1. Bundle up, find a hiking stick and don't forget the saw.
2. Search high a low until you find the perfect tree (or until the kids start to get cold!).
3. Take a family picture beside your tree.
4. Cut down the tree.
5. Drag the tree back to the car.
The kids were thrilled to wake up to snow Saturday morning at Gigi and Gpa's in Denver. They were even more excited to discover that Gigi and Gpa's new house has a perfect sledding hill!
Happy Thanksgiving! -from two little Indians, a couple of pilgrims and one cute pumpkin : )
Look at that cute pirate face!
We made spyglasses and treasure maps at his party.
But the kids favorite activity was the treasure hunt in the sand.
Look at all that pirate gold! 
Wyatt, Sabrina and Colter sang three songs with their friends from school. We learned that Wyatt is not shy in front of bright lights!
Danny acted in one of the skits. His role was quite a stretch - he was a doctor! It was a really funny skit and he did a great job. 
There is just something priceless about my little boy dressed in his sister's new tutu running around the backyard chasing grasshoppers with his new bow and arrow.
Having four other siblings means that my kids have to share lots of things - their toys, my time, their candy. But one thing these two will probably always share is birthday parties. With birthdays just four days apart and Thanksgiving either right after or in between their special days it's going to be hard to entirely separate their celebrations. This year we were able to do separate parties with their friends, but they shared a family celebration on Saturday with all of our family in Lubbock. It was a "fancy pirate" party!
Here is our fancy birthday girl with her sparkly new birthday necklace.
Some fancy pink cupcakes with pink glittery sprinkles were "perfect" according to the birthday girl.
We did some fancy little girl crafts at her birthday party.
And a fancy party just wouldn't be complete without playing dress-up in new sparkly dress-up clothes!
Zane has started asking to put his shoes on in the mornings when the rest of the kids are putting their shoes on for school. Then we go outside so he can wave good-bye. So sweet...
I was in charge of collecting the shoeboxes at our church for Operation Christmas Child. The kids helped me check all of the boxes, put rubber bands on them and then load them in our car. We collected over 120 boxes!
Gigi and Gpa came from Colorado and spent the entire weekend with us.
Noni and Papa, Megan and Nathan, Craig, Kim and Abi, Cathryn and Jerod and Gummie and Robert all came for celebration. 
Our girls were just two of 28 children adopted in Lubbock on National Adoption Day.
The girls were happy to see their foster parents, Mimi (Letha) and Ken. After living with them for over two years they hadn't seen them in nine months. We are forever grateful for the love and care they gave our girls.
It was fun to be able to do our adoption at the same time as the Wilhites. When we first met the boys two years ago we would have never imagined that we could be connected to them for life!
Here we are just moments before we officially became a family of seven. What you can't see in the photo is Wyatt trying to wrestle with Colter, Zane wiggling around and Monique throwing herself backwards out of Danny's arms!
The kids all got to adopt a stuffed animal for their own. Here they are promising to be good parents to their adopted animal.
Our first official family portrait. The judge who did the adoption is the same one who has been hearing the girls' case for the past three years. He spoke for a little bit at the reception before the adoption and said that as judges they spend most of their time separating things - husbands from wives, kids from parents, criminals from society. One of the reasons they love doing adoptions is because they are putting something together instead of taking it apart. 
We have enjoyed watching the cotton that has been growing behind our house for the past several months. Tonight they started harvesting it and the kids went outside to watch. Life in a small town... : )
She got some new pompoms and went to a football game to watch the cheerleaders.
She worked on some sewing projects with Noni.
She went to the park with Aunt Cathryn, Uncle Jerod and their dog, Millie.
And she spent an evening with Aunt Kim and Abi. It was a weekend full of activities especially for Sabrina!
Wyatt was building towers while everyone else was napping and I just had to take a couple of pictures of him in his T-shirt and jeans. So cute!
When I looked over to check on Zane while we were eating this is what I saw...I think he enjoyed his supper!
Zane is walking everywhere now! He just looks like such a big boy in this picture...
Danny took the kids (all but Zane, who had a fever on Friday) camping this weekend. It was just a quick overnight trip, but they had lots of fun. Danny has more pictures on his blog...
