"Are you going to put that on Blogspot?" - Jared

"But of course!" - me

Cute pictures featuring Josiah and Benjamin's NC cousins, Jared and Rebecca:

In costume after their church Christmas program:

Jared being Jared:

Rebecca the musician:

Giving the boys a gift Christmas Eve:

Pretending to be Benjamin:

Smile!

Sitting in her new car:

Going to church:

Cousins:

Taking Josiah for a ride:

Christmas in North Carolina

We made it back from NC last night after 10 days of traveling and holiday madness! Four days were spent primarily on the road, and the other six were packed with Christmas preparation, family dinners, church programs, and other special holiday events like a beautiful live nativity and an impressive model train display (no pictures allowed). Here are some pictures showing the highlights of our wonderful trip:

Josiah loves wearing Santa hats!

Aunt Marcia was very brave to make gingerbread cookies with the three amigos!

We stopped by to visit Jim and Wendy Lewis and the rest of the Stallings crew.

For Christmas Eve at Marcia and Barry's, we had our final Advent service all together.

The boys were excited to get some gifts Christmas Eve!

Christmas morning, they were beside themselves waiting for everyone to get to the living room!

The boys were anxious to get their new tractors outside and into the dirt.

A future football star. :)

The boys were thrilled to have Papa Perry give them a tractor ride!

Posing with their cousins, Jared and Rebecca, on Christmas Day.

Grandma showing off her beautiful new pearls from Papa.

Christmas dinner prepared by Logan and Marcia.

16 year old sweetheart Rebecca got a new car for Christmas!!!

Grilling steaks for dinner on Sunday in Virginia at Great Grandma and Aunt Emily's house.

The whole family, left to right: Aunt Emily, me, Great Grandma, Aunt Marcia, Anita, Jared, Logan, Grandma, Josiah, Uncle Barry, Benjamin, Papa, Rebecca

Update

An update on our trip thus far:

We left at 3 a.m., with peacefully sleeping boys until 6 a.m.

It started to snow on the Jersey Turnpike, slowing down the last hour of our trip to visit Uncle Jon. Somehow, we had missed any weather reports about driving into a severe snow storm.
We made it to Fort Dix at 11 a.m., which looks lovely under snow!

Because the snowstorm was picking up speed, with an expected 18 inches, visitation was canceled and we had to head on to Matthew's without seeing Jon. We'll come back on our way home next weekend. What a bummer!!! :(


Josiah fell asleep between NJ and DE, and I had to restrain Benjamin from tickling him and pulling his hair! :)

When we arrived at Matthew and Heather's, Logan tried to fit us into their driveway but ended up parking on the street. Thankfully, the plows didn't hit us! This much snow is unprecedented for DE! The roads were awful, because they don't have the fleet of plows that we do in Maine.

Matthew with Micah and Zachary

Caleb giving Micah a ride

Photo op with the cousins! Grandma bought Christmas pj's for all the boys. :)

Kung fu Noah

Zachary getting tall (actually, this is an illusion! He's a tiny little peanut that runs around like a 2 year old!)

Skyping Grandma and Papa to show off their new pj's.

So, although our trip isn't going according to my perfect plan, we're safe, having fun with Matthew and Heather's family, and getting ready to hit the road to NC this morning. The snow has stopped, so we're just hoping that the roads are clear. The boys are having a blast and have been very good. Josiah (and me too!) was heartbroken when we didn't see Uncle Jon, but he's adjusted. Thank you for keeping us in your prayers today as we travel!

Miscellaneous Merriment

I'm packing us up for our departure tomorrow night, and wanted to post a few more pictures of holiday fun we've been having here in Maine. We're headed to NC for Christmas this year (it's only 3 degrees out right now, so I can't wait to go south!), but first we're going to stop in NJ and visit Jonathan on Saturday, and then head an hour over to Matthew and Heather's in DE for a night. Today is Jonathan's birthday, so I'm looking forward to wishing him a happy birthday in person. And we're going to go to a service at Brandywine Valley Baptist Church in Wilmington, where Matthew is the youth pastor, so that will be fun too. Josiah and Benjamin are anxious to see their cousins! They've enjoyed watching Matthew and Heather's Elf Yourself video of the boys hip-hop dancing. :) Our plan is to leave around 2 a.m. Saturday, so we can catch some shut-eye first, and then make it to NJ around lunchtime. We'll go to an early service on Sunday, and get right back on the road, but wont get to NC until dinnertime, so altogether, our trip to our final destination will take 40 hours and will be exhausting! I'm really looking forward to our trip, especially for all of the sleeping in I'm planning on doing with all those babysitters around! :) And I can't wait to enjoy the boys' wonderment on Christmas Day. We've had an inkling of what that may look like as the boys have enjoyed all of our holiday fun thus far. Just yesterday, Grandma came over and helped the boys make a beautiful gingerbread house, and then last night we had a Christmas party with our Bible Study. Everyone brought something to share for a potluck, and also a gift for a Yankee Swap. It was a feast! And the boys had so much fun assisting with the Yankee Swap (thank you, friends, for being so gracious with the excited little boys!). Here are pictures from yesterday, but first a picture of me with the boys up on a lift at Logan's boss's home. I'm not sure how high up we were, but you can see how small the house looks below us! I was pretty nervous, but not the boys! Benji wanted "more, more". Daddy told Josiah months ago that he may be able to take him up on a lift when it came off of Squirrel Island, and he never forgot. He kept asking about when he was going on the lift, so when Logan's boss brought it off the island Tuesday, we rushed the boys over for their big adventure:

Silly Sue reading the instructions en espanol.

Merry Christmas from the Perrys!

Santa's Little Show Stoppers

The boys were in their first little play this past Saturday, the library's production of "The Polar Express." They were little elves in the North Pole. First we took one of the free Christmas train rides, which was visited by Santa Claus with candy canes for the kids! The boys were thrilled:

Then we trekked over to the Town Hall at the Railway Village for the play. These pictures are from their run-through when we first got to the Town Hall. For the actual play, Logan used the digital camera to make a video (which I tried unsuccessfully to download onto my blog yesterday) while I took pictures with the 35 mm. From the rehearsal:

Santa was missing from the run-through, and in the rehearsals in the weeks beforehand, he had always been in street clothes. When he arrived on-stage during the play in his red suit, the boys were mesmerized and forgot they were supposed to be his helpers. Josiah somehow managed to sit on his lap, pushing the little boy playing the lead role out of the way! It was so funny!

Discussing their Christmas list with the big man.

Posing with their proud Mommy and Daddy after the show.