Bree is FOUR!

I feel like just yesterday I was writing about Bree's 3rd birthday, and here we are, another year gone.

Another year to be thankful for our sweet, funny little Bree. Bree is my biggest little helper around the house. She loves to hold Ivy when I'm busy cleaning or cooking and she keeps a good eye on what the little ones are up to. Definitely an oldest daughter!

She has been memorizing a lot of scripture these last couple of months and likes to bring them up when they are applicable. Her favorite is the "bee" one. "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other." She tries to 'help' Rylan with his verses too, by jumping in and quickly finishing the verse when he pauses. He really appreciates that. Not. :)

Bree is such a joy to us. We love her cheery heart and silly faces. She keeps us laughing all the time!

Bree wanted a pony party this year so we decorated the house with LOTS of pretty colored paper ponies. Here are a couple of pics from the celebration!

Aunt Michelle always makes the perfect pinata!

We had rainbow cake....

...and enjoyed the company of family and friends who came to celebrate with Bree!

Look at all those cuties!

Fun Dip Fun

Fun dip candy makes Grant a happy boy.

He doesn't handle the devastation very well when it's gone.

Mosaics

For school this morning the kids worked on shape and color matching, along with improving their eye-hand coordination and detail work. I found these great foam sticker mosaic projects at Hobby Lobby and the kids had a wonderful time with them!

Elle worked on her own little play-doh project...

...and Grant supervised all the activities.

One month already?!

She is such a joy!

Christmas!

Christmas at the Pennington home

This year we decorated with a vintage nature and music inspired theme. We really wanted to simplify Christmas this year and keep the focus on Christ, and one way to do that was to spend less money on decorations and ornaments. Rylan and Bree had fun making new paper star ornaments with Mommy. We used pages out of an old German hymnal that I picked up at the thrift shop. We also used the hymnal pages to wrap our Christmas gifts with.

Our tree with new ornaments this year! A lot of them handmade, with paper and whatnot. Lovely blues, greens and browns.

Christmas Eve cookies!

There were a few casualties....

One red hot candy for the cookie....two for me....one for the cookie...

Our frosted Gingerbread Baby, Grant

Aaron and his angel. Quite impressive, don't you think?

Christmas Festivities!

Here's the amazing labor of love that Aaron made for Rylan. He spent several days down at the farm building this beautiful work bench.

Rylan has been slightly obsessed with tools this past year and this is just perfect! It is super solid and weighs like a ton! I had a lot of fun individually wrapping each tool for him to open.

Bree received a princess dress-up themed gift from Aunt Marilyn. The dress is modified from one of Marilyn's party dresses when she was very small. I think my Great Grandma Opal made it, so this is a very special gift!

Ivy and Michelle

Funny bunny hair clips. Also from Aunt Marilyn. She knows how much our kids love dressing up.

BEAUTIFUL Christmas dinner table created by Michelle. Twig trees with floating paper birds. Lots of candlelight. Just beautiful!

Ivy, trying out Bree's new dolly stroller.

Showing off his new Knight costume from Michelle. Wyatt made him the sword and shield. Can you tell my kids like dress-up?

Cole built super cool catapults for all the boys.

Cuddling with Grandma and Grandpa. What a happy Christmas!

We are so blessed! Praise God for His indescribable gift of Christ Jesus, the ransom for our souls. How much we have to celebrate at Christmas!

It's so shiny!

Look who got a major black eye this week! It was the result of a collision with Rylan at the mall play area while we were at a playdate. She's such a big girl. Hardly cried at all. :) That's our little miss adventurer!

Our good and perfect gift

She's finally here!

Her name is Ivy Lora Pennington and she arrived at 11:33 am on Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
She weighed 8lbs. 1oz. and was 21 inches long. She is BEAUTIFUL!





Sunday evening I started having 'real' contractions, half an hour apart. Monday morning I already had an appointment with the midwife and a non-stress test scheduled since I was technically past my due date(Nov. 21st). Baby looked great and I told the nurses that we would probably be back that night or the next day. We decided to do some walking that evening and have a fun family date night so we took the kids out to eat, shopped at Bass Pro Shop, and walked around the mall. The walking worked...by the time we got home the contractions were 15 minutes apart. Right after we got the kids in bed I decided that they should probably go to Grandma and Grandpa's house, so we woke them all up, bundled them back up, put them in the car and Aaron dropped them off at Mom and Dad's. The contractions continued all night, but never got any closer together than 8-12 minutes. This was not unusual for me and I figured we might be getting close, so around 8:30am we ended up at the Bellevue Medical Center. Sure enough, I was definitely in labor :) Baby arrived 3 hours later!
We named her Ivy Lora. Her middle name is in honor of Aaron's Grandma Lora Pennington.

We are so abundantly blessed beyond any reason. The Lord has been so amazingly gracious to us and we give Him all the glory. Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of Light, in Whom there is no shadow.

Ivy is our good and perfect gift this year.