We had a pretty fun holiday season for our family! First we made an adorable gingerbread house, which won first place in the Lage Family gingerbread house contest. It was a lot of fun but a lot of mess too! It was complete with trees, people, and a dog house for Douglas. Then of course we had to do our annual Christmas good
y bake-off, which was very yummy.
It was nice to see all of our family, including Jamie, Justin, and Lexi who came to visit from Utah. Of course there was the usual family drama (all on the Walpole side of course), but we love them anyway!
Santa came and brought way too much stuff to our house this year, but of course the kids weren't complaining about that. It took them three hours to get through all their presents. The girls both got their own vanity and dress-up clothes, which I can't seem to get them out of. Brandon got a big tractor with a trailer and plow so he was as happ
y as could
be. Christmas is a blast when your kids are little. One day they will be bratty teenagers who are picky and never like anything you get for them. Boy, I can't wait!
Now it's nice to have life back to normal, well at least as normal as our lives get. We manage to stay very busy, which I guess is a good thing. We can't wait for the weather to get warm so we can get outside. The farm show is coming up in a couple of weeks so the boys are real excited for that! It's like Christmas all over again for them. I'll have to make sure I get some pictures of the kids in the big equipment to put on here.
So usually when Christmas is over the wintertime is boring and it seems to be so long before it warms up outside. But a couple of weeks ago we had a break from the 20 and 30 something temperatures for a few days when we ac
tually had temperatures around 70 degrees! We couldn't believe it. It was so good to get outside and have some fun (or at least get the kids outside and out of my hair for awhile). One afternoon we walked to the park so the kiddos could play. Of course they had a blast. It's nice that Brandon can 
swing all by himself now so I only have to push two of them on the swings. It makes my arms tired after a while and of course they never want me to stop.
A couple of weeks later we were back to our usual winter temperatures with a high of 20 if we were lucky, just in time for the farm show. It just would be the farm show if you weren't freezing your butt off walking the freaking mile to get in because you have to park so far away. To some people in this family (like Douglas and Brandon) the farm show is almost as good as Christmas. Of course to me I think it's a nightmare and a waste of my time, 
but then I'm the one who is trying to keep track of three children in a crowded place for hours when they are tired and cranky. I suppose it could be worse though. I'm not sure how but I'm sure there must be some way it could be worse. Anyways, the kids had a lot of fun playing on all of the big equipment. And of course you can't go to the farm show without getting bag after bag of free popcorn. And the Schmidt's Bakery gives out delicious cake samples. Overall it was a nice trip to the farm show. We didn't lose any kids for more than a couple of minutes and I managed to stay in a relatively good mood, at least in a better mood than Tiffany was in. I forget how hard it is to do that sort of thing when you are pregnant.
So while I was busy and distracted working on this I just burnt my cookies...bummer! I'll either have to start over or try to convince Douglas and the kids 
that they are really chocolate 
cookies. Haha!
