Christmas Eve!

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE GLYNN FAMILY!!!!
December 24, 2009

Today we woke up to a strange day--the front windows were all iced over and upon stepping outside, we could walk on top of the snow!!! Andy started to shovel and then tried out the snowblower....but I prefer to call what he did today "ice-blowing"! It was a fun day and the weather did not impact our activities. We had much fun playing outside in the snow/ice this morning--all 6 of us were out, which was a first for this family. Colin didn't like it THAT much; he really did not like the feel of boots; and didn't feel the need to keep his mittens on. We'll have to work on him.

Our friends had told us that IF we talked to the snowplow people; they would dump all the snow in our yard....how neat is that? So, last week, I spied a snowplow in the cul de sac and ran outside to ask if they'd make us a pile! Sure enough, we have the start of a sledding hill! The girls had such fun today, sledding down into our front yard! Ava tried it a few times, but she preferred to play with Colin and eat the snow! Down below are videos of the girls sledding and Andy "ice-blowing", as well as amazing Ava snow pictures that Andy captured.

Above, we have a collage of our evening. We went to church, as we always do on Christmas Eve. It was wonderful and we (Colin and I!) almost made it through the entire service! Maybe next year?!?!? We have a crazy tradition in our house....every year on Christmas Eve, we go to 4pm church and then out to eat to McDonald's....which has always closed at 6pm. This year, we arrived at 5:30pm only to find that they closed at 5pm! What a bummer! Wendy's had their lights on and sure enough, they were open, so our tradition of fast food on Christmas Eve continued! And how did that tradition start, you ask?! Well......years ago, we were trying to decide WHAT to do for dinner after church since we usually leave early in the morning on Christmas for one of our parents' homes. It has become a fun, crazy tradition and now, I guess we'll have to alter our dinner time or just make it a fast food tradition!

When we got home, we let the girls open 1 gift...their matching Christmas PJ's. We enjoyed finishing our Advent calendar and the girls were whisked off to bed....so Andy could finish assembling their gifts. It's currently 10:45pm and he's yet to come up from the basement...I'm wondering if he is PLAYING with the gifts?!

This year, we are staying put for Christmas. What a strange feeling that is, to not have to rush to pack for a trip. We are excited to give the girls/Colin all of our attention and make it a full family day tomorrow--after the crazy fall we've had, we are all excited for the day tomorrow!

But nonetheless, let us not forget the reason for the season....that Jesus was sent from above, to save us from our sins. Happy Birthday Jesus.....and Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas #2 and more...

Yesterday after school, we celebrated 2009 Christmas, part 2!!!! Grammie and Grampy brought their tree (haha....wooden craft pencil tree!) and set it up at their apartment! We had a mini feast and had quite a few laughs as we exchanged gifts. Colin was VERY into the gifts, favorites being an Elmo book and Radio Flyer rocket....and a big laugh was the photos that we gave to Grammie and Grampy...HOW on earth did we forget to order individual photos of COLIN? Poor 4th child....already being forgotten!

Above you see the group photos taken by "the" tree...

The children opening gifts...as you can see, Ava was VERY into opening a stocking stuffer!

All 3 girls received vests this year...they were a HUGE hit. The above picture is the girls early this morning--they didn't really take off their vests all day!

Here is Colin and his new rocket....he just didn't want to get off of it, even to have the wheels put on! He has moved into the next stage of "kid"...he is very into his gifts/toys now!

Today, we went to Oshkosh to the Nutracker in the Castle at the Paine Art Center. It was beautiful! The children are very into the Nutcracker story and had lots of fun walking through the rooms. Above, you can see the family before and after the tour as well as the girls pretending to be nutcrackers and reading the "big book" about the Nutcracker story.

Cameras were only allowed in 1 room and the basement activity area. Above, the children were playing with the wooden toys in the 1st room. Colin was happy as long as you did not put him on one of the big scary toys....

And he was also happy as long as he was strapped in his stroller....which is a good thing!

