Mallory was begging to build a snowman during the last little snow so we went out and gave it our best effort.  The windchill at that moment was -4 and our faces were stinging from the cold so we ended up with a snow pile.  The snow was so soft we couldn't form a ball.  Mallory's typical 3 year oldness showed up when I tried to take the picture.  She was the one who wanted to build it, then when we got it done, she wanted nothing to do with it.  Last week the kids and I had gone swimming at the Y.  We all got very cranky in the changing room afterward and by the time we got to the car I was bawling from being so upset with myself at how I had handled their childishness.  I moaned during my crying that I am a terrible mother (which I have never let come out of my mouth and know that it's a lie and am working with Jesus on it)  and Kinley, with tears in her eyes, loudly and firmly said to me what Josh says to her when she says something mean about herself "No you're not! I don't think that about you and God doesn't think that about you!".  It melted my heart and the truth went straight through.  It was such a burst of light in a dark hour.  It is also in stark contrast to two months ago when I was teaching the kids about the fruit of the spirit.  We went around the family and said what fruit we see in each other's lives.  Kinley told Josh that he had the fruit of peace in his life because he is always calm and like everything is ok.  Then she looked at me and thought hard for a few seconds and said "well I don't see any fruit in you mommy".  Of course that broke my heart and I had to take days to get out of that pit.  Oh mothering! :)  God is working in my heart a lot and revealing the selfishness, self reliance and pride that poorly affects my parenting.  Oh the pain of dying to those things but I am praying that this year I learn a place of humility before God and allow Him to pour His love through our family instead of me running our lives with self-centered control freakness that pushes Him out.  

We had our annual family visit to the dentist and it was Mallory's first time to get cleaned and checked.  At home when we were getting ready to leave she started freaking out saying that she did not want to go to the dentist because they were going to pull all of her teeth out.  In the car she was acting crazy about it so I just prayed out loud and told fear to get out.  By the time we walked into the dentist office she was a completely different person.  Happy to be there and excited for the experience.  She did great and when we left she cried for the hygienist and wanted to go to her house to give her a hug.  Now she begs to go back to the dentist. 

 Saturday was the Cub scout Pinewood Derby.  We love our new pack in Jenks.  It is so organized and well run.  James worked really hard on his car which is in the picture below sitting on the right side of the table.  He won first place in his den for speed and creative design.  Then he won first place of all the Wolf Cubs in design.  He was pleased and can't wait for next year.  He and Josh are scheming a "money" car??

We had a very merry Christmas season this year!  It started out with Josh and I getting home from Duncan after Thanksgiving on Saturday around 10 and staying up until 2am to get up the Christmas decorations.  After we recovered we enjoyed the festivities. We "found" Duck Dynasty for the first time and Josh found this app that allows you to put one of their beards on your picture.  

 We continued our gingerbread house making tradition but tried to go bigger and better.  We decided bigger and better is exhausting and wasteful.  I had to use 18 cups of flour to make enough dough!  We did have left over dough so the kids each got to make their very own house.  

 James'

 Mallory's

 Josh and Lindsey's

 Kinley's

 On the way to OKC James was tired and laid his head on M's seat so she started rubbing his head because she likes the way his buzz cut feels.  It was the sweetest few minutes!

 We spent Christmas eve and morning at my parents' house in Edmond with my sister and her kids.  Mallory was not interested in looking at the camera before seeing her stocking.

 James' favorite toy was the Hot Wheels wall track that Santa brought him.

Kinley and Mallory were probably most excited about the beef sticks they found in their stockings…I am so proud!  

Kinley's favorite toy was a My Little Pony castle that hooks to the castle she already has.  Mallory looked at her toy which was a My Little Pony royal car set and she said "I didn't want that…you can have it Kinley".  All that Mallory asked for this year was a pink fishing pole.  We told granddad and assumed that he was going to get it so we kept reassuring her that it would come.  Then when we opened gifts in Duncan and she didn't get one we felt really bad.  Thankfully she handled it with grace and we went to Walmart the day after Christmas and got her one. 

 She loved fishing with the long wanted pink fishing pole!

 Josh's big bass catch.  Isn't he handsome!

