Thanksgiving in Branson!

Every year for Thanksgiving we spend the weekend with my family in a house in Branson. We will head out after spending Thanksgiving Day with Chris' family (which I forgot my camera for) and arrive that night in Branson.
We usually spend Friday and Saturday at Silver Dollar City. Friday afternoon we arrived in time to have lunch with Santa. Its a buffet style lunch where we are entertained with singing until Santa arrives. Then one by one they let each table up to visit Santa (this is so much better than trying to wait in line to see him).
Here is the Weber kids visiting Santa. Adriana asked for horseback riding lessons, Andrew asked for hockey stuff, and Joey just asked for candy....surprise, surprise!

The Casey kids with Santa!

Posing for a quick picture with the cousins.

Kaitlyn and Adriana.

It is never a trip to Silver Dollar City without Andrew playing the basketball game.

We took a break from all of our playing to watch the snowman show. Its about a snowman who comes to life. They let all the kids come up front and sit on the stage for a close up view and get snowed on!

Then we rode the sing a long train. It takes you to a cabin where "grandpa" tells us the story of the birth of Jesus.

The boys watching "grandpa" tell his story.

Before heading out we sat down to watch the parade. The kids getting ready to watch.....


Chris was a bit behind us so he wasn't able to get any good pictures of the kids with the parade characters but they did get a few high fives and hugs from them.

We headed home after the parade since it was so cold out.
The next day we headed back out there and it was so much warmer out this day.
Here is MawMaw posing with her granddaughters.

Da boys!

Adriana took a break from riding all the big roller coasters to ride a few with her little brother who was afraid to ride by himeself.


Every time we come to Silver Dollar City the kids always make a candle. I had to help Andrew make his so I wasn't able to get any pictures of him, but here is Adriana making hers.

After making the candles we headed out to decorate cookies. Unfortunately Joey had fallen asleep so he missed out on all the fun.

After leaving Silver Dollar City we headed down to the Landing for dinner and a little shopping. And wouldn't you know it, I forgot my camera again! We ate dinner at the Bass Pro Fish House then let the kids make their annual Build a Bear.
We made sure to get some family pictures this weekend since we don't see Kevin and Jenny very often.
Here is MawMaw and PawPaw with their six grandkids!

My little brother, Kevin, and his wife, Jenny, with baby Jessica.

Our best attemp at getting a picture of the six kids together.

We had so much fun this weekend with lots of love and laughter. As always, it goes way too fast! I already miss little Jessica and can't wait to see them all again for Christmas!

Beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

We decided to spend Wednesday night putting up our Christmas decorations before heading out of town on Thursday. I really love Christmas and get so excited decorating and luckily my kids all share the same enthusiasm that I have. Most of the harder decorating I did while the kids decorated the tree. I actually let the kids put most of the ornaments on themselves even though my inner control freak was screaming.
So here the kids are decorating the tree......







When we get back we will finish the rest of it but I did manage to get them to clean their rooms and playroom in order for me to agree to put the tree up that night. It worked out well for both of us, they got to put up the tree and I got a clean house before heading out of town :)

A boy and his cat!

Nothing sweeter than a little boy sleeping with his kitty cat!

Being thankful!

Last night we did our annual Thankful Tree to talk about what the kids are thankful for this year. Here is how it turned out this year.....
Adriana is thankful for .....trees, friends, food, tv, mommy and daddy, animals, house, and mawmaw and pawpaw.

Andrew is thankful for........mommy and daddy, his nice teachers (not sure about the mean ones...hehe), trees, his grandparents, hockey, his new bed (which happens to just be a mattress on the floor from our friends until we can afford a frame), his puppies, and his birthday (which happens to be in a few days).

Joey is thankful for.........eating, trees, mommy and daddy, house, animals, pawpaw's boat, clothes, and tv.

I think we've raised some pretty thankful kids for the most part. Not one of them mentioned any toys other than TV.

Graduated!

I know I say this all the time, but I'm very sad about all the growing up going on around here. Yesterday was Joey's last visit with our parent educator because he will be turing three next month. After being in the program for over 7 years, it is very sad to hear it all coming to an end. She did all the testing on Joey and he actually scored above average in almost everything which really surprised me. I guess I think of him as older because of how big he is and so I don't realize how many advanced things he does. Simple things like getting dressed by himself I though most 2 years old did but actually most kids don't do this until they are 3 or 4 years old. Building blocks because he loves building. He was actually building at a much older age. His speech, which I credit to his constant talking older siblings, was well over his age. His large motor skill was also advanced I think because all he does is jump all day, hence his nick name jumping Joey. And his fine tuned fine motor skills I believe comes from picking up all the small pieces of toys his siblings leave laying around. So with no delays in any area, Joey is now out of the parents as teachers program......boooo! As my friend Melissa would say.....stupid growing!!!!!!

Sick again!

We have been doing so well this year with not being sick other than our Rosiolla episode but that has come to an end :( Chris started us all of with his cold which quickly spread through the family. I though mine might have just been sinus but it has spread down into my chest so everytime I get up to do something I feel like I can't breathe. Last night Adriana was up most of the night complaining about her throat hurting. Luckily no fevers have hit us, its just this annoying cold stuff that doesn't seem to want to leave. And on top of it, I was supposed to run in the Jingle Bell Race which is my favorite race of the year, and I don't think there is anyway possible that my lungs are going to let me run a mile yet a 5k run. So this will be the first year in a long time that I will have to miss it :(

Funny sayings

Mommy: How can you tell if someone is a boy or girl?