After the tour, we went to the basement where they had some activities for the children. The girls loved the drawings, puppet theater and learning about various other things (like worms and composting!). It was a fun afternoon, a great kick off to Christmas vacation!

2009 Christmas, part 3 starts tomorrow, so stay tuned for more merryGlynngoround fun! The girls are giddy with excitement to exchange gifts with each other and we are looking forward to worshiping as a family tomorrow night to celebrate Jesus' birth. How blessed we are, to have a Savior sent to save us....Merry Christmas friends and family!

MORE music...& Christmas #1...

Warning: This is a long post! It is 3 events into 1 post....enjoy!

Believe it or not, we have more "music" themed activities to report to you! We had Ellie's school program and then the church singing for Ava...and then last week, had Jayna and Ava's school programs. All the music events this year have been BEAUTIFUL. Great work girls!!!

The above picture is a collage of Jayna's program; it was the kindergarten and 1st grade classes. They sang many songs and many of the children had individual speaking roles. Jayna found it entertaining to memorize everyone's lines and speak them to us as fast as she could! Whoa!

To catch a few snippets of the program, click on the following titles:
Come On Ring Those Bells
Bethelem Lullabye
Jayna's verse
Joyful, Joyful (and what joy the children sang with!)
Angles are Rejoicing (my favorite...and it remains the song that describes Jayna and her singing!)
My Heart, Your Home

2 days after Jayna's program, we attended the preschool Christmas program. It was darling, seeing these little children dressed up and singing to Jesus. In October, the class had "Bible Dress Up Day" and for Ava (being child #3 to attend NHP), I had decided she'd be what the other girls had been--a frog or butterfly. The day before the event, she came home saying "Mom, GUESS WHAT?! We get to dress up and *I* want to be an angel!" Oh dear....there just was not time to get an angel costume, it was 2 weeks before we moved--our house was in shambles, so creating one was not really an option. She settled on butterfly....and lamented over the desire to be an angel! SO.....when she found out that she got to be an ANGEL for the Christmas program, she was on the top of the world! You can see Little Ava Angel in the picture above and in a few songs that the preschoolers sang. To view them, click on the titles:
In A Little Stable
Oh What A Night
Rock The Baby
Above are the Glynn children after Ava's program. We've not had the best luck getting Colin to cooperate in a busy setting, so we didn't even try this time (picture on left). Wouldn't you know, he was chomping at the bit to be included...hence picture #2 (on right!).

The preschoolers had a gift exchange and Ava was delighted to receive a princess coloring tub toy. The top right picture is Ava with her friend Lily--they enjoy playing with each other everyday at school and come to find out, Lily is 1 of 4 children as well! The bottom right photo is Ava and Colin (trapped in his stroller!). Colin was holding his beloved bracelette and had crumbled a sugar cookie into his cup holder..... ;)

The next day, we traveled to Illinois where we celebrated our 1st Christmas of the year with Andy's family. We made it a (long) day trip...and got home just before midnight...with 4 children who were WIDE awake!!

ALL of Jim & Margie's children were there, the only missing person was son in law Matt who couldn't get away from work. It was so nice to see Molly and the kids, who we rarely see. Of course, it was a day full of photo opportunities, which did prove to be challenging at times....

The above pictures are the Glynn children and grandchildren photos we captured. There WAS 1 entire group photo captured just prior to us leaving for the night....but we didn't dare try that one with everyone's cameras. The picture above is full of happy, serious, and silly pictures. It was fun to be the photographer on most of these and hear Andy and his siblings create their crazy poses. I also had to play the role of "Fairy Godmother" with a sparkly wand chanting "Bibbity Bobbity Boo!" while waving it over Andy's head JUST to try to get all of the cousins to LOOK at Andy and perhaps SMILE together. What a memory.

We also got to enjoy Uncle Ben, home from college. As usual, he and Uncle Jimmy dueled for Colin time....

The children played the wii and we really got a kick out of Ellie's dramatic playing with the wii wheel and boxing with cousin Abby. To see the boxing, click HERE. We also had a creative "Happy Birthday Jesus Cake"--it was a layered meatloaf! All of the children (minuse Colin) had a turn blowing out the candle--to view this, click HERE. Again, not to be left out, Colin had some candle exposure himself. He got quite the kick out of blowing out the dining table's candle: to view this click HERE.

