Table for 27 Please...

A couple days after Christmas Grandma&pa Fergy took the whole Fergy gang out to eat at Buca di Beppo's a yummy Italian restaurant where all the meals are served family style. We took a whole room to ourselves which turned out to be great because the kids, especially mine, were non stop traveling from seat to seat.  

Although the service we received this night was pretty crappy, we still had a ton of fun enjoying one another's company and all the delicious food.  THANKS MOM & DAD!

Holly Jolly Fergy Christmas

As Christmas started approaching this year Cory and I lamented that we just didn't feel like it was Christmas so to help put me in the holiday spirit Cory drew a couple of Christmas pictures for me on our shower wall until on Christmas day the whole wall was was filled.

I got up early on Christmas morning, like I do every year to get the breakfast started and mood set & I glanced over at everything Santa left & had to take a picture before the presents all got ransacked of all of our beautiful Christmas bounty.  But this year before we let everyone loose on their gifts we gathered together to read the Christmas story from Luke 2 hoping that it would help us to remember and keep focused on what the day really was about, "Happy Birthday Jesus" as Phoebe says.

It was fun to have the kids finally see all the special things Santa left.  Phoebe got her "present" from Santa, Barbie clothes.  Josh & Cami got a race track and a car each to race on it.  And Santa left them all a book in their stockings.  You can see Phoebe was thrilled for her dolly clothes while Cami wanted to read everyones books and Josh was happy for his joint car set.

As we opened the rest of our presents it was funny to see all of our children's distinct personalities be shown.  For example, Phoebe gets happy for most toys, but she will let you know if there is something she doesn't really care for either.  Cami is hard to please and will just stare at you like you have just done or given her the lames gift in the whole world, and josh is generally happy for EVERYTHING as you can see by his excitement over Phoebe's Bath paints.

Josh did get his own very first truck which plays music lights up and moves.  Josh played and played with this truck all day and danced to the music it made; I think he will be our own Billy Elliot.

For Christmas this year I asked my parents for one gift, a carpet shampooer and I was thrilled to finally get to open the giant box they brought to me back in October, MY SHAMPOOER!  I was also got new maternity pjs complete with a matching onesie for when Sofie arrives and Cory got the newest Tom Clancy novel. 

 After all the gifts were opened and we all our breakfast Phoebe sat and played with her new horse and snow white while the twins played & played in the kitchen with Phoebe's new 90 piece food set.

This year for Christmas dinner we planned an evening meal which is unusual for us but worked perfectly because the we were able to have  some of the Fergy clan stop in and join us.  We have a small place, but we managed to squeeze everyone in and stuff our our tummies full of yummy food.

 

 Thanks to everyone who helped us to have one of the very best Christmases yet ever!

The Night Before Christmas in the Fergy Home

Every Christmas Eve growing up we ate Lasagna, it was the only time of year my mom made it and this is one tradition that we have continued in our family.  This year for something a little extra special I made Italian soda for our drinks. We discovered that Josh LOVES raspberry Italian sodas and will drink them until his face turns into red blotches and you have to cut him off so he can get some oxygen.

After dinner we opened our one gift of the eve and as always it was new pjs!  This year I chose not to make them, but take the easy way out and buy them, so they will get more warm snuggly use out of them.

 

After a short pj photo session the twins were really cranky so they went to bed while, Phoebe stayed up and decorate gingerbread cookies with us for Santa.  Phoebe was loving all the icing writers you can tell by the amount she loaded on her two cookies.

Cory and I decorate a few cookies ourselves, as always you can see Cory's are all fancy and mine are more sub-par.

Since Phoebe loved her cookies so much we decided to leave some plain cookies out for Santa on his plate.

After decorating the cookies we stepped out back for a few minutes to spread some reindeer food, which Phoebe was so excited about and wanted to stand at her window all night to watch the reindeer come eat her food, but she eventually feel asleep, so she missed them eating some of her special food for them.

We really had fun this Christmas eve now that our family is larger and Phoebe gets excited for Santa and his reindeer and I look forward  to having many more like it in the future!

Visiting Santa's Elves

As Christmas was nearly upon us I realized we hadn't gone to see the elves at Gardener Village so I planned us to all go on Christmas Eve morning when daddy could join us. We were lucky enough to have our friends Stephanie, Cassie & Jacob join us as well as Grandma/pa Fergy, Aunt Ashley and Uncle Luis.

If you look closely on the Naught and nice lists you will see Camille's name in the middle of the naughty list and Joshua's name at the bottom of the nice list...I'd say Santa got it right once again.

As Cassie and Phoebe refused to stand by each other for a picture the only way we could get them in the same photo was to have a parent hold them both for a picture.

I think Josh just looks so cute in his little hat I had to get a picture!

Miscellaneous Fergy Happenings

In the last couple of months Phoebe has begun to "make believe" with her toys, which has been really fun to watch.  This was one of the first times that I have seen her make believe with her blocks.  She built everything by herself & then told me it was a house, tree (orange circle), table (green block), & our "nice" car (orange & blue blocks).  She is too cute to watch learning and exploring on her own.

Have I ever mentioned Josh has three very favorite things to do? Eat, be held, & bathe. One afternoon when the kids were especially fussy I thought I would bathe them all to calm them down, well Josh was a little over zealous and while I was changing Cami's diaper, Josh leaned right on in and got in the tub with all of his clothes on still.  Phoebe flipped out and began crying about it, but Josh on the other hand was perfectly happy just to finally be in the tub.

Cami is our resident busy climber girl, even more than Phoebe if it can be believed.  She is always looking for something to get into and most of the time it is something naughty. She is also one of our most clumsy children, so the two together often lead to some kind of disaster. This particular time I had the stair gate down while I was getting the milk to fill the kids sippy cups for bed and Cami took the opportunity to scurry up the stairs unsupervised, normally not a problem, but this time as she was going up her hand slipped trying to crawl up as fast as possible and she smashed her face on the edge of a stair, resulting in a black eye.  It is not so apparent in these pictures, but if you note the Christmas pictures that will follow it is MUCH blacker. We now call her our own Fergilicious Black Eye Pea.