Christmas 2011

We had a busy but extremely joyful Christmas! There are a lot of pictures... and yes, I know it is mid/late January but I just didn't want to forget all of the special times we had celebrating Christ's birth this year!

Madeline wanted to host a Christmas party for her friends. So we had some of her good friends from our church and neighborhood over for a mommy and daughter cookie exchange and tea. It was such a fun time!

Christmas Eve we celebrated with the Frantz side of the family and had a blast as always!

Gloria really excited about her first Christmas

One of the most fun things we did this year with Mike's family is play a Christmas cookie game. The object is to see who could get the Christmas cookie into their mouth from their forehead without using their hands in less than a minute. We did several rounds of this, laughing hysterically all the way through, and Mamaw ended up winning with the amazing time of 4 seconds! Here are some highlights of the game :)

All the cousins minus Lacey and Stella who were in Japan...we missed you guys!

Christmas Eve night

Our big girl had a princess Christmas this year!

Little man only liked opening one gift and then didn't want to open anymore. Finally he opened the rest of his gifts with sissy's help. It was quite funny though.

I loved that Christmas was on Sunday morning. We had a beautiful, sweet time of worship with our beloved church family! And then we spent the afternoon packing up for Mississippi and having dinner with family.

We got to celebrate lots in Mississippi for a week with lots of family. Talented Aunt SuSu made the kids some cowboy and Indian dress up clothes!

Christmas morning "replay" at Papa and Marmie's house

Trying to get a shot with Mamps and Granne and all the great grands... pretty impossible

Papa and Marmie with all of the grands. We were laughing how in 5 years Papa and Marmie have grown from a family of 4 to a family of 10!

She's 8 months old!

Well I'm going to try to do a marathon of blog posts to catch up on the happening through Christmas and the past few weeks.... and to start our baby girl is 8 months old! I totally missed blogging about 7 months so I'll just combine it all in one.

7 months old

At 7 months old our sweetie was army crawling all over the place and sitting for longer periods of time by herself. She loves to play and be involved in the action of our oldest 2 whenever possible. She continues to be a happy little girly and eats solids once or twice a day. She has yet to reject anything I've given her :) She's dropped down to two naps most days and is by far our most flexible child yet, which I'm attributing to her being the third child.

8 months old

This past month there were many milestones. Gloria is crawling everywhere and getting into lots of things! We definitely have a mobile little one on our hands who is curious about the world around her. She babbles all the time words including "mama" "dada" "nanna" "baba" and does this cute little rolling of your tongue like a car motor when she is frustrated. Her two bottom teeth also came in this past month. She has started some finger foods and cheerios is a new found love that combined with drinking out of her sippy cup can keep her entertained for about an hour. She is reaching for people, especially her mama and daddy, whenever she gets upset or hungry. She continues to grow; last week I put her in some 12 month pjs thinking they would be a little big and they fit! It will be interesting to see how much she has grown next month! She continues to be such a big joy to our family! We love you so much baby girl!

Kiddos sing at Church

Last night we had a Christmas service at our church. The kids always do a few songs and Scripture reading, and this year, since Madeline is 3 and in "big kids" Sunday School, she got to participate. Since Rivers is 2 he wasn't supposed to be involved but followed Madeline up to the stage. We didn't want to cause a scene so we let him stand there with Maddie and her friend Dallas. Here is a couple of the songs from last night! Enjoy! Merry Christmas!!!!!!

Our Hero Made the News!

Daddy is an everyday hero around here, but was shown here tonight on the local news being a local hero on WHAS 11 News. We are so grateful for God's mercy in protecting his life as well as the other firefighters and the woman they saved.

You can also read a great blog post our good friend Denny wrote about Mike.

(click on the gray text to watch the video and read the blog, if you were having a hard time finding it!)

Ornament Day 2011

Today was our 6th annual ornament day. For those of you who don't know, or have forgotten, the background of the reason the Frantz Family has an ornament day on December 9th every year, I will briefly give you the history. It was the year 2006, and a certain handsome man (Michael) and a certain southern belle (me) had been dating for a little while. He took me on a surprise date before I was to go home to Mississippi for Christmas. We went to see the Nutcracker Ballet and then we were supposedly going out for a nice dinner afterwards, but decided to exchange one Christmas gift early. We were going to start a tradition of exchanging ornaments with each other every Christmas. Well, much to my surprise and excitement Michael proposed that night with a beautiful engraved ornament, and we have kept the tradition every year on December 9th, now including our kiddos in the ornament exchange.