We are excited because we ordered a Canoe and Kayak with our Christmas money! Josh is excited because now he is an Admiral because he owns a fleet of boats.  We are officially going to look like the Griswold's going camping. 

 On New Years Eve both sets of neighbors came over for our annual Tamale dinner.  All the kids stayed up until midnight to ring in the new year.  They thought they were big stuff!  

 Emily took these pictures of the girls when we were in Duncan over Thanksgiving.  I think the are beautiful!

Though the blog post is all about us and our gifts, we were thankful that we could see a little growth in our kids and their ability to see past gifts a little more this year and get involved in giving and being thankful.  God has so richly blessed our lives with deep relationships, physical provision, and His relentless love the most fun thing we can do is share it all with the world and this Christmas we experienced that together. 

Here are a few of our favorite pictures from our photo shoot with Erin Goodrich Photography.

 I love these two pictures…she captured them exactly as they are these days.

 Below Kinley and Mallory are making their own batches of cinnamon rolls.  I love cooking with them…it's too bad we always make sugary unhealthy things together.  Today we were babysitting a 6 month old and Kinley was pushing him in the stroller to the bus stop.  She was doing a great job and I complimented her. Then Mallory said "When I grow up, I'm going to be really good at cooking!"  It was so funny, like she inferred that I was saying Kinley would be a good mommy even though I didn't say that.  She decided she wasn't into the mommy thing but feels confident about the cooking.  She actually is very interested in cooking and always wants to help.

 October 26 I ran the Tulsa Run 15k!! I made it the whole way (9.3miles) without walking and in 1 hour 49 minutes.  My goal was not to walk and to finish in 2 hours.  I ended up running it with my neighbor Tiffany and we had a great time together.  Last year when I ran the 5k I tried to take one of the medals at the finish line and a woman yelled at me and told me "that is not for you!! Put it back!" I was embarrassed and decided I was going to rightfully get and keep one of those medals. (I'm mostly joking:)) It was really cool to set a goal that seemed totally unattainable and reach it.  Josh was so good to let me go on a lot of early runs and long Saturday runs and to put up with my moaning about soreness.  I was really wanting the kids to be at the finish line and see me accomplish a goal I'd been working toward for months and to be excited with me but they were less than impressed and the first thing they said when I crossed the finish line was "finally! you took forever mom! Can we go home?"  They were only there 20 minutes and I had been running for two hours!  Oh well, I am believing that it stuck with them somehow! My running career is over for now and I am so happy! 

 We continued our halloween tradition with the Henslee's and had dinner with them and went trick or treating.  It was so fun to have a neighborhood of our  own that was worthy of trick or treating in.  The kids buckets got so heavy after half the neighborhood that they were begging to go home!  James was Batman (I don't have a picture??), Kinley was a fawn (cracks me up that that was her choice  - what five year old wants to be a fawn?!), and Mallory was a black cat who wouldn't wear her ears.

Thursday afternoon the kids were washing rocks in the upstairs sinks.  They filled the sinks and left to let the rocks soak.  Mallory stayed behind in the bathroom for a few minutes then apparently got distracted by the others and left the sink running.  Meanwhile I was in the kitchen getting dinner together and I heard a strange dripping sound.  I ran upstairs and asked if the water was running…sure enough it was.  The bathroom didn't look too wet at first.  I went back down stairs and it started raining from two of our light fixtures in the kitchen!  I went back up stairs and started freaking out saying "Mallory, this is soooo bad!! You are in big trouble, there is water everywhere!!"  She kept saying "I don't understand!! I don't understand!!"  I could tell she was really clueless so I explained it all to her and she was so sad.  She started crying.  I realized it was just a childish mistake and hugged her.  We went over the rules about sinks and water and she promised always to turn the water off.  She is so cute and mostly so sweet.  She was really worried about the house.  Below is a video of the water (near the end, it had flowed a lot faster) and of Mallory talking about it. Now you may remember something similar happening in our old house about 2 years ago.  Kinley overflowed the sink on purpose because she wanted her ponies to float.  She even locked the door behind her so no one could turn the water off.  It's frustrating that both girls have done this but funny how different their attitudes toward it were.  So far we don't think we have major damage but the wood floor is starting to warp.  The sheet rock around the light fixtures has water rings we had to pull up the carpet upstairs.  Time will tell...