Andrew: Boys have short hair and girls have short peepees.

Seriously this boy cracks me up!

An evening at the Weber house!

So this is how we spend our evenings around the Weber house. The kids sitting by the fire reading stories to each other. Life really doesn't get much better than this!

12 days of Christmas!

We have collected so many Christmas books over the years that the kids have received as hand me downs or gifts and I came up with the idea a few years ago of letting the kids each open one book a night and we all sit together and read them. I think its a great way we can get all of our Christmas books read without overwhelming them and they LOVE this! I just got done wrapping the books and we now have 37 Christmas books!!!! Wow! So this year we will be reading for 12 nights before Christmas with one extra book. The kids are going to be so excited and I'm so excited because I managed to get them all wrapped up this morning!
So here is all the books in their beautiful wrapping....being sarcastic there!

Last soccer game!

I know I mention this all the time, but I really, really love our church and school family! These are some of the most wonderful, loving people I have met! This past Sunday was Adriana's last soccer game of the season and it happened to be against the other 1st grade Borromeo team. All of us mom and dads blended together in the crowd and cheered on both teams. After the game was over (which the other team won putting them into 1st place and us into 2nd) we all met up at the playground pavilion for a pot luck lunch. I had such a great time catching up with all the parents who are all loving Christian people!
Here are the girls sitting down for their lunch.

Adriana's soccer team with Coach Finnegan, Ass. Coach Ginsberg, and Ass. Coach Brown.

Both teams together (which will be the power team when they combine in 3rd grade!) along with Coach Finnegan and Coach Naibors.

Afterwards the kids got to play a little before heading home.

I'm so glad to be able to be a part of this for my kids. They will grow up with us knowing all their friends and parents and just being one big family! I know the saying is so true that it takes a village to raise a child and I'm so happy to be a part of this loving village!

Chris' deer!

This past Saturday morning was opening season for rifle deer hunting. Well that morning I received a call at 7am from a very excited husband stating he just shot the biggest deer he has ever shot! He was so excited and was still shaking when he was talking to me. Here is a picture of his deer.

Joey is potty trained!

This is another sad moment for this momma, after having little ones in diapers for 7 years it is now coming to an end :( I know most people are excited about this time in their lives, but I'm very sad about it! But like the title says, Joey is only potty trained. He still asks for a diaper when he has to poop and wears one at night time still. But I've been very lucky having three easily potty trained kiddos. I was planning on waiting until after both boys turned three before working on the training but they both decided to be trained before then. So I'm down to just buying pullups now! So way to go Joey!!!!!!

Team blue!

Chris' youngest brother, Adam, and his wife, Emily, are expecting their first little baby at the end of March. Today they had their ultrasound and they found out they are having a little boy! So now I'm up 4 nephews and 3 neices! Way to go team blue and I can't wait to meet my littlest nephew next spring!!!! Congrats Adam and Emily!!!

Pecan picking!

Yesterday I spent the day at Great Grandma Weber's house with the boys picking pecans. We didn't get a chance to do this last year since the trees didn't seem to produce enough pecans.
The boys riding out to the trees in the back of MeMaw's car.

The boys had a lot of fun hunting for pecans and trying to fill up all the buckets.

Andrew found the part of the tree that the pecans grow on and thought it was really neat.

We ended up getting almost 2 5 gallon buckets completely full.

After picking we headed back to the house to visit with Grandma, but she was sleeping so we didn't want to disturb her. Instead we headed over to the barn to visit some brand new kittens that were born on Sunday. They still had their umbilical cords attached. Here is one of the little kittens in the palm of my hand.

Andrew holding one.

Here is the litter of kittens. There was eight babies in total.

Joey visiting with mama cat and giving her some loven.

And this my friends is how little boys use the bathroom in the country :)

The boys had a great time out in the country although hopefully next time we will get to spend some time with Grandma!

Adriana's riding again!

Adriana has been begging for horseback riding lessons since we had to quit them a year ago. Well for her birthday she said the only thing she wanted was some horseback riding lessons. How can a mom say no to that? So we agreed to let her have 6 lessons and go from there. So I got a hold of her old teacher Debbie and was able to get her back on the saddle. We started her first lesson this past weekend and she did awesome! She was riding better now than she did when we had to quit. She is very excited and cannot wait for her next lesson! MawMaw even went out and found her a pair of pink cowgirl boots that she will be able to wear the next lesson. She was so excited about that and actually tried to sleep in her boots! I really hope we can afford to keep the lessons up for her because I know she would give up everything just to keep riding.....hum, this might have to be one of her three gifts from Santa too :)




AFter riding it was time to brush little Joe off.

Now time to give all the horses a couple of treats.


And finally feeding time!

Debbie is so good and patient with Adriana. Although our lesson is only supposed to be an hour long, it always turns into a 1 1/2-2 hour long session for the same price. She makes sure she goes over everything with how to take care of the horse with Adriana. Hopefully we will learn enough to be able to take care of our own horse someday :)