Life according to my phone

Being a mom to these three kids is a real treat.  It keeps me on my toes and never stops.  The days are full but we really are having a great time being a family of five.  

Some days Most days we are covered up in laundry and dirty dishes.

And all we really want to do is catch up on lost sleep.

Even if the only nap we can get is in big sisters baby doll stroller. 

But we always make sure we get lots of hugs and snuggle time in. 

 

Because that keeps us all smiles:)  And smiling is what this little boy does best.

Somedays we make it to school in cute outfits that match our friends.

Or we get excited about matching mommy by wearing our boots and green dresses to church.

And other days we look like this.

 

And the best we can do is get to story time with one boot and one flip flop on;)

 But oh well!  We do what we can. 

We keep our shades on for sunny days. 

And our hats on for chilly days. 

We try to sneak over to the "froyo" store as often as we can to satisfy mommy's sweet tooth:)

 Occasionally, we help mommy clean.  But really most of the time we makes messes for her to clean.

 And we love when we get opportunities to go to the Gym Dawgs meet and see Hairy Dawg. 

 We like to practice sounding out words by sending text messages to daddy.

(can you understand 4 year old language?!)

 We were pretty stinkin' cute in our Ukrainian outfit at our missions conference. 

Some days we look in the mirror and think, "what just happened" and all we can do is laugh at all the craziness. 

We are just thankful we have each other:)

Ringing in the New Year

We rang in the New Year in our usual way at our 9th annual Progressive Dinner.

I'm thankful for all these peeps.

And I'm extra thankful for my hot date. 

I'm thankful for Grammy and Pops who kept our oldest two kids for the night so we could get our house ready to host the dessert portion of the dinner and enjoy the evening.  

2012 brought lots of blessings.  Especially our littlest package that arrived October 25th:)

The rest of Christmas

Everyone is snug in their bed taking a Sunday afternoon nap so I decided to jump on this rare opportunity to update the last few weeks on the blog.  They have been a whirlwind and I think we have spent more time traveling than we have been home.  I'll finish up with the rest of our Christmas...

****

Two days after Christmas we loaded up our family of five (it took me a solid 5 hours to pack us up!) and made a pit stop at Callaway Gardens before heading to Auburn. 

We met my parents and my brother and his family at the Fantasy in Lights at Callaway!

8 million lights, 15 dazzling scenes and 1 magical night....a beautiful sight to see!

With our jackets bundled and our hot chocolate in hand we did our best to stay warm while waiting to board on the trolly.

It sure was cold out there!

Listening to the kids excitement on the trolly ride was just precious.  As cheesy as it sounds, it really did seem magical.  I can only imagine what it's like from a kids point of view.  Pictures don't do it justice so after taking these two, I put my camera away and just enjoyed the ride. The kids had a ball despite the look on Molly Jane's face above:)

 We headed back to Auburn late that night and woke up to a day filled with 

playing outdoors with the cousins,

visiting Mimi and Papa's old house that has just been updated and is almost ready to be put on the housing market (can't believe how good and different it looks), 

playing in the fort in Mimi and Papa's back yard (same back yard I grew up playing in. It's only 3 houses down from my parents house.), 

 riding in the cart with PoppyDoc,

getting lots of good cousin time,

and visiting my grandmother in the nursing home.

So glad Henry got to meet Grandma for the first time!

The day did not end there!  Right before dinner we greeted my sister and her family who arrived late because of a sick little Paul.  We were so glad they finally got to join us just in time for dinner and to open presents.

As always my parents were extremely generous and completely spoiled all the grandkids!  I think the gift that was one of the biggest hits this year were the Magnatiles.  Houses, teepees, rockets, pyramids and 3D shapes of all sorts were being made.  It entertained them all for days. 

True to Rouse form we had to get a matching cousin picture.  My mom bought them all adorable matching jammies.  But this picture is just not complete though without Hannah and Becca.  There was definitely a void this Christmas without the Cordells who are serving in Ukraine to spread the love of Jesus with others.  We miss them like crazy!

Trying not to forget the REAL reason of the season, my mom lead the kids as they acted out the birth of Christ while my dad read Luke 2.  

Playing the parts of Mary and Joseph were Cooper and Claire.

And of course Henry was the prime choice to be baby Jesus.  

The Shepherd:) and

wisemen came to worship the baby King. 

It was a bit chaotic but cute none the less.

^{Luke 2:13-14}

 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

¹⁴ 

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,

    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”