Merry Christmas 2013!

From our family to yours - 

we hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

 We have had our highs and our lows....

 Christmas eve Grandma Shirley went to the hospital 

(So Lee and Shelby had these 3 crazies to maintain

while Kristi and I sang A Christmas Hallelujah)...

so our prayers during our beautiful Christmas Eve service

were focused on our beloved Bryant grandparents.

 We did alot of the Christmas stuff I love...

like baking.

 And decorating!

 And seeing Santa 

(note the touching of the beard...just to verify "realness")

( and the guy who continues to decline...)

 My very favorite part of Christmas day...

was watching our kids give each other

the gifts they bought for each other.

 Completely heart warming...

and such a wonderful feeling for parents...

to see their children enjoy giving as much as getting.

 And of course we made cards.

Which were all mailed late of course...

and have lots of glitter.

And lots of love.

Hope you all had a marvelous,

 wonderful

joyous 

Christmas!

Peace, Peace

I adore the Livesay family - they live and work in Haiti...and every year I am completely blessed by their Christmas videos.  Totally worth 6 minutes and 12 seconds of your busy day to just listen

 (Hope Livesay's voice is extraordinary)

and enjoy. 


Peace, Peace.

"Let's save our money for a VACATION!"

Ayden seems to have had enough of winter already.
Yesterday he asked if we could get our beach vacation scheduled - and he would like to travel by plane because that car ride is WAY too long.  And he would like this sooner than later.  I explained to him that it was going to be quite expensive for 5 of us to fly - so he now is reminding me that we can "do without" some stuff (including toys) so that we can take that long anticipated plane ride!  I am hopeful we can swing that this summer - and we might just start a plane ride savings jar to help us with that!

We have all had a long week - but I believe Korbyn (and Karyn and Sam) get the award for longest week in history.  Korbyn got her tonsils, adenoids and ear tubes removed last Thursday.  She was still running fever yesterday - which I never dreamed would be the case.  What a LONG recovery.  We are hopeful she can sleep better (no snoring!) cause she seemed to inherit the humongous Blecke tonsils.

(this pictures is from day 4 - after tylenol and feeling pretty good for a little while!  Good enough to dress up anyway!)

Mom and Dad are safely ensconced in their Florida abode- happily scooting around the campground with the golf cart and texting me from the ipad!  I love that they are adventurous and keeping themselves busy.  We definitely miss them when they are gone - and are more than a little jealous that we are freezing up here and they are comfortably sitting around in shirt sleeves!

The Clark family came home this weekend - for some Skinny Wrapping parties, checking up on Korbyn, mom's Christmas concert at the Finke and singing at church!  It was cold but we tried to make the best of it. We had hoped to cut down a tree, make Christmas cookies, do some shopping and guess what......we got none of that done!  But we did sneak in a visit with Santa (Alec declined and Ayden was watching the MU football game) and Alec got his long awaited picture with the City's decorated fire truck (he hounds me every year to take his picture with it!).

Ayden will be finishing up his basketball season this weekend.  He is quite a natural and always makes at least one basket per game.  He is a crazy dribbler - but you can tell he is going to be excellent.  So fun to watch him in sports - he truly loves it.

 SWISH!

Christmas is fast approaching - and we are running behind schedule as usual.  Sigh. Hopeful tonite we can knock out some cookie baking and wrapping!  (wishful thinking???)

Challenging.....

It has been a challenging few months here at the Bryant household.
And I blame that for my serious lack of blogging.

Lots of change (my job, kids new classes and teachers) and lots of stress quite honestly.
We have had dog drama, sickness (numerous people!), ER trips, prolonged asthma issues, work travel and mix that all up with the normal stuff that makes you exhausted and you have some serious exhaustion!

We have had lots of wonderful things going on as well....and we must take some time to focus on what has been going great the past month.  The kids are doing well in school - and enjoy their days.  The weather has been gorgeous this late fall/early winter and we have spent lots of time outside.  Ayden has been playing basketball - and is super fun to watch (although he still passionately adores football - and will watch it non-stop if we will let him).  Mom and Dad are heading to Florida soon - we will really miss them - but are so happy that Mom is feeling good enough that they can go - (and we are hopeful she stays feeling good and they have a wonderful time!)  Alec has become very independent and really likes Kindergarten.  Ava is blossoming in first grade and is starting to read very fluently (and not getting stuck on "the" anymore!).  The Granddaughters are amazing and gorgeous - Rae got tubes in her ears and Korbyn is getting her tonsils out this week - but other than that they are hilarious and entertaining as always!  And I think the "parents" are doing good as well - working hard and being amazing parents.  They all make me very proud.

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend - we truly did.  We had early Thanksgiving at Kristi's and had Bryant Thanksgiving on Thursday - and then the rest of the weekend we truly stayed home and cleaned and enjoyed being HOME.  We all needed the break - and honestly it could have been a little longer and I would not have complained.

So - I am going to try to start blogging every week - there is just too much funny stuff going on around here - and we just have to document it!