A Plowman Family Christmas

Scooter's family spent their Christmas holiday at our house this year. Because of Skipper's mission and our year in England we had not all been together since our wedding reception three and a half years ago! It was fun to spend some time together. Scooter and I moved into our house around Thanksgiving so we had month to get things ready for five guests. It was a rush and involved lots of unpacking, painting, hours on Craig's List (bless it!), and even more hours of driving around the metro area purchasing and picking up. We'll save the home improvement stories for another post, but we managed to get the house ready and it was worth it so we could relax while the family was here (well, everyone else did - I had to keep working). We tried to do all of the Plowman family traditions which included eating a bagel wreath for breakfast on Christmas Day
The most successful gifts of Christmas were probably the "du-rags" that Skipper and Skeeter got in their stockings.
They were highly amused with Santa.
But they thought they looked pretty cool.
Then in typical boy fashion they started going a little crazy...
After we were done laughing at the boys we decided that it was time for a little Christmas hot tub time. It had snowed a TON on Christmas Eve (seriously, we were out trying to drive through it and it was terrifying) so when we opened the back door it looked like this...
Someone (I'm not naming names) had forgotten to buy a snow shovel in preparation for the anticipated storm so we tried to sweep a path from the back door to the hot tub - it didn't work that well.
A word about the hot tub. When we moved in we found out that the heater on the tub was broken so we had it repaired. To make a long story short the tub finally started working. after five visits from the repairman, on December 23, so on Christmas day we still hadn't had time to use it. We were so excited to break it in! We didn't really know what the ideal temperature for the water was. The look on Josie's face pretty much says it all - it was boiling hot!

We finally started easing ourselves in, but it was a painful process.
After a few minutes we were happy to be in it.
The boys decided it was getting a little too hot after a while and decided that the surrounding snow was simply too tempting.
Boys - I'll never understand them.
After they made snow angels they decided that the hot tub was sounding good again.
Unfortunately they forgot that when you go from rolling about in the snow to really hot water it is kinda painful. Skipper seems to think so anyway...
Christmas dinner later that day was yummy. That night we had the traditional Plowman Family Christmas Program. Complete with singing, games, chime playing, a family chant/dance (don't ask) and Jacey singing a Christmas song in Spanish complete with choreography.
The day after Christmas we went to the Kansas City Ballet to see The Nutcracker. We took some pictures before we left. Look at those handsome brothers.

They sure love their mom.
Here are the girls.

The Nutcracker was really amazing. All of us loved it - including the boys, which may have had something to do with the fact that I bribed them to not laugh at the boy ballerinas (ballerino?) with an entire tin of Christmas cookies that I had hidden in my purse.
We also celebrated Jody's birthday a few days later. Happy Birthday Mama Jo!
For her birthday all she wanted was a proper family photo so we made the boys get back into their sweaters.
Overall we all got to do the thing we wanted to do most over the Christmas break - relax!

Hauser Street

Well, we're homeowners. On November 19th we closed on our first home. We worked our poor realtor to the bone. He has never shown so many houses to one family. It was a long somewhat frustrating search, but, luckily, we loved our realtor. We just clicked. He is kinda like our Kansas City uncle now. We even spent Thanksgiving at his house with his family. We were very blessed to find him.

We are very excited about having our own place. It is nice to finally put down some roots. I have been "rootless" since 2002 and it feels great to know where we'll be in five years. In the last few places I've lived I have never really fully unpacked because I knew I would be packing it all up again soon. I also never really took the time to decorate like I wanted to because it seemed pointless to spend time and money on it and when we knew it wasn't going to be our home for long.

The house is only 15 minutes from KUMed (where I work and Scooter goes to school), has great highway access, is close to a grocery store, and near lots of parks and walking trails. It is also in such a nice quiet residential area. The yard is a good size, and there is room for guests and our future family. It was hard to decide what size we needed because we really wanted to make sure we wouldn't grow out of it in the next six or seven years, but we feel like we found the perfect home for us!

KU Football

A while ago Scooter and I drove to Lawrence, Kansas to watch a KU football game. It was a beautiful day and the stadium was packed.

