Christmas time 2015

Hi there!  Happy holidays.  It was a lovely season for the Marsh fam.  We are still color coding the poor CNMs as you can see from their green gifts and blue gifts...

Here is a unique tradition in Lawrence:  the Old Fashioned Christmas parade.  Only horse-drawn carriages are allowed as entrants.  The boys are checking out a really old fire truck.

Another tradition is the boys' annual ornaments from Mema and Grandpa.  Carson gets a Santa and Conner gets a fire truck each year.  They go on a special tree in the tv room. 

Here's a tradition that we think will soon be over for good.  It was especially tough to get Conner on Santa's lap this year.  Seems middle schoolers don't do that sort of thing...

Check it out!  Full tree up and lit, and no cats climbing around knocking ornaments off!  We had to encourage them out of the tree once or twice, but they did a decent job of leaving it be.

Bring the presents into the tv room and start ripping in to them.  Remember Carson, the green ones are yours, the blue ones are your brother's.

Some really awesome and challenging gifts this year that required mechanical expertise.  Both engines ended up in Conner's possession, but Carson did quite well on the little metal models, origami and a 3,000 piece puzzle that we will surely be working on for several weeks.

Daddy got some cool KU b-ball videos, which were timely gifts because over the holidays, he accepted a new position as Director of the DeBruce Center.

A long overdue birthday party for Carson!  A new laser tag place opened up in town, and he chose to wait until his party could be hosted there.  Pretty sweet place, with lots of fun for his buddies.

A rare extended Marsh family photo.  Faith was not happy with the amount of time it took to get us all together and force the camera to behave.  But nice to get evidence of the whole gang together.  Happy New Year!!

Happy early holidays!

Hey there!  A rare early December post, well before we can highlight Christmas activities.  But this way we can catch up on b-day and turkey day stuff.  Here goes:

Fall in Lawrence was beautiful.  The trees were in full color and seemed to hold on just a little longer than usual with mild weather this year.  This is Carson throwing the football.  Do you see the football??

Conner decided he loved his custom made Halloween costume so much, that he wanted it stuffed and kept on his bed as a sort of stuffed squid sleeping buddy.  Can't get one of those just anywhere!

Here is Carson's scout den getting a behind the scenes tour at a KU biotech research lab.  Ironically, the same facility that Daddy worked in during his first years as a KU employee.

Conner's delayed b-day party finally happened with the Parracks and his best friend Preston.  He asked for his party to be in the Bass Pro Shop, and the crew is pictured in front of their huge aquarium. 

We hosted Thanksgiving this year!  First time since 2011.  It included all the boys' g-parents, one great Aunt, one great-great aunt and Uncle Ted's whole family (plus their exchange student from Finland).  So yeah, really great to have them together at the house!

A little hard to see the kids' table behind the grandmothers, but fourteen in all.  On a sad note, Mummy got super sick after pulling the whole event together so beautifully.  She spent the afternoon in bed.  Not fair!!

And here is our runner.  His medal is for 1st place in his age group for the KU Veteran's Day run.  The course snaked through the KU campus, which was hilly, but really fun.

Conner helped put on a play at St John's!  He is third from the right and was in charge of lighting for a portion of the production.  The boy can manage electronics.  It's a gift.

Crazy hair day.  Not sure there is much more to say about this one.

Please circle all the things in the first picture which do not appear in the second.  :-)  The whole family went up to campus the day before Turkey Day to witness the implosion of an old KU residence hall.  It was crazy loud and very cool!  Not something you do every day.