Baby Wesley was as precious as can be--and Colin really got agitated when I held Wesley right next to him. He was very perplexed and disturbed.

Colin LOVED the Whipple boys and it was cute to see him interact with them. He especially got into chasing Parker around and playing with Sammy and his Webkinz parrot.

And speaking of Colin....it will probably go down as the "Christmas of Colin and his beads". We did not take the girls' (Colin's?!) beads with us...but sure enough, he found some at Grandma's house! He took FOREVER to warm up to the relatives this time...but as you can see, in the lower right picture just above, Colin eventually did warm up and even shared a string of purple beads with Uncle Ben.

There were gifts, and for once, Andy did not get photos of each child opening everything! :) He did capture the cool tye dye swimming shirt Ellie received and the knitting machine that Jayna received. Stay tuned though....the absent photo here is of Ellie and Jayna getting guitars. Surely there will be documentation of this in the future! :)

Merry Christmas week! As we were getting ready to eat our feast, we all sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and Andy's Mom commented that we would all be so sad if people forgot to celebrate OUR birthdays. Let us never forget the reason we are celebrating this week!

Music, Music, Music...

This weekend was FILLED to the brim with music! On Friday, the 2nd-8th graders at New Hope had their Christmas program, which had been canceled last Wednesday when we received "mountains" of snow. The program was BEAUTIFUL.

A month or so ago, Ellie told us she was going to play a piano selection in the pre-program music. Wonderful!!! (Especially since I dropped the ball with the craziness of our move and didn't get her auditioned for the church pre-music playing this year!) And a week before the program, I was picking up the piano books and saw Ellie's song...and thought "Wow....I bet she'd like it if I played a duet with her!" (Of course, she was elated when I asked her about it.) The funniest thing was that most people in WI had no idea I play the piano! To watch the duet (really, nothing to watch...just listen!), click HERE. It was a special song and now all the girls play duets with me for fun!

Also about a month ago, Ellie came home from school saying "I got a solo for the Christmas program!" We were so excited for her. She absolutely loved participating in this program and her solo started off the program this year. The words are "Savior of the nations, come, Virgin's Son, make here Your home! Marvel now, O heav'n and earth, That the Lord chose such a birth." So true---Jesus made THIS His home....and that the Lord chose SUCH a birth....how blessed we are!!!! To hear Ellie's solo, click HERE.

There were many more songs during the program...here are snippets of all of them (click on song title to view):
Silent Night part 1 (the 3rd graders were singing in KOREAN!)
Silent Night part 2
African Alleluia
Tell The World
Go Tell It On The Mountain
He's Got The Whole World In His Hands
Joy To The World


After school, we zoomed home to drop Ava off with Miss Valerie (who, by the way, SAVED the day--she ended up being able to babysit Colin during the program, which was during his nap! Whew!). We had a HUGE surprise for the big girls--they had no idea what we were doing with them on Friday night. All they knew was 1) it was just for big girls and 2) they had to bring their winter snow gear. The above picture is of the 4 of us JUST prior to leaving for the surprise. To see us reveal the surprise to the girls, click HERE.

The girls were beyond excited. Andy had heard about the Sara Groves concert a few months ago and said 'Put it on the calendar...and how about we surprise the girls?!' 2 years ago, Andy and I went to see her in concert--she is one amazing musician. We now own almost all her CDs and it is neat to hear the girls sing along to them. Both times we've seen her, she's played at the Cup O Joy coffeehouse in Green Bay. And get this: the concerts are FREE....they do take a freewill donation....but basically free--totally amazing! 2 years ago when we went, it was COLD. Actually, COLD doesn't describe how it was. It was SO cold back then that school had been canceled due to the cold temperatures. This year? THE SAME! But school wasn't cancelled! It was hovering around zero when we got to the Cup O Joy coffeehouse....to see the big crowd waiting in line....