The only college football games I have ever been to have been those where BYU was one of the teams on the field. It was weird to experience another schools chants and cheers. KU had some strange ones - for example, they kept yelling "Rock Chalk! Rock Chalk!" The cheerleaders even had signs that said it. We were puzzled until we finally asked a nearby student the meaning of it. After consulting lots of other people they decided it had something to do with the bedrock that the school was built on. Weird, huh? Never has there been such a huge, loud tribute to the bedrock under a school.


We saw other strange things like the shirts people were wearing.

"Our Coach Can Eat Your Coach!""Our Coach Beat Anorexia!"We were confused until we spotted the coach...
Let's just say that he is a big boy.
It was a fun outing but next time we have to buy some KU shirts before we go. We were the only people in the stadium not wearing blue or red. We didn't even think about it before we left. Oops. I guess that's what happens when you don't really care who wins. Sorry, but we are still BYU fans at heart.

Another Girlie Get-Together

After our California trip in August we weren't sure that we would all be together for a while, but happily, it happened sooner than we anticipated! These lovely ladies came to Kansas City for a visit a few weeks ago. They were too curious to see my new stomping grounds to stay away! I think my sisters just wanted to make sure that this place wasn't super boring because I'm sure they'll be visiting at least a few times over the next few years. Luckily, they liked it a lot. We had a very girlie weekend complete with cooking, shopping, giggling, and sleepover-style sleeping arrangements. Luckily for Scooter, it was the weekend before a test so he had a good excuse to hole himself up in the library and not be forced to attend the girlie activities.

We went to the farmer's market (I promise these are the last farmer's market pictures I will post for a long time) which was fun and interesting as always.
Sorry for making you look into the sun!
Do you know what these crazy things are? Chestnuts!
Who knew that "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" involved such weird shells? By the way, when we were travelling during Christmastime last year there were tons of street vendors doing that exact thing - roasting chestnuts over an open fire. You had to eat a couple of nuts before you got used to flavor, but then they were quickly addicting!Aren't they beautiful? We still call them the "little ones", but they are all grown up now!I think everyone's favorite place at the farmer's market was "Al Habashi Mart." It is fun to have a place to get authentic naan bread, fresh homemade hummus, and weird spices and sweets. The farmers market is close to downtown so the skyline looms over the stores and booths. It is a weird clash of modern and old when you see all the Amish farmers selling their baked goods with the skyline behind them.
In the spirit of autumn we went to the Louisburg Cider Mill. It was a lot of fun. The cider donuts were absolutely delicious and the cider was even better. You can watch the cider being made right there. Mmmm...I have such beautiful sisters. See?Gorgeous.
Gorgeous.
Gorgeous.

They are pretty silly as well. That or they really like cider donuts...


There was a pumpkin patch next to the cider mill. Complete with petting zoo, hay-wagon rides, and silly wooden signs. By the way, this sign - completely inaccurate. Since when have I been under 5' 6"?It was interesting to see the pumpkins still attached to their vines. It reminded me of the Little House on the Prairie book "Farmer Boy." Does anyone else remember the milk-fed pumpkin in that book? Was that book anyone else's favorite in the series? It was mine. I think it was all the descriptions of the food (I put all of the blame for my fifth grade weight gain solely on that book...).

Next we went to the corn maze. We discovered that my mom had somehow never been through a corn maze even though the rest of us had been to multiple mazes. She said the only times she had ever been were with groups of kids and that she was "always the adult getting all the donuts and cider ready." Right before we went in she got a little apprehensive and had to reassure her that it wasn't a haunted corn maze. My mom was thrilled to see that there was still some corn left. I can't even tell you what a high percentage of my photos have them doing something like this. They love to pose.
Especially this one.
I can't get her to stop.
It really is so hard to take normal photos of her. You usually have to snap a few like this before she will stand still and smile. We had a little trouble finding our way out of the maze so Rachelle came up with a great solution - corn whispering. That's right folks. She became our personal corn whisperer.
"Hear the corn. Feel the corn. Be one with the corn."
Andrea's version of corn whispering (involving - can you guess? - more posing!).



More corn whispering from Rachelle. We were at a hot dog stand when Rachelle had an epiphany.

Oh my gosh! The "KC" on this barbeque sauce stands for "Kansas City" doesn't it!? 'Cause Kansas City is famous for it's barbeque! I've always wondered why that was on there!
So happy we could help you solve that nagging question 'Chelle.

I miss them already!