanding the lessons that much, but I'm just thankful that they are excited about doing it.

We hope your Advent is filled with the wonder of Christ's coming as a baby to rescue the world, and also with deep longing for Him to reign as King forever in a new heaven and new earth.

Molly Jaeger: I posted my Thanksgiving pictures, no matter if they are belated, and now it's your turn! I need to see those babies of yours!

:)

Love you!

This one takes after her mommy.

On Saturday on our way home, we met up with Jonathan, Joy, Seth, and Joel. We were glad to see them and recap our Thanksgivings with each other and also get ideas for Christmas celebrations. We enjoyed a dinner at Champps at South Point in Durham, and then walked around for a few minutes to find ice cream before we parted ways and headed home.

Joel! He ate like a grown man, and smiled at us every chance he could.

We distracted them from playing in the fountain by making them pose for a picture. You can tell they've been doing this way too much because they all know how to cheese it up.

We love these friends and can't wait to see them again this winter.

Aaron and Jonathan are inseparable :) They are both AWESOME dads, too!

There's lots to love in these pictures:

Sweet Emma's face, Vivian's new haircut and attempted camera smile, playing on the tractor, Kate's thoughtful gaze on how to get what she wants...

And she takes action...pushing, screaming to get off because it's her turn. Vivian's determination to stay on the tractor shown in the tightness of her mouth while still looking at the camera for a photo shoot, and Emma's continued sweet face and smile while being attacked.

Whoa...we did a lot of driving this Thanksgiving! Aaron did 90% of it...thanks babe.

Now that's a nice looking chauffeur. Lucky me :)

We left early Thursday morning for Spring Hope. We spent most of the day Thursday with his family except for a few hours when we took a small trip to my dad's family Thanksgiving (see posts below!). On Friday we drove to Raleigh and spent the night with my Grandma, and came back home on Saturday night.

The whole trip was a blessing to all of us. The girls couldn't have been sweeter with all the family. I was so proud of them for not getting overwhelmed with the many different faces. They were also very good back seat riders on each leg of the trip.

This was our best Thanksgiving yet! I didn't have the new mom jitters or uptightness that I've had in previous years. And no one got sick! Very thankful!

We hope everyone else had a great holiday, remembering how much we have to be thankful for in our faithful God and his gift of the gospel.

We all know who these little ones are!

Cousin Brian and Alyse, new parents

V, Emma, and Addison

Sweet, sweet Sophia

Chelsea, Caleb, Alyse

Uncle Larry and Aunt Julie

Uncle Rick (the ever-faithful dishwasher at family gatherings) and Aunt Larisa

Grandma Peggy! Thanks for hosting us. We love having Thanksgiving at your house and so does everyone else!

Mike arranged a checkers tournament for the family on Thursday. I wish I had gotten a picture of the huge bracket he and Ben created for the wall in their living room. Every name was on it (although I didn't play because when my turn was up, we were going to another Thanksgiving gathering...whew! saved from humiliation). Here are some pictures that capture the tournament:

The money jar had about $100 in it for the winner. We had played all afternoon and by 9:30 or 10 pm there was still one more game to play to decide the champion, between Virginia and Brian, but it was too late so they just split the money. Hopefully they will be able to play against each other at Christmas to determine a winner!

There was a relay race planned for Thanksgiving afternoon.

Everyone in the Fernandez clan gathered together to hear the instructions for the race:

Ben explained everything...it was all his idea and he set it all up. Thanks for the fun, Ben!

Cousin Joey and his mom Aunt Julie went 2nd to show us all how to do it (the first contenders...Aaron and Ben...weren't a great example haha). First you had to carry an egg on a spoon without dropping it.

Carry four pieces of wood to another place and stack them up...

Here's Brooke running back to the finish line. Wow!

I think Aunt Larisa and I went last. We clobbered almost every other team with our fast time. I'm serious...we came in 2nd place!

I was just having fun in an embarrassing situation (everyone watching you run as fast as you can) but it looks like I knew we were victorious :)

On Thursday evening we took a break from the Fernandez festivities and drove 30 minutes over to my Granny's house near Wilson. We were met with lots of family and more food! V and K were excited to see Papa and Gramme, but there were lots of other family that they are starting to recognize as years pass.

Cousin Amy and her niece Hannah

Dad and Uncle Tim

There was a football game on in the kitchen...I can't believe it was that interesting?!

We tried to get V and K to eat some supper...they turn everything into a game or a joke!

Uncle Joey and Aunt Sierra were there! And we can't wait for their housewarming party this weekend!

Gene and Granny, our hosts. We are so thankful for you!

On Friday we headed to Raleigh to stay with Grandma (the girls call her Mama Dot). We did lots of fun things, but we mostly relaxed and ate a lot :). We stayed until Saturday afternoon...taking our time for everything and enjoying the company!

While we were waiting for the meal to be ready, the girls took Angel for a walk.

Kate is Papa's girl. She's also playful, sometimes in an irritating way like trying to poke you in the eye with glasses while you're trying to talk on the phone :).

It went well at the beginning...

...until K realized that there was a possibility for her to hold the leash. Then the whole walk became a teaching experience for sharing and taking turns with some tears.

Grandma Carolyn, Granddaddy, and Aunt Nancy were our traveling guests. We were glad to see them! Nancy gave the girls some books as gifts.

After the wonderful, filling meal (thanks for cooking Grandma!), we sat around together and played the Newlywed game.

It was a fun evening...the game was intense at times, with lots of flip-flopping of which couple was in the lead. I think Aaron and I came in last place when it was all said and done.

Stephen was our host! He did a great job coming up with the questions. One of the hardest was, "which animal does your mother-in-law remind you of?" because TWO of the mother-in-laws were in the room! Can you imagine?!

Vivian pretended to play along as she wrote down her answers.

After everyone else went to bed, Michael, Stephen, Aaron, and I went to the movies. We had some miscommunication about which theater we were going to, and we ended up at the end of Six Forks at a small, shady theater...ha! But it was fun...popcorn can't be beat, and the movie was sorta funny.

Kate was being silly during breakfast Saturday morning.

We enjoyed our family and the vacation!