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I’m not taking as many pictures lately.  I have mixed feelings about this.  Sorting through the massive amounts of pictures I’ve taken over the years is overwhelming, but I still love them and I’m glad I have them.

Here are my boys reading together.  One of my greatest joys as a mother is to see my kids enjoy being together.

Charlotte and her best friend, Alyssa in the snow.  These girls just love to be together.  Every time they see each other, they scream and hug each other and jump up and down.  I think everyone needs someone in their life who is so enthusiastically happy to see them.

We really haven’t had much snow this year.  We had the first big snow on Christmas and then it snowed for an entire day a few days later.  This picture was taken on December 30th after the wind had been howling and blowing all day and all night.  The wind blew the snow into giant drifts and it was so bitter cold that the thought of going out to shovel was daunting.  Luckily, Zach braved the weather and dug out a path for the van. Nicole had woken up several times crying and tugging her ear the night before. I took her into the instacare and found out that her eardrum had burst.  Once we picked up ear numbing drops at the pharmacy she slept the rest of the day.

The howling wind and bitter cold made the walkway very difficult to clear.  I wondered what the neighbors must have thought as they saw me out there with my pick ax.  The pick ax actually helped quite a bit.
Zach’s birthday is December 31st.  We celebrated with family and then with family and friends.

I failed to get a picture of the several varieties of wings Zach cooked, but I did take a picture of my second attempt at a baked Alaska.  I lit sugar cubes drenched in Lemon extract on fire, if you look closely you can see the flame on the one on the far left.  The sugar cubes immediately started burning the outer layer of the dessert so we blew them.

I froze the cake along with the ice cream this year and it made it very difficult to cut and not nearly as attractive as last year.

Here is a picture of several of the children blowing noise makers.  We actually let them stay up till midnight for the first time ever.  Nicole and Thomas didn’t make it till midnight.

There was something about this image of Ila being the ringleader of this little group of girls that I liked seeing.
It seems like I should end this last post of 2014 with some nice picture of everyone, but I’ve already shared all those nice pictures in other posts so I’m ending here with a picture of three girls whose eyes you can’t even see.