Merry Christmas!!!

Celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior and praising Him for the many blessings He has provided this year.  We hope and pray that the Peace Christ brings is with you and your's this Christmas.

Love, The Moss Family

Two of us are missing in the Christmas picture this year.  Just picture two crazy people behind the camera doing their best to get 4 kids to smile at the same time.  IP is just looking at us thinking, "they've lost it."

We kicked off the season with the local holiday parade with friends in the cold.

Thanksgiving!

Early Craziness Christmas with the Cousins!

9 little blessings around Granny & Paw Paw's tree

Fun Times at Granny and Paw Paw's house!

the 2 littlest "Littles"

the "middles"

"working" on the farm

playing in the barn

Kicking up our heels out on a triple date night with free baby sitting!!!

A New Tradition

Getting ready to find out how our 2 new baby kittens do on a 6 hr road trip and how this tree withstands 75 mph winds.

selecting their ornaments

Here are a few pics of a very cute Angel Gabriel and Mary in their Christmas program.

We sang carols and visited with some of Daddy's friends from work.

Granny and PawPaw came bearing gifts:)

It's a helmet! It's a helmet! I gotta helmet! A brown helmet!!!!

Notice the change in character between the 1st and the last pic in this section;)

We built our 1st gingerbread house.

We packed a lot into Daddy's afternoon off.

Science Mill

SLiM sneaking the last bite of pie during the pic.

photo by McB

what a family of 6 selfie(without a selfie stick) looks like

We spent Christmas Eve with friends at our church program.  Daddy, McB and SLiM participated in the program but we have no photos to show from it b/c Mommy was juggling a busy IP and HR and attempting to video.  We loved the program though.

The birthday buddies did their monthly shoot just before the program.  All decked out in their matching 1st Christmas suits.

Big bro snuck in for a Christmas kiss.

We finished up our advent celebration at home before opening gifts.

We headed out around 4am Christmas morning to Gramma and Grampa's house.

Gramma played scrabble with the stockings this year.

Grampa read the Christmas story and then we all opened gifts together.

We spent the afternoon playing in the beautiful warm weather.  Here are a few pics of SLiM learning to ride her new bike.

We had s'mores the next night and then headed in to have a book party with 7 kids in a closet while the tornado sirens were going off as the winter storm moved in and pushed out our nice warm weather. 

We went on an adventure to see an ice sculpture exhibit.

The winter storm won and we found snow to play in on our drive home.

McB built a mini snowman and the kids had a quick snowball fight.  IP started it by pelting Daddy in the head with a snowball.  He thought he was big stuff until he realized how cold snow is without gloves on.

6 Months!

She is usually the center of attention in our family and she continues to get lots of lov'n from her siblings.  

We're looking forward to trying new foods this month and maybe learning to sit independently...two things she is very interested in.  She has become much more proficient in rolling, scooting and using her hands, esp. to grab things off mommy's plate.  She celebrated her (1/2 a year!!!) monthday with a bowl of cereal.  While she had no idea what was coming, a few others in the family have been anticipating this moment for a while now.  We all watched eagerly as she experienced her 1st bite of food!!!

wait for it....

1st bite!

2nd bite:)

Story time with her sweet big brother:

Even Darth Vader has to learn to read and write.

Pledging allegiance.

The photographer snapped this action shot of Ziggity enjoying his reward for sitting still to take a family photo.

5 Months!

Oh my goodness, this girl brings so much love to our family.  She is full of smiles, giggles and squeals...happy squeals for the most part.  She communicates quite well and has even mastered the cutest "yelling at us" squeal when we don't react as quick as she would like us to.

Birthday Buddies!

 We frequently remind ourselves that it really is fall despite the heat.  Here are a few shots of our visit to the local pumpkin patch.

Our traditional picture with a baby in a stuffy pumpkin costume.  The BRIGHT sun and shade and sweat give our photo a little extra character.  We all survived and promptly returned to fun times in the petting zoo.

IP is having a deep conversation with a goat.

After, conversing with the goat, IP spent most of his time here.  He is patiently waiting for his turn to pretend drive.

A lady scarecrow MUST have a dress...and a hat.  SLiM was a little disappointed that there was no purse to hang on her arm.

The County Fair

Loving on their Little Sister

Sunday Best

We had a dress up day at school and 3 weeks later, IP is still wearing his "football player".  We've washed it a few times.

Speaking of dress up, they say, "you are what you eat."

Here is shot of Daddy trying to get out the door to go to work.

Practicing for our Thanksgiving feast and thrilled to have baby sister join the fun in the playroom.

Playing with the big kids takes lots of energy.  This is the calming technique she uses if we don' get to her paci quick enough.

McB has met some milestones this month too!

He finally lost his 1st tooth

and dribbled the soccer ball during a game:)

He is turning out to be quite an entrepreneur.  After learning a little about money in math and planting a garden in science, he decided he wanted to sell his produce at HEB.  We decided we'd shoot for the local farmer's market instead.  He collected some pecans to sell too since his garden only yielded about 3 small baggies of lettuce.

A few weeks ago we discussed letter writing in his reading curriculum.  Despite our encouragement to write to one of his grandparents, he wrote a letter to the Queen of England saying, "God is good."  

We were a bit shocked when he received a response letter signed by "The Lady in Waiting."  He is ready to hop on a plane (or a ship) and go visit Buckingham Palace.

We decided to visit a more local government building.  Grampa and Gramma joined us for a fun day in Austin.

Fun Times at Zilker Park

The snaggle-toothed, Trader Joe's turkey. 

Our hotel slumber party on HR's 5th month-day!