We went on our first cub scout campout this last weekend.  The funny thing is we are like professional campers but we didn't really know what we were getting into so we didn't take much and we were completely unprepared.  We had to borrow tent stakes, toilet paper, trash bags, coffee, baby wipes… Now we know!  But it was really fun and we feel like we are getting a Jenks community.  The kids all go to Jenks West, some are in James' class.  They live within a mile of us, and one goes to LC jenks.

One of our favorite things to do in the Fall is visit Carmichael's Pumpkin Patch.  They have the best gathering of live farm animals in our area not to mention a hay maze, cool pumpkins, and lots of other cool stuff that costs money that we never let our kids do.  This year we ran into James' best friend from the last two years at Hoover.  His name is Will.  James has been asking to call him for over a month.  Finally I let him about two weeks ago and we had to leave a message.  Anyway, James was super excited to see him.  It is hard to know how to handle the moving on friendship thing.  I have tried to distance us from him but it feels so sad to James because he doesn't understand how us moving 30 minutes from him changes anything.  I told him to pray about it and see what God does...

 We got a few new school books for the girls to practice their basic preschool skills and they beg me to get them out everyday and beg me to keep working when I tell them time is up.  I hope they stay this studious.

 Small sample of our family pictures!

 It rained really hard all day one day last week.  We had been to the grocery store and two other errands and were soaked by the time we were done.  I had a major fiasco in the walmart parking lot that included a 12pack of cokes rolling all over the parking lot, walmart bags looking more like water balloons, and an unruly basket.  So, when we got home I let them loose in the water.  It was freezing but they played for an hour racing bottle caps in "rivers" and rescuing worms from drowning.

 We just returned from out 6th Annual Beaver's Bend Campout!  This year only our household and Jason's household were able to make it AND we didn't get the spot that we've had the 5 previous years! But we had a great time and made some fun memories.  Our family always gets there first on Wednesday night.  We always have bad weather the first night we are there it seems.  This time it was raining when we arrived and proceeded to rain all night.  So we set up as fast as possible in the rain and just hung out in the tent for the two hours until bed time.  We sang songs, told stories, played "I'm going camping and I'm taking a …."  It was so sweet to have that time with the kids.  Mallory's "ghost" story is hilarious and I have tried to video tape it but she won't have anything to do with it.  Sometime I'll get her then I'll post it.

This is a bear we always take pictures with but this time we realized he could hold Mallory.

 I forgot to post this story a while back but one day in the back yard Mallory wanted me to push her in the swing so as I was pushing she told me to stand in front of her and I asked why.  She said, "so I can kick you in the muffins".  What in the world.  She meant she wanted to kick me in the breasts but apparently someone taught her that they are muffins.  

 I've been telling Mallory that it is just going to be her and I next year because Kinley will go to school like James.  I ask her "what are we going to do?" She says "have tea parties!!".  Yesterday Josh and I were talking to her about it just being me and her all day next year and she said "Well, I AM the cutest in our family".  At least she doesn't lack confidence.

 As for parenting on the camping trip once we got to Beaver's Bend the kids were great!  We didn't have to discipline at all.  It is so nice that they are getting big enough to have a good time with.  However, on the way there they were quiet intolerable.  We had to pull to the side of the highway to give all three spankings at one point.  I was cracking up because we were in hick SE OK and Josh was having the kids put their hands on the car while he used his belt to spank them.  I yelled out the window "you are going to get taken to jail if you don't watch for cars!".  Oh parenting...

 Our family is officially too big to fit in one canoe.  So when we went on the float we got James his own kayak.  He handled it like a champ.  There is only one small spot of rapids and they are right when you get in but he only spun around once and didn't get stuck at all.  I think he really enjoyed it and we were really impressed.  Does he not look like a teenager in the pic below…what happened to my baby?  It started raining while we were in the middle of the float so we pulled into a little grove of trees for protection.  Simultaneously James had to poop real bad so Josh instructed him on how to dig a hole then hold on to a tree and swing it way back then poop in the hole.  He did great and he did it all while all 8 of us watched.  He is a true outdoorsman.

