Winter Break

After Christmas we had some fun out and about, It may have been a bit chilly but not too bad for a day at the zoo, a day at Durham Museum, an evening sliding on the big slides down town and walking around to see the lights.

At the zoo.Most of the time when we go to the zoo it is too hot to spend much time in the jungle, so when we went over winter break it was the perfect place to spend our time seeing all we could see there. 

Big slides and downtown lights.

Durham Museum one of the favorite places to visit each Christmas. The huge Christmas Tree is always exciting to see.I love taking pictures of all the kids here. For now we cannot show H's face but it is so much fun watching her explore and she takes such cute pictures.

Shockey Family Christmas
We had a fun night playing with cousins and hanging out with family. The kids had a great night playing hard Nerf wars, indoor snowball fights and whatever other crazy fun shenanigans were going on.

A look back at Christmas

We had a wonderful holiday break that went by so fast and now it's March. Here is a bit of what we did before Christmas. It took us a little longer than usual to get our decorations up but once we did it was beautiful and made the house feel like Christmas.

We had two trees again this year. Our big beautiful real tree with our many many ornaments and a little artificial tree that we decorated with all the handmade decorations the boys have made over the years. I love this tree

Liam, Declan and Grayson were asked to be in Gramma's Christmas children's program. They were so cute and had fun participating. Liam was Harold the Angel, Grayson was a cow an Declan was Joseph.

 Just before break Liam had a holiday program at school. He played the Orff Xylophone for the first time. His music teacher worked hard to get enough of these special xylophones for everyone to learn how to play. They sounded great.

Of course, with seven children (Lindsey and the girls came to visit) and four adults we were bound to have at least one child be sick at some point. Well, on Friday night Grayson's eye was looking a bit weird. He was not happy that I was taking him to urgent care. Tristan begin the awesome big brother that he is came with Grayson and me and helped a lot with keeping Grayson calm.He had an ear infection and pink eye.

Christmas Eve started with a phone call to the doctors office asking for eye drops for Liam who had woken up with pink eye. Then Lindsey and I took off for the Urgent Care again. This time it was with her girls. They both had ear infections and respiratory infections. Poor girls were there for over two hours. 

After the long day at the doctor. Some of us went to the Christmas Eve service at Gramma's church. It is always nice service ending with candles lit and Silent Night.

 After a great dinner Declan, H, and Grayson sat and watched the fire a bit.

Christmas Day
Such a fun, crazy filled day. There is still so much joy excitement and love in our house Christmas morning. I love the anticipation of the Santa surprises. One of my most favorite thing of the season is how much all the boys love to give each other gifts and can't wait to see each other open the gift they picked for each other.