Our Sweet Trip Downtown

This afternoon, after the girls finished all their schoolwork about 3 today, we headed downtown for a little treat. Our favorite sweets spot here in town is a downtown bakery called Burneys, just a few minutes from where we live now. The girls worked really hard today so we finished off a good school day with a little sweet treat!
They do have doughnuts and we (especially Bethany) noticed them for a few minutes, but we all settled on a filled crossiant in the end. Their filled crossiants are the best! They look like a crossiant but are filled with all kinds of sweet filling like a filled doughnut and are glazed like a doughnut and they taste Awesome!

Our lemon, chocolate, lemon and cinnamon sugar crossiants quickly disappeared! Bekah was too excited to look for a picture and Bethany couldn't take her eyes off her cinnamon sugar crossiant.

They talked me into a quick walk around downtown before we headed back. Allie was in her car seat on my arm while we walked and carrying that carseat gets heavy fast!

They picked one store downtown that they wanted to go into while we were there. They chose Art of Hope which has beautiful original artwork and prints painted with Bible verses on them. The big girls love to look at the artwork but they also love that the store has a space where they can draw and create as well. They each worked on a Valentine's card today for a few minutes.

We loved being out in the sunshine today. While I am sure winter is not done yet, we are definitely looking forward to sunny, warmer spring days being, hopefully, not too far around the corner! We enjoyed our sweet treat and our walk around downtown today!

A Frosting of Snow and Gingerbread Fun

 When the forecast began to show the possibility of snow for early this week, our girls were so thrilled! They love snow and the possibility of having snow AGAIN after just having some snow had them super excited! Finally, Wednesday evening, we began to see a little sleet and snow mix. Brent went out to check and when I asked how it was outside, he replied "Well, I don't think you can even call it a dusting...I might call it a frosting." And so it was!

 I think we were just south and east of the couple of inches that were forecast for us, but it didn't stop these girls. The oldest two bundled up and were ready to head out and enjoy their "frosting."

 Here was their sledding attempt. They got a couple of sledding runs in!

Since we had a little frosting of snow, we decided to continue with a little more frosting later in the day. Before Christmas, just Bekah went with me on a grocery store trip, and we picked out a gingerbread house to surprise her sisters and do together. Well, I tucked it in a cabinet and of course, everything got so busy that we didn't get to put it together before Christmas. Well, of course, last week one of the sisters found it and I told them we would do it one evening soon. So with our frosting of snow, we pulled out our gingerbread house and fosting and candy and got ready to decorate.

 We had so much fun! They probably spent half an hour decorating the house. There was minimal arguing and they each worked on a section of the house and then together to decorate all around the house! I piped the icing and placed 3 pieces of candy and they did all the rest!

Allie and Brent had fun watching while the big girls worked hard on the gingerbread house.

Bethany was focused on making sure she got all her candy placed just where she wanted it!

We even added a E.L.Fudge cookie for our gingerbread man!

I think doing our gingerbread house in January might become a new tradition! It was a sweet finish to our frosting of a snow day!

Happy 9th Birthday, Rachel!

We began Rachel's birthday with the traditional streamers and balloons while you sleep and she slept through it all! See the orange balloon...that is just the top of her head peeking out from under the blanket. 

Then she woke up and we started her birthday with a song and raspberry pancakes. Yes, the pancakes needed a candle she said!

 She wanted to open one of her two gifts before we left home for the day so she opened the gift from her sisters.  They got her s handmade crocheted doll that she had seen in a local store a few weeks ago while we were Christmas shopping for family.

Rachel and I talked about how she wanted to spend her day with the family. We just got a family aquarium membership for all of them as a gift for Christmas. Before we knew that we were actually going to get snow, Rachel told me that she wanted to ride the ferry across the Cape Fear River and go to the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher. That was how she really wanted to spend her birthday, but then the snow came. I watched the website for the aquarium and ferry system and both were shut down on Thursday due to the snow. Finally, late Thursday evening, I saw that the aquarium was opening at noon on Friday but no word on the ferry. Then this morning as we were getting ready, I saw that the Fort Fisher ferry was running on schedule. Yes, she was super excited, for sure!