 Canoeing is my favorite thing at Beaver's Bend.  I started thinking about all the places we go where canoeing is possible and Josh mentioned something about people that own their own canoes and I suddenly came up with the Morris family Christmas list…GRANDPARENTS listen up…we and by we I mean all 5 of us :) want 1 canoe and 1 kayak.  We will take used and beat up!  Grandad, we could even bring them when we come to your house and use them on your ponds!! Ok enough of my shameless begging.  I think it would be really great to be able to float that river 10 times while we are there camping, it is beautiful!

 Ezra (Jason and Emily's 1 yr old) passed out in our canoe.  We were just rowing along and Mallory said "the baby is falling asleep".  He was sitting up and swaying side to side with droopy eyes like he was just about to fall over. We laid him down on a life jacket and there he slept for over 30 minutes.  So sweet.  Now, the reason he was so tired is that he didn't sleep well the first two nights we were there. The third night (again I am revealing some great parenting techniques of ours - please know we love and care well for our children and don't turn us in to DHS) Josh and I told them about the wonders of melatonin crushed up in applesauce.  Jason affectionately labeled it sleepy sauce.  Anyway, Ezra slept great the whole night and woke up happy.  That morning we discussed it a lot and laughed about it then packed up and left.  As our family was eating at McDonald's on the way home we were telling the kids they had to get in the car after lunch and take a nap while we drove home.  James said "So did you put that stuff in our food?"  We died laughing.  The way he said it was so funny.  It was "I'm curious how that works and I kind of want you to give it to me"mixed with "how dare you drug your children" mixed with "what else do you put in my food?". We assured him that we only drug him when absolutely necessary (like when driving 24 hours non stop to Hilton Head - that is when we gave it to our kids - the only time I might add).  

 Gotta love car naps! How do they sleep like that?

 This pic isn't very good but I wanted to document that the girls love to eat mac and cheese out of coffee mugs.  I was out of town or gone for the day and Josh was feeding the kids mac n cheese and all the bowls were in the dishwasher so he served it in coffee mugs and Kinley thought is was the best thing ever.  So now we eat mac n cheese in mugs.

Over the summer we went to the Kiddie Park in Bartlesville (one of our favorite places).  We are sad because the kids are beginning to grow out of it.  However, we still had some pretty fun times.

 The girls cracking up on a very slow turtle ride.

Kinley and I were sitting at James' flag football game the other day and she was playing with a baby that was there.  I told her how fun it is to watch her love on babies because I loved babies when I was a kid.  She said "then you got three of your own! But it's so sad because we are growing up!"  I said "I know...whaaa...what am I going to do without my babies?"  She said "You can hold my babies! You can be their Gigi and you can see them whenever you want, as long as I'm not busy."  I reminded her that when I'm busy I let her grandparents keep her. She said "Oh yeah, when I'm busy they can come stay at your house."  I said "well maybe we will live down the street from each other?"She said "Ok if my husband is ok with it that would be fun?"  Such a precious conversation.  I can't believe how she is growing and it breaks my heart but leaves me excited at the same time.

 James and Kinley are becoming really good friends.  They enjoyed the train ride together and today James was talking about the hard time he's having at school with his friends.  He was crying and Kinley came up to me with tears in her eyes and said "I feel bad for James". I told her to go up to him give him a hug and say I love you.  She did.  He hugged back and said see I'd rather be with you guys all the time. So sweet!  I have hope!

 I've taken each kid on a date in the last month or so.  The girls both chose Braum's and James chose snow cones.  I love how they come alive and chatter constantly when they have me one on one.

 This is the wreath I made for halloween then I got a fall flower arrangement  to replace the bow with for Thanksgiving! It was so easy!!

 James wrote this paper when his teacher asked them to write about their weekend.  I was so thrilled that he so openly exposed my keeping him out of school to do something fun.  To make matters worse the teacher assigned me to hang all the childrens' stories in the hall! Oh well, I've always been a little bit of a rebel.

  

We took family pictures this weekend and right before we left we asked Mallory how she was going to smile for Miss Erin the photographer and she put on James' batman mask and stuck her tongue out.  We were scared considering last year she was a complete terror.  But, she did wonderfully.  We had and great time taking pictures and everyone did great!  I can't wait to post some!