The 2 young Lovebirds 5 years ago

This year was so much fun, because our kids, especially Madeline, had really been looking forward to it. Michael started off with a little family devotion by retelling the story of that night 5 years ago. They listened with wonder, that mommy and daddy hadn't always been married, and he read some of Ephesians 5 explaining that marriage is a wonderful gift God has given to picture Christ and the church. Then we sang "Merciful God", the same hymn we sang together the night he proposed, and thanked God for the sweetest gift apart from our salvation... our family! And then of course the kids excitedly opened their first Christmas gift of the season, their 2011 ornament.

Gloria got a "baby's first Christmas" ornament. Madeline appropriately opened a princess ornament since that has been her "favorite" thing this year. I was super excited to find Rivers ornament because it incorporated his 3 great "loves" of the year, balls, books, and "oo-oos" (a monkey or really any zoo animal for that matter).

I got Michael a Johnny Cash guitar ornament, complete with the ability to play Blue Christmas, because 1)he loves Johnny Cash's music 2)he found out about a month ago he is distantly related to June Carter, and therefore, by marriage Johnny. Yes it was something very big and important that happened this year :) He got me a cute little school house ornament since this year embarked the first year on my journey of homeschooling.

We ended the night with family movie night, something we all look forward to, with the works... pizza, The Polar Express, and brownies. Such a fun way to celebrate a day that we consider its own holiday around here! Oh how much has changed in these 5 years! Thank you Lord for this sweet sweet gift! Happy Ornament Day!

Its Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas

Christmas is definitely in full swing in the Frantz household. We've trimmed our tree, decked our halls, made our first batch of Christmas cookies, went to a Christmas concert this past weekend, and attended our Sunday School Christmas party... and it's only December 5th! I hope to be sharing some more ways we make Christmas special around here, so stay tuned!

Our little helpers decorating the tree! They had so much fun this year!

Making the first batch of Christmas cookies to celebrate Daddy's first semester of seminary ending (daddy's favorite)

Watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for the first time... It makes my heart happy how much these 3 love each other!

Last Month Happenings

Last month was quite busy... so I'm going to update you briefly (with lots of pics) on the highlights from November.

We started off the month with a trip home to Mississippi to welcome Carter Wesley Lewis into the world! Much to my sister's disappointment, but to our delight, he waited to make his appearance until we got to the hospital late that evening (November 2). What a sweet time it was to be there for his birth, and we definitely can't wait to get back for Christmas and get to love on him some more.

My sweet little nephew

On our trip there we also got in some fun time with Aunt Susan

and of course some play time with Marmie

a proud Papa and his 2 grandsons

November was a big month for Madeline. We've casually been doing what you could consider "preschool" with her for a while now, but she officially started a more "formal" preschool last month by beginning a phonics curriculum. She LOVES doing school and its been a lot of fun being her teacher!
In November our little one turned 6 months old! Half way to her first birthday, can you believe it? She experienced her first time swinging and loved it!
She's rolling all over the place, can sit up on her own for moments at a time, and is starting to scoot up on her knees trying to crawl. She remains such a content happy little girl and we love her so much!
She also began solids last month and loves all the veggies we have tried so far (peas, carrots, sweet potatoes). Like my other 2 it looks like I've got a good eater on my hands. At her 6 month check up Gloria weighed in at 16lbs. 10.5 oz (50-75%) and is 27 in (90%) tall! We are thrilled to have a healthy growing baby girl.
We hosted Thanksgiving at our house with a grand total of 17 of our friends and family! It was such a fun holiday :)

loving time with Mawmaw

Thankful for our growing family this year

Fun to use my newly renovated dining room (thanks to my talented hubby) to host Thanksgiving

The bounty of food!

Madeline and Rivers loved spending Thanksgiving with the best friends!

That about catches you up on November for the Frantzes... a little late :)