Easter 2017

Easter fun started early for Denver due to the fact that he's basically living the dream. This is simply because he goes to school for 3 hours twice a week, who wouldn't want that cake schedule?  Anyhow, since this was the case they celebrated the Thursday before with a chapel service & an egg hunt.

Philip went out & watched the hunt & said Denver was quite the little hunter when it came to finding brightly colored eggs stuffed with candy.

As you can see below his best buddy Mosi obviously also found Easter activities to be a good time.

As a family we started Easter weekend by heading out to Sayre for some of the hometown alumni festivities. We enjoyed the parade & running into some familiar faces.

Afterwards we went back to the 3G Ranch to dye eggs. Lucky for us Papa & Nana have hens who are good layers so we had plenty of eggs.

The kids hid & hunted the eggs until they were cracked & falling apart, they then enjoyed hurling them into the field & watching the colorful shells break apart.

We ate a yummy Easter supper together & then the kiddos left their baskets out for the Easter bunny to hop in & fill them overnight.

Sadly that lame picture is the only still pic I got from Easter morning. I did video some of the kids going through their baskets before Lily woke up. I put those on my YouTube channel so if YouTube is still a thing when my kids are going back through these blog posts of your mother's fond memories of raising you guys then go there now & watch Denver's excited exclamation of every discovery in his basket. 

(Random pic of kids with Easter Bunny at the Home & Garden Show a couple of weeks before).

Sadly I did not get a picture of everyone in their Easter finery but rest assured everyone looked so cute & sweet.

We left Sayre & stopped in Yukon for Easter church services & then headed out to Blanchard where we enjoyed a fun egg hunt & fantastic meal with the Kouba side of the family. Having a baby limits the ability to get pictures so once again I missed out there but a good time was had by all.

Our final Easter agenda item was the neighborhood egg hunt.

We really are blessed to live in a great neighborhood that is a small community within itself full of sweet neighbors & great families to spend time with.

It was a nice few days that resulted in plenty of fun & moments with those we enjoy the most.

Valentine's Day

We love any reason to celebrate around here and Valentine's is the perfect excuse.

By celebrate we basically mean eat chocolate candy for breakfast

Unless you only have 2 teeth - in that case your celebration consists of having your treats (none of which are chocolate) thrown placed on the floor by your siblings...it's not easy being the baby. :)

Holiday fun 2016

There was a lot of excitement with three littles this Christmas season.  The two oldest could hardly contain their joy & anticipation of all things Christmas while everything was a new experience for Lily.

A few of the things we did -

We went to the church Christmas party which was a birthday party for Jesus.  We played games, ate cake, and gave gifts for orphan children in the Congo.

We also rode the Polar Express 

The kids had their parties at school which was a first for Denver 

We went and met Santa one night - maybe it was the hour of the night or just the busy time of year for him but Santa's expression pretty much sums up his thoughts of our herd of kids...

Denver made a pole to celebrate Festivus - don't worry we put it in the crawl space for safe-keeping. (See Seinfeld circa 1994-96ish for better understanding of this reference.)

Christmas Eve we were at the Kouba side of the family for a celebration that has just become packed full of kids of varying ages making it just a fantastic evening of chaos & joy.

The next morning the kiddos were up early & Annie was relieved to see Santa found her name on the nice list. Denver, on the other hand, had already acknowledged he was going to just have to see how the cards fell but was not going to let that worry him & apparently the cards fell in his favor.

Of course with all the fun I didn't get many pictures because well at some point you have to make the memories instead of document them but even without photographic evidence I do know this - we had an outstanding Christmas and it becomes clearer and clearer every year how abundantly fortunate we are.

Thanksgiving 2016

What about these cute little turkeys?

Thanksgiving 2016 was with the Goodman's so we all went to Great Wolf Lodge in Texas

The kids love Great Wolf & road trips - this girl is no exception.

She wasn't as sure about the water.

But this guy - he loved it.

He enjoyed swimming, floating, and water sliding as much as possible.

Annie enjoyed herself too & was super brave doing all the big slides even though she was somewhat terrified at times.

Time with family was the big win for all of us & we had a fabulous visit.  

On our way out of town we stopped at The Gaylord and did the Christmas ICE experience which is basically where you walk through an igloo.

Lucky for Jenny & I we had little infants we wore on us which was like having a little heater under our parkas.

The kids enjoyed it & it was a great way to kick off the Christmas season.

Halloween

Halloween is not my favorite holiday but man alive the kids love it.

I guess maybe it's the dressing up

and getting to pretend to be someone or something else for awhile.

Or it could be all the fun festivals & activities that time of year.

I guess I'm probably underestimating the importance of candy in their lives too.

We didn't have a family theme this year - Annie was a Shopkin (one of her favorite toys), Denver was Buzz Lightyear, & Lily was Snow White.

They had a blast at the OSU student party,

church trunk or treat,

their class parties (Denver below with Leilyn AKA a bad witch - according to her, and Mosi AKA Batmo of the imaginative 1-2-3 gang the Alsup kids came up with)

(Annie went as Junie B Jones for dress up like your favorite book character day - AKA wear your costume to school - but she likes to find any excuse to have multiple costumes),

and trick or treating through our neighborhood with friends.

It was a fun year because Annie really enjoyed every activity & Denver was just the cutest little thing running through the neighborhood trying to keep up with the big kids with his bell bottom Buzz Lightyear pants & helmet continually falling across his eyes & fogging up.

Plus we had this little princess to enjoy

Halloween 2016 was a success for the kids as can be quantified by the fact that as I sit here 6 weeks later typing this out we still have 2 giant shopping bags of candy.  On the other hand for me their success means I will have to slowly & painstakingly hide piece by piece in the trash to prevent the ninth hour pardon by the kids if they discover a morsel of it is being disposed of.