Christmas 2017 Odds and Ends

 Here are a few things that have happened over December.  Our friend Reed turned 40 and had a "Dad joke" party.  We were all supposed to get each other to laugh.  I was out pretty quick, but Josh lasted until the end and then lost to Dallas Mathews. He was trying so hard not to laugh he was crying.  It was pretty funny.

 The championship of Dad jokes!

 Our Christmas tree all decorated.

 I love my house decorated for the holidays!

 The boys decorated their own trees in their bedrooms.

 Palmer and Lincoln's tree.

 The boys always love running down to find what Scout our Elf on the Shelf has been doing.  He got pretty crazy toilet papering our tree one night.

 He took a bubble bath in cotton balls too.

 The animals did him up to the chandelier one night too.

 Hunter had his Christmas band concert.  He did so well!  I love band concerts at Christmas.

 We went to our annual Georgia Boys Choir concert and watched our friends Liam and Deacon Taylor.  It is always so beautiful!

 All of this went toward making gingerbread houses.

 We had someone give us the 12 days of Christmas this year.  It was so much fun!  The boys looked forward to it every night.

 Reading one of the clues.

 We would always get a piece of a nativity set along with a gift.  It was so kind.

 Scout wanted to make a gingerbread house too.

 Making gingerbread houses.

 McKay's school Christmas (winter) party.  They made "ugly Christmas sweater" ornaments.

 We got together an played scatter ball on Christmas Eve with a bunch of families.

 Always our favorite traditions.  We brought the Stanton family with us this year.

 We found out the Westerbys were our 12 Days of Christmas family!  We really had an awesome December!

Lincoln Turns 13

 This handsome young man just turned 13 years old!  He's such a great kid and I can't believe how grown up he seems all of the sudden.

 Lincoln is kind and tells me he loves me all day long.  I feel so lucky to have this boy in our family.

 Lincoln wanted a "very chocolatey cake" so we did chocolate mud cake with gummy worms on it.  I think it was chocolatey enough :)

Lincoln is the best, I hope this coming year is a wonderful one for him!

Thanksgiving 2017

 This year was a really different Thanksgiving for us.  We invited a family over whom we didn't really know.  We met them through Palmer's football team.  There is a player named Simon Stanton and I used to sit with his mom at football games.  They had said that they were going to have a lonely Thanksgiving, so I invited them over with us.  I didn't get any picture, but thought I'd document the before table that I thought was really cute.

 Simon, his older brother Andrew and their sister Emily all came along with their mom.  We had a great time with them and it was fun for Palmer to get to know Simon better.

We bought a zipline and most of the night the kids spent on that.  It was so fun!

Palmer's Top Golf B-day Party

 Palmer had his birthday party at Top Golf this year.  It was a hard weekend because a lot of people were out of town, but they still had a great time.

 Lunch and golfing and the weather was perfect!  Because he did football team this year, we had to do it after all of the crazy was over, so we didn't have the party until November.  

 Top Golf is so much fun!

 Donuts where you can inject your favorite fillings.  So yummy!

 Love this crazy 14 year old!

Lincoln's Football Banquet

 Lincoln's end of season football banquet was at Stars and Strikes Bowling Alley.  The kids had fun bowling and eating, then we went and did awards and cake.

 Lincoln really liked his team this year.  They were a pretty good bunch of kids.

 Coach Hugh saying nice things about Lincoln.

 A lot of these boys made the middle school football team, so they will get to play again together!