Christmas Day

We had a wonderful Christmas morning. David loved his very appropriate new shirt from his Hinton cousins.


Amber surprised us with beautiful artistically painted shirts. David got Curious George, Marissa got a butterfly themed shirt, Steven got a really cool tiger shirt, Megan's shirt was covered with images from the Twilight books, I got an amazing guitar shirt and Kelly got "the world's awesomest dad" shirt. We love them! Amber is very talented!




Thank you Amber! I love it!
Zoe even enjoyed her new candy cane bone!

Christmas Eve Fun

The kids got new homemade pajamas for Christmas. They loved them! I think they look great!


Here is our version of the Nativity Story with Aunt Stephanie. Mary holding baby Jesus (we don't seem to have any baby dolls anymore), Joseph, an angel, a couple shepherds and a wise guy!

Holiday celebrations

With all of the holiday celebrations going on, I was able to help out with Marissa's school party.

We also had a gingerbread house decorating party with a couple neighbor families. Way too much candy and frosting, but a lot of fun.

A new way to sled

David decided to sled down the slide of the play structure just for fun. Silly boy!

First snow

Today we woke up to the first "sleddable" snow of the season. Notice, I didn't say "shovelable" snow, which is how Minnesotan's describe this snow. That means that you have to actually move the snow out of the way if you want to get back up your driveway, which is what I spent a large part of the day doing when our snow blower didn't work the first 30 times I tried starting it. So, in between shoveling, I would give it a yank and on the 31st try, it started. David, Marissa, Steven and two neighbor boys enjoyed sledding down our yard (one positive of having a very steep yard). They need to enjoy it while the temperature is still above the teens. Soon, it will be too cold to play outside for more than two minutes, and whenever it takes longer to put the snow clothes on than the kids actually spend playing outside, it just isn't worth it to me. Enjoy the pictures!

Marissa



Steven and David coming down (the mailbox was not injured in this stunt)



This is where they end up, good thing it is a quiet cul-de-sac



Steven

Thanksgiving fun

Amber dishing up her plate with yummy food


We had a great Thanksgiving break with lots of family in town. The kids were in cousin heaven with their Stotts cousins from Kansas, Buer cousins from Texas and Hinton cousins from Illinois to play with. The weather turned out pretty nice so they could play outside, too. 

Early morning shopping and chaos at the Mall of America rounded out the weekend.

We love having family visit!