Christmas

 Christmas (Eve) Eve Vietnamese, Will can hardly stand how amazing his food is!

 We opened presents at Paula and Asa's house and enjoyed a long weekend hanging out with Brian and Tia's family.

 After spending two days eating some of the most amazing food I've ever had, we decided to drag everybody out into the wind for a Christmas hike. It was gorgeous...and freezing.

We all spent a lot of time playing with our new toys and enjoying each other's company

Tuesday Ruth got to fulfill one of her Christmas presents...to get her ears pierced. She was so excited and nervous that she squeezed Will's hand so hard he refused to continue to help. Her little ears look so cute with sparkly hearts in them.

Ruthie's Christmas Photies

 This beautiful girl was cursed with my un-photogenic genes. She and I get so awkward in front of cameras! Luckily, with lots of blurry pictures and brother and sister to make her laugh, we got some good ones!

William's Christmas Photos

William is such a nut. It took a little convincing to get him to be willing to take pictures (that must be a boy thing). But finally he gave in and showed us his natural charm and handsome smile.

This was his favorite picture

Claire's Christmas Pics

Some of them are kinda blurry but I love how well they capture her personality. She's quite a fireball, always full of energy and on the extreme ends of happiness or misery.

Random pictures

 While Ruth is rock climbing and Claire is in gymnastics, Will and I take silly pictures

I ran my last 5k of the year, sort of...I showed up to the race. But the sun was setting, it was 35 degrees and crazy windy. So I went to the gym and ran a 5k on the treadmill instead. I ran my fastest mile at 10:56 and my fastest 5k at 34:40. So even though I missed the adrenaline and energy that you get from a race I still did a great job and happy with my overall physical improvements for the year.

Finally Fall

 My adorable children all spruced up to go on a work trip with the Daddio

 Claire and I did not go on said business trip because we were sick. We watched almost every episode of Octonauts those two days!

 Popejoy Hall offers $3, hour long shows for kids during the day. This season we will get to attend 13 plays, dance shows and musical reviews and Paula gets to come with us! The first one was the Nutcracker.

 We've done a LOT of raking...and jumping

 This week we finally got everybody signed up for their special classes. Ruth is in a homeschool rock climbing class. Will and Claire and both doing (their own) gymnastics class.

 I ran my first 10k December 3rd. It took me an hour and 25 minutes even. My goal was to finish in 1:35, so I was seriously stoked! The course was extremely hilly, but I was the leader of the slow group and I got the biggest running high yet from doing this race. I feel like a birthday half marathon is totally doable now!

And we've done our "gingerbread" houses for the year. It's basically just an excuse to eat vast amounts of candy, but it's fun.