The weather outside is frightful

When the view from your window is this(it's been snowing steady all day):
The best thing to drink is this:
I enjoyed my hot chocolate today. Today has been a challenge. Hunter woke up crying this morning and said he'd had a bad dream. Well, I thought he was just being crabby(b/c some days he wakes up really crabby...I usually send him back to bed and tell him when he's more ready to be happy to come on out and it works every time) but today was different. He wanted me to make him Malto Meal but once I did refused to eat it, and wouldn't get off the couch, so I figured out it was more than just the bad dream. He's got a fever of 102 and has been sleeping all day. I'm not kidding ALL DAY. I wonder what this will do to bedtime??? I'm really hoping he feels better by tonight or tomorrow morning, I'd hate to miss out on all the fun Christmas things we have planned. While I was trying to coerce Hunter into eating something this morning I turned the corner to find Tate using HIS Malto Meal as finger paints on my walls. That was a mess that took a while to clean up. Then, after Hunter was in bed and Callie down for a morning nap(the first one in a week Praise God it was today!)I decided to whip up some banana bread with some bananas that were going bad. Tate wanted to help, and while I was measuring the second cup of flour out he turned on the mixer and banana bread batter went flying everywhere! It was another big mess, but the stove top is nice and clean now;) I've decided not to expect too much out of this day. Tate ate about half the loaf of bread for lunch. It felt like I just had two kids all morning. I got to spend some one on one time with Tate and I've never heard the kid be so chatty before! He talked the whole time. We built some towers with his blocks:

We are VERY excited to not have to drive to Iowa in this snow, we have over a foot, and when we went over Thanksgiving there was no snow at all. We are also excited to be able to be at our own house on Christmas morning this year. I love being able to see my family for Christmas, and I will miss seeing them, but it is SO nice to be able to have our first family morning Christmas EVER! I'm so happy the kids will get to open their presents on the actual day of Christmas. Tomorrow the kids and I are going to make my mom's homemade cinnamon roll recipe for us to have on Christmas morning.

Hunter was a shepherd in our church's Christmas program the other night. He had a hard time keeping his hat on and he tried to talk into the mic(even though he didn't have any lines). He looked pretty cute, though, and Brent was sure that he was wearing his old bath robe from when he was a kid.

Have a Merry Christmas!!