Peaks of Otter Hike

A Penny took the week off after Christmas, so we got to do a few things together as a family.

My mom and Alex came to visit for three days, so we went for a hike with them to Peaks of Otter.  We got some great pictures of the view along with way.

It was one of the longer hikes we've done as a family (3 miles round trip, with some fairly steep stairs), but the kids did great!

The view of the top was beautiful - and bright!

The kids loved climbing on the rocks - I'm happy to be adventuresome with them.

AHG awards and other activities

A couple weeks ago Laine had her American Heritage Girls award ceremony.

She earned two merit badges for work done during her meetings and at home.  And she earned a service star (for 10 hours of service this fall) and a few other badges for participating in troop events.

I'm so proud of her hard work and her willingness to try new things!

We also went to Dickens of a Christmas, which is an event in downtown Roanoke on Fridays in December.  We checked out lots of lights, looked at crafts, and even watched a short ballet presentation on a street stage.

As we were heading back to the car we bumped into Frosty!  It was a fun, first-Christmas-in-Roanoke outing.

Seeing more cousins

This past weekend the kids and I went to Charlotte, NC to see my brother and his family.  The nephews were being baptized, so we joined them for their special weekend.

After church we went to Chuck E. Cheese's for lunch.

It was a short visit with everyone, but we had a good time and are glad we live closer to be able to make these kinds of trips to see one another.

Decorating for Christmas

In between our two sets of visitors we pulled out all the Christmas decorations and transformed the house.

The kids love setting up the ceramic tree that came from Penny's house when he was a boy.

I got Santa hats at the dollar store for the kids, and they were a huge hit with the kids.

Don't they look cute?!

There's the finished product.

These guys are so awesome :-)

Friends from St. Louis

The same day Penny's brother and family left our house, we had friends from St. Louis come visit us for a few days.

Rachel and Stefan are good friends of ours, who also used to be our go-to babysitters whenever we needed (or wanted) to go out of town.  Penny did their wedding, and we loved spending time together in St. Louis.  It was great to have them here for a visit!

As with most visitors to Roanoke, going to see The Star is on the list of activities.  The Roanoke Star is on top of Mill Mountain, and it can be seeing from all over the city each night as it is lit up.

There are great short hikes at the top of the mountain, so we went on a hike with the Novosels once we arrived.

The next day Penny and I went for a longer hike with Stefan and Rachel, and little Silas came too.

We hiked up Reed Mountain and enjoyed the view at the top.

The kids loved having visitors over the break, especially spending time with the babies.