Surprise!

I had no idea that I'd ever be making a post about baby #4, but we're confident God has known all along. Stay tuned as we keep you updated on our newest Nottingham addition! :)

Lincoln's Baptism

We were so blessed to have Lincoln baptized at our church this Sunday. We had family there to celebrate with us this marking of Lincoln as God's. We pray that he will come to know Him.

"Baptism is a sacrament, wherein the washing with water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, doth signify and seal our engrafting into Christ, and partaking of the benefits of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord's." (The Shorter Catechism)

Blue Eyes

Just another cute pic of a cute kid!

Our first BIG snow!

Last week, we FINALLY got our first big snow- over a foot! Emma got 3 days off of school, so we had plenty of time to "enjoy" being snowed in! Our friends Brooke and Grace West were in town, so Grace ventured out into the snow abyss with Emma and Reese. :)

Check it out! The untouched winter wonderland!

Thank goodness for my dad and his snowblower- we were trapped!

Letterboxing... in the snow?

We found out about this super cool activity you can do called Letterboxing (www.letterboxing.org). It's great for families, it's free and awesome for the treasure-hunter in us all! And if you know anything about my husband's obsession with the movie National Treasure, you will understand my daughter's fascination with finding treasure of her own. The gist- you read online clues to a letterbox in your area (there are tons of them all over the country) and you follow the clues until you find the hidden box. Inside you find a stamp and a notepad. You mark their stamp in your notepad and vice versa as a log that you found it. It's super fun and we've done about 5 in the freezing snow and Josh insists that we wait for summer to do any more. :)

One of our first clues took us to the Fishers Train Station!

Find the treasure and making her mark!

Binkin's Giggle

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Being with family is, of course, one of the greatest parts of celebrating Christmas. Due to many different circumstances, we saw no extended family on Christmas Day! We celebrated early with my family and late with Josh's. It was actually quite nice to have the kids just be at home and go at our own pace without any worries of packing bags or rushing off somewhere.

The kids got up and were surprised with their one big gift- a new table and chairs with art supplies for the play room!

And a tasty breakfast of monkey bread...

Then the stocking explosion! We mostly just do lots of fun stocking stuffers for everyone and enjoy opening lots of little things. The kids are into quantity over quality if you're pickin' up what I'm puttin' down. :)

Happy Birthday cupcakes- Reese the dinosaur enthusiast specifically requested that we make parasaurolophus cupcakes. Only the best for Jesus! ;)

And Lincoln's gift from Grammie Bev bearing his best nickname- Lincoln Logs!

Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve was nice and quiet- just a nice dinner with Josh's parents and Mark and Sarah, and a Christmas Eve service at church celebrating Jesus. We came home and each got to open one gift and were off to bed for the long-awaited Christmas morn...

The PERFECT tree!

It's become a family tradition for Josh and the kids to go pick out our family Christmas tree. You may be picturing a trek through the knee-deep snow on a tree farm, axe hoisted over the shoulder... nope. Just the Marsh parking lot at 116th and Allisonville- $20 from the Boy Scouts. Hey, it works for us. Josh is NOT a fan of winter and doesn't like to be cold, so this 5 minute task is just perfect. They did a GREAT job and it was a beautiful tree. :)

And Winnie's Birthday, too!

And straight from Iowa... to St. Louis! How could we miss Winter's 5th Ballerina Party?? What a precious party with all her little girl friends (and her dashing big brother to welcome the guests!) doing crafts, dancing and eating ballet cake!

Ballerinas? Or supermodels striking a pose?

Paige's 1st Birthday!

I can't believe I'm just now getting to posting the pictures from the beginning of December until now... but better late than never! We all packed up again for the Iowa journey to celebrate precious Paige's 1st Birthday! She was sooo sick with a double ear infection, but the little trooper managed to look as darn cute as ever. It was a great visit and we wish we could do it more often!

Could you not just EAT that face?!?

The ridiculously adorable and time-consuming cakes Heather made for the party!

Craft Time!

All the Gross grandkids (hehe!)