 As the drove along the coastal roads near the aquarium, we could see a bit of the beach snow remaining. Brent took this picture from one of the beach accesses about 5 miles from the aquarium.

We arrived at the aquarium and got checked in with our membership and the staff gave Rachel a birthday sticker to wear too.

 As we made our way around, we stopped at one of the touch tanks. We were talking about the animals in the touch tank with the staff member stationed there and I said that Rachel wanted to come to the aquarium for her birthday. He then asked Rachel if she wanted to see some of the baby seahorses that they had. She said yes and he took us onto the education offices.

 These are the seahorses that are almost ready for the exhibition tanks in the aquarium. The baby seahorses that we got to see that were born in October were so tiny that you could barely see them in the tank behind the plants in the tank with them! It was so neat. Brent and I have been to the aquarium a lot of times over the years and we have never gotten to go behind the scenes before today either! What a special birthday treat for Rachel!

 We also saw a couple of sea turtles that had been cold stunned recently. This big guy was one of my favorites. There was a filter in the tank so the water is moving, but that is a giant hermit crab! Look at how close he is in size to the regular sized horseshoe crab!! Two facts we learned about this cool crab: first, the shell he is in opens to the right. Apparently, if a hermit crabs shell opens in one direction, in this case to the right, that is the direction the hermit  crab ' s body curves and so from then on, the crab must be in a shell opening that same direction! Not only that, we also learned that this hermit crab is getting so big that they may actually have to have a shell made for him that would be big enough but not too heavy for him to carry around!

We finished up our tour with the staff person with a BIG thank you and headed back out to the big tanks to watch the fish and let the girls get some pictures. Bethany was hugging both her big sisters while she watched.

 They still had the aquarium beautifully decorated with gorgeous Christmas trees throughout the aquarium. Look how grown up Rachel looks in this picture!

 My birthday girl and I and then the whole family with the giant replica of the Megalodon shark jaw. This is Brent's favorite spot in the whole aquarium, I think!

 We headed out from the aquarium to make our ferry time and found out that they were down to only one boat today. We had to wait about 45 mins for the next ferry but this actually worked out great because it put us leaving on the ferry at just around sunset.

 Here is the ferry coming to pick us up. We drove the van onto the ferry and when they gave the signal we went from the warm van to the warm indoor cabin on the ferry. We got to watch sunset as we rode the ferry!! Allie loved her first ferry ride too!

 We took Rachel out to supper. I love this picture of biggest and smallest sister, but I declare Rachel was just Allie's size about 5 minutes ago it feels like! How can our firstborn be 9 already?!

We came home after supper and had birthday cake and she opened her present from us.

Rachel, we love you and are very proud of you!We thank Jesus for you and pray you will follow Him fully in this next year! We loved spending the day with you and celebrating YOU! Happy Birthday!

A Special Snowy Day

We started hearing about a possible coastal storm a few days ago, but knew that where we live in NC now it is pretty rare to get measurable snow. The forecast became more and more sure that we would get snow and the girls were thrilled! They all love snow! So yesterday we waited and waited and the snow was forecast to start around 4pm. No snow at 4, 5, 6 or even 8 pm. We were like, oh no, the snow is going to miss us again. Finally, sometime between 9 and 10, Brent checked again and this time, there was SNOW! 

 We went to bed with it still snowing and wondering how much snow we would wake up to? It was beautiful when we got up and we got between 2 and 3 inches...and the girls couldn't wait to get outside in it!!

 We made snow angels

The girls even got out the popsicle mold and made snow pops!

And boy, oh boy, did they sled! Here is Allie just before her first sled run down the hill with her Daddy. She liked to sled!

 Bethany liked to sled with her sisters and even by herself this year!

These two even fit themselves on one sled just so they could both ride the green sled. Nana just bought us the green sled from Royal Trustworthy Hardware just before the snow and the girls loved how fast it went!

 Their Daddy was stationed at the top of the hill to help them go even faster!

 The big girls even helped their Daddy clear the driveway!

 Loved our special snow day here in eastern NC and all the fun we had today!

McGuirt Girls, January 4, 2017