Christmas Pictures

I hope you all had great Christmas memories. Here's some of our pictures taken over the past week at different family gatherings.....

Christmas Time's A Coming!

We're having fun preparing for Christmas and our get togethers. We already celebrated Christmas w/ my immediate family. The boys got an adorable table & chairs from "tractor" gma and gpa. They love it. We have it in the kitchen, they eat their snacks & color there. They always go to the same seat, kinda funny.... it's like "assigned seats"!

Christmas Day we no get togethers. I'm happy about that! We will take it easy in the morning, i'm planning on making some muffins, then read a couple christmas books that Adam got for Christmas & have a few activity pages for Adam to color & read...In the afternoon we're going to visit my grandparents who live at Garden Spot home. We've never had the twins there, (terrible, i know). My parents will be there, along w/ my gma on the other side. So we'll pop down there for a bit. Nothing planned for the rest of the day. We may drive around and look at Christmas lights in the evening. Next year we talked about starting a tradition or 2. Maybe taking food to a family from church, or a needy family in the community, or someone in a home, etc. Also would like to start keeping baby Jesus out of the manger scenes until Christmas day, then have the boys add baby Jesus on Christmas morning. We have 2 manger scenes, so I guess we'll need another one for all the boys to add their baby Jesus! I'd love to hear about any other traditions your families do.

Adam helped make "train" sand tarts this morning. It went better then i expected! Never know what will happen when you put a kid in charge of colored sugar! He decorated all these by himself.

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas, celebrating the birth of our King!

Daddy's New Toy

Look what rod found in someone's garbage!! yes, it's a wheelchair, of all things. And he's having fun doing wheely's & seeing how long he can stay on the back two wheels. The boys like to go for rides. It's labeled Lancaster General on the back, very interesting that someone would up and throw it away!

Chia Seeds

We've been enjoying these easy to grow chia sprouts this winter. It's the same stuff in the chia pets. you just sprinkle the seeds onto a wet paper towel, in a pan. They stick to the towel, and twice a day you rinse the seeds, to give them water. after about a week you have sprouts! they are good on burgers, wraps...pretty much anything you'd put lettuce on. Adam and the twins love to snack on them. They are very healthy! Pam started this w/ Adam while we were on vacation. He likes to 'plant' the seeds. It's a fun thing to do this time of year when there isn't gardening to do outside.

Bday Party

Our cousin-in-law Chris (who lives downstairs, w/ wife Michelle), celebrated his 30th birthday this weekend. This was a unique and memorable party. He's originally from Australia, so it was themed around his home country. We ate KANGAROO! and CROCODILE! seriously, it was pretty good. The Kangaroo was made into burgers, done on the grill, and the croc was seasoned and also grilled. it looked like chicken and had a hint of fishy taste to it. The boys were the only kids there, so they got plenty of attention. Especially from their Kangeroo friend.

Pre Church Wrestling Match

Celene v/s the twins.....

next week, round #2

This & That

Wow, things are busy this time of year, aren't they? I love Christmas time though. Last weekend we took the boys to a local church that held a walk through re-enactment (sp?) of different peoples' perspectives of the prenancy/birth of Jesus (Joseph, Mary, the Inn Keepers, Shepherd's and Angels). there were different "stations" that you went to and heard their stories, it was neat. It was indoors, thankfully. They had live animals which was cool. The boys enjoyed it & I can see Adam's growth in the understanding of Jesus' Birth. So exciting.

Getting our Christmas tree this year consisted of bringing it in from the back patio! We used our orange tree again as the Christmas tree. Works pretty good, other then it's not shaped quite as nice as an actual Christmas tree. Adam helped decorate. Since then, he's been decorating around the house, using his chapsticks (he has quite a stash of those, thanks to aunt Pam!)

I got this funny shot this morning of the boys. Adam put his arms around them....maybe a tad too tight, Brad is not loving it! Adam is in his big boy bed tonight for the 1st time ever! I know what your thinking, "isn't he 3??" I didn't feel the need to rush into the big boy bed. I enjoyed being in control of when he gets out of bed :) he has never tried to climb out of his crib, and the rail is the whole way down!! (remember i said he's not very adventureous). He napped in the big boy bed today and did great. went right down, and daddy woke him up when he came home. tonight again he went right down. Hoping he doesn't come down too early in the mornings now, I like get the babies (ok, not babies anymore...twins) up first & ease into my day...but i suppose i can adjust...

