Randy's Birthday

Does Randy look 41?

Randy's birthday comes every year the day after Christmas! His present from me every year is that we clean up Christmas after the boys go to bed on Christmas. But I also gave him another present this year--we went out to dinner and a movie. The boys used some of their money they earned for Christmas gifts to buy their own presents for dad. It wasn't a fancy birthday at all this year, so I hope he had some kind of fun!

Dax and Mark worked hard to buy these gifts for their dad.

Seth loves to help open presents.

These boys love their dad SO much!
Happy Birthday Randy.

Christmas

We had a great Christmas this year! It started on Christmas Eve...dad was busy building a surprise Christmas present, so the boys and I made gingerbread houses. Each boy designed his own home and ate a TON of candy in the process. I was worried about doing this project without dad, but we did okay even tough we missed his creative mind!

We are all ready to go!

Seth's gingerbread house. He made two cars on the left, and
on the right are gummy bears that represent our family!

Mark's house!

Dax made a nativity. Those are all animals outside and in the mini tents.

We had a lot of fun!

Christmas was very nice and relaxing. The boys slept in until almost 8 am. Then we went and saw what Santa brought. Each boy had a new gift and a stocking full of candy. After we played with these toys for awhile, we headed up to eat breakfast. After breakfast we opened the rest of the gifts. This year we had the boys earn money to buy each other presents. All three of them did extra chores so that they could buy something at the dollar store for their brothers. It really made Christmas more meaningful for them. They were so excited to give their gifts to their brothers. One of the better ideas we have tried in this house.

Seth got a new train set.

They really just wanted to eat the candy!

We all received a lot of puzzles!

Santa brought big Lego sets. One with standard legos and one with the duplo legos. We spent hours on Christmas creating lots of fun things. Dad is awesome at Legos!

Seth kept pretending this face was a camera.

The boys love Legos!

They think the best part is digging through to see what Legos are in the pile.

Seth really wanted to make a castle.

 We were worried that we might have a green Christmas. It hasn't snowed much this winter, but we awoke to snow on Christmas. That made everyone's day! So we went out and did some shoveling, and of course ended up in a small snowball fight.

Dax is an excellent shoveler.

I love watching all the boys work together to shovel.

Seth is about to throw those snowballs at me!

Mark getting his dad!

Randy threw that shovel full of snow right on top of Dax.

So Dax had to retaliate.

 Grandpa Ockey came over in the afternoon and spent some time with us. Then after a restful afternoon we had a delicious Christmas dinner. No one was sick, everyone loved their gifts. It was a simple, but perfect Christmas. I couldn't have wished for a better day!

The boys with Grandpa Ockey

We are ready to eat our Christmas ham dinner!