Andy was the first one in line!!! He was dressed to wait outside and the girls and I took off to find a McDonald's. By the time we arrived back at the Cup, Andy could not feel his feet! He sat in the van while I waited in line about 10 minutes and then Andy took over again...in the fridgid weather. For his (crazy) dedication to being 1st in line, he received a CD door prize! The above picture is lone Andy waiting in line at 4:30 for the 6:30 concert and then all 4 of us FREEZING waiting in line just prior to the doors opening. What a fun memory...and the concert had not even begun yet!

Waiting....waiting....waiting....for the concert.

And finally.....Sara Groves. The little video Andy captured does not due her justice....so if you are interested, type Sara Groves in youtube.com....her music is amazing. For the 2nd time, we LOVED her concert and will continue to wait patiently for her to come back to Wisconsin!


While we were at the concert, Ava had fun with Miss Valerie making Gingerbread Lollipops! She had names for all of them--it was cute to see her creativity. The next day, Ellie and Jayna worked on a Gingerbread house...and oooopppps...there was milk in the frosting! Thankfully, I had some 'spray' frosting and that did the trick. They love doing these creations at Christmastime!

Finally, today, Ava's Sunday School class sang at church. She is very shy; she is VERY serious....and we don't have ANY video to show you! :) These were the only 2 pictures that turned out--let it be said that she was darling and we'll have more Ava at the end of this week when she has her school Christmas program!!!

Happy Music Viewing!

Mountains of Snow....

Today, we had a MAJOR snow day! Wow. Nothing like jumping right into winter!!!! Last night, as I fixed dinner, the girls said "PLEASE? Can we go out in it NOW?!" I let them thinking they'd be right back in. No so true. I think we called them in after about 40 minutes!!! The girls LOVED it, they completely walked all over the beautifully non-marked snow in the back AND the front! It was really fun to see Ava love it just as much as the big girls last night...however, this morning...things were different....

The above photo is Ellie at 645am....wearing her PJs under her snow gear! She woke up ready to take advantage of the white stuff. She and Jayna lasted pretty long playing outside 2x today...Ava? Not so much. The snow was so deep, Ava really couldn't even move in it! The picture above of Ellie by our table and grill reminded me of all those years we went to the Hormel House in Vail...that's what all the homes' decks looked like!

Next to Ellie, if you look close, you'll see a picture of Andy using his new snowblower. We didn't have a snowblower at our old house; Andy did his research and bought it 2 weeks ago. He read the instructions, tested it out last night...he was READY this morning. It made it for 1 pass of the driveway before it broke down. So much for the highly rated machine. It will be going to the snowblower doctor! But our neighbors--they are so friendly! 2 different neighbors just let Andy borrow theirs--it was a HUGE blessing, considering how deep the beautiful white stuff was!
We spent the day playing and we did make molasses cookies. Ellie and Jayna got to roll the cookies in sugar, and Colin supervised and ate the finished project. We tried to get Ava up from her nap to help....as you can see, she was NOT ready to end her slumber!

We also got some great video of Colin today. He's been a bear--his ears have been full of fluid and we believe that the fluid finally became infected. He has just cried and cried for 2 days now...but we did capture some funny stuff from him:
He has a beloved blanket...but does he love sniffing the tag more than he loves the blanket? Click HERE to see the game at breakfast today.

And just last weekend, we took the girls to see The Nutcracker Ballet. Tonight, I was commenting that perhaps Colin should be in dance--the boy dancers get GREAT roles in the productions. Andy started imitating dancing and Colin REALLY got into it. Click HERE to see.

And finally...it was a like a switch had been turned off--the crying stopped and joyful happy Colin returned. To view some of his dancing moves, click HERE!

Happy Snow!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

It is REALLY snowing today...it is BEAUTIFUL!!!

As Ava and I watched the snow this morning, we started singing our favorite Christmas songs....and I was reminded of an all time classic Glynn video....

Click HERE for a good holiday laugh!!!

And stay tuned....weather permitting, tomorrow night starts the girls' Christmas programs!

Happy snow watching!