Here's a very recent pic of the Gingrich family, minus Steve who wasn't able to come. This was taken the morning after we got home from Aruba. And the tan that i had in this pic is already gone, booo.

That's enough random-ness. I hope you all have a great weekend!!

That Fish Place

My favorite thing to do with the boys during the winter is take them here. You can spend a couple hours in here. Besides fish there is a "touch tank" with sting rays. you can actually put your hands in the tank and touch them, there's a reptile room, critter corner (bunnies, hamsters, ferrets), and i believe on weekends the humane league comes in with cats and dogs. Today my friend Maredith spent the day with us and we decided to go to the fish place. Maredith and her family are missonaries in Guatemala. She and her dad are back in the states for a week. It was fun seeing her again, catching up, and hearing what God is doing through them down there.

Here's Maredith and Ben....

Brad.......

Adam was pretty mellow while we were looking at the fish. I asked him what was wrong. He said he didn't like all the fish looking at him. So we headed over to the less intimidating reptiles. He didn't seem to mind the gigantic snakes looking at him! some of us didn't care for that, though (me, myself, and I). We topped the outing off w/ ice cream cones at McDonalds. It was on the way home, we HAD to stop :)

Back to Reality!

It's rough coming home from vacation and getting right back into the swing of things. Rod is exhausted with the demands at the body shop. And me, on one hand there is the twins, who have been crying more often then not...Then there is Adam, who lately doesn't take a blessed thing seriously. I cannot pray or do devotions w/ him without him giggling, squirming, or breaking out into song. And when i ask him to pick something up for me, he'll first try to pick it up w/ his mouth, then his toes....what's that all about!?!? So we have the two extremes here in our household right now. Come on over if you'd like some entertainment :) On a positive note the twins learned to clean while we were gone. Thanks car Grandma! The twins get to play with Adam's new train track when he isn't there. Adam went to Gma's for a couple hours today, so they made good use of that time!

Our Trip

We're back from Aruba!! we had a great trip. It went by fast, but I felt ready to come home. Rod wanted to stay 2 more weeks. That might have been pushing it for me! We were there for 1 week, with warm weather but not real sunny. We still managed to get sunburned the one day while being rained on! It was very refreshing to get away and spend time with Rod. We celebrated our 7 year anniversary. We had lots of fun & much needed time together. We snorkled 3 different times. We've done this before but it was a lot better this time, cause we brought our own snorkling gear with us, so we could go on our own instead of the guided tours. We had so much great food. most of our meals we're outside which i love. The one restaurant was on the beach, right by the water. some tables the water would come to their feet when the waves came in. We also did lots of sight seeing. We rented a vehicle and went all over the island with this thing. Lots of off roading, which apparently is legal. it felt weird though! You can imagine the adventures Rod had us on with this poor vehicle, which luckily was 4 wheel drive!

We felt very blessed to be able to do this trip & are so grateful to our family for taking on the boys while we were gone. It was amazing to see God's Creation, so beautiful and creative. From the fish and birds, to the water and waves, to the trees and cactus. Here's a few pics.....

These flamingos were on our beach, about 7 of them, just walking around. They were so cool!!

That's me out there waving...the water is so blue-green. pictures don't do it justice. This is our resort. we took a boat ride out to "our beach" (only our resort could use this beach), it was actually a seperate little island, about a 5 minute boat ride. Peaceful and quiet beach......other then the fact that the airport was right beside it!!
Windy!! while off roading we found so many beautiful things around the island. This is the very north end of the island. This is the other end of the island. The island is only 16 miles by 9 miles (something like that), so we literally covered the whole island.

We brought these green floatie things with us from home. I'm so glad we did. We used them a lot! This is the pool at the resort.

Rod was pretty pumped about this meal....5 different meats, with 3 sides! It was an argentina grill.

Eating along the beach......ahhhhh, I'll stop here...