First weeks of Christmas

Well since the kids are napping/ resting, and I'm on a blogging roll, I'll go ahead and start a post about our first few weeks of Christmas.  Christmas, especially with children now, is one of the most anticipated times of the year, and rightly so I believe.  Every morning since Thanksgiving Madeline will ask how many days left until Christmas.  And as we seek to fill this special season with lots of things to create fun memories that "build up" to that glorious Christmas morning, our hope even more is to plant in our children's hearts an anticipation for the coming Christ.  So we've picked out and decorated our tree, made lots of Christmas cookies, watched lots of Christmas movies, hosted and gone to parties, gone shopping to pick out the "perfect presents" for everyone on our list, wrapped gifts, hung stockings, and sung every Christmas song imaginable (right now Maddie is singing at the top of her lungs a mix of "Angels we Have Heard on High" and "frosty the snowman" during rest time), I hope that they will look back to this Christmas and have so many fun memories.  But really my favorite times during the season have been teaching the kids those age old beautiful Advent and Christmas hymns about the anticipation and coming of Christ, and reading to them stories from the Bible that build up and point to his birth.  I hope as they grow, and Lord willing, God works in their hearts, these precious truths will become the MOST precious things about Christmas to them.  As I was thinking these past few days about how special and joyful this Christmas has been for our little family combined with my sorrow and grief for the families experiencing the horrible tragedy in Newtown, CO I've been greatly reminded that the anticipation of Christ didn't stop with his birth in Bethlehem.  As believers, living in a depraved and sinful world that is not our home, we have the Great anticipation of Christ's second and final return where he will make all things new, and right, and beautiful!  Come, again, Lord Jesus!!!!!  Merry Christmas!

 I haven't been great about taking as many pictures lately, but here are some highlights.

Some of our sweet friends the Philpots got to visit from TX,
 and how glad we all were to spend time with them!

A little party at a friends house
 trying to get all the kids to look

That's more like it

A fun dress my mom saved from when I
was a girl and Maddie "posing" for a pic

Watching Rudolph

And drinking hot chocolate

He could sit all day and play with the
train around the Christmas tree

Opening ornaments on our annual "Ornament Day"

Gloria got a "baby" ornament... and you can see why.
 She rarely is without a baby doll in her arms these days.

Rivers got a Madagascar 3 ornament for a few reasons.
It has a lion, one of his favorite animals, balls,
and that's what we went to see for his 3rd birthday

Madeline got an ornament
 commemorating her first year of school

A Full and Bountiful Fall

Well, I've had a bit of drought in blogging lately.  There's been good reason though!  We've had a very full fall, and I have lots and lots of pictures to post.  There are lots of things that have contributed to my lack of blogging... getting into the routine of "real" homeschooling, Mike was a full time seminary student this semester for the first time, the Lord blessed us with leading two weekly Bible studies with non believers in our community, in addition to our normal responsibilities and things we are involved in.  So to say the least, we've been busy! But probably the real reason I've slacked in blogging is that in September we got some exciting news... BABY Frantz #4 is due in May (yes May, along with all of our birthdays with the exception of Rivers in June.  God's timing is always perfect, and funny!). 
We are extremely excited to add another sweet baby to our family. Friday we will find out if this baby is another sister or a brother. This pregnancy hasn't been terribly difficult, about like the other three, except this time I have three other little ones to love on, chase around, take care of, and home school, so I've been a little more tired than usual.  But I feel like I'm finally coming out of the fog, and I didn't want to forget all of the great things about this past season.  I'm going to attempt to upload lots of pictures (probably not in order) to give a glimpse of the past few months.

We started off the Fall semester by going to Buffalo Bill's Wild West... in was the Fall Festival at Southern this year.  The kids had a blast dressing up as cowboys, riding ponies, eating "fair food", seeing a rodeo, and playing on lots of bouncy inflatables!  We were all exhausted by the end of the night!

Later that month we took a "field trip" to the Louisville Science Center on free museum day!  It was our first time to go and was so fun!

One of my favorite pics of all 3 kids before church one morning

Early on in school we read Johnny Appleseed, so that weekend we went to Huber's Farm in Indiana to pick some apples from their orchard and have some farm fun!

A little building workshop with Daddy

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And of course fun in the leaves

In October we went to the Festival of Leaves at Berheim Forrest for the first time.  There were fun activities for the kids like making mud pies, painting pumpkins, a hay maze, and a wagon ride.  Rivers favorite part was getting to see some hawks and owls up close! It was really cold but we had a fun morning.

Halloween... Rivers was Handy Manny, Maddie was Doc McStuffins, and Gloria of course was our little pumpkin. We went trick or treating in our neighborhood with some good friends and had a blast getting lots of candy (that we are still enjoying)!

Right after Halloween we packed up and made a quick trip to Mississippi for Carter's first birthday.  We crammed LOTS into that 4 day trip...

A trip to the pumpkin patch which we had all to ourselves for a photo shoot!

Carter's Birthday party

A trip to Vardaman for Mike and the kids' first Sweet Potato Festival

Purple Icecream!

Fun with Papa

All the traveling had this Little Man pooped!

And of course we had to ring in the chilly weather with the warmth of fires and roasted marshmallows! Hot chocolate is the kids new favorite drink and they ask for it every morning now :)

I didn't get many pics from Thanksgiving, but we hosted Mike's mom and The Palmers (our good friends down the street).  It was a warm beautiful day, and although this isn't a great pic... it's the best one I have of all 5 of us. 

Now... Let's see if I get Christmas pics up before February! If not Merry Christmas!