Christmas Day at our House

We had a wonderful Christmas day at our house with Papa and Mimi, Nana, Aunt Allie, Dan, Uncle Claude, Aunt Joyce, Colin and Alex! Jaren and Andy were excited to play with their new Air Hog helicopters and build their new legos sets (dinosaurs and police cars). Jenna loved playing with her new Playmobil Dolphin pool set because it is an excuse to play in water and her new microphone and stand was a hit with both kids. It was just a special blessing to spend the day hanging out with family!

2008 Christmas Card

Make a Smilebox greeting

Christmas Cookies

We have a new annual Christmas tradition of making sugar cookies and decorating them. All went well except that we forgot to put in the 2 tsps of vanilla extract, and I think that Andy spent more time cleaning up the kitchen afterwards that it took us to actually make and decorate the cookies!

Oh, Christmas Tree...

We went out to our local Christmas tree farm last Saturday in what seemed like blizzard-like conditions and picked out our tree and came home and decorated it. The first pictures are the finished product of the tree and outtakes from our annual Christmas photo. Enjoy!

Thanksgiving 2008

On our way home from celebrating Thanksgiving with family this year in Michigan, we stopped at the World's Largest Christmas Store...Bronner's! What a fun place to start celebrating the Christmas season. We let the kid's each pick out an ornmament and an advent calendar filled with chocolate for each day. Jaren chose a Grave Digger Monster Truck ornament, and Jenna stayed with the Hello Kitty theme that she had going from her birthday this year. They also got to chat with "Santa" and have their picture taken with him which was a first for both of them.

Halloween 2008

We celebrated Halloween by going to our church's Trunk or Treat on Friday night. Jenna was Mike Sullivan from "Monsters Inc.," and Jaren was a clone trooper from Star Wars. You would have thought Jenna was a celebrity by how many little kids and adults came up and commented on how cute her costume was or how much they loved "Sulli" on Monster's Inc.! One little girl even asked to have her picture taken with Jenna. We came home with enough candy to last for a year. The next night we went to Nana's house and showed off their costumes.

Field Trip to Farm

Jaren's Kindergarten Class went on their first field trip this past Friday to a local farm, and Andy took the day off of work and went along. As you can see, they had a lot of fun! Enjoy....

Fall Break Hike

We enjoyed part of our Fall Break this weekend going on a short hike in a beautiful local park about 5 minutes from our house. We were teasing Jaren that he had found the "world's largest leaf!" Happy Fall....

Big Nino's Pizzeria

Jaren's kindergarten class (as well as the morning and all-day classes) opened "Big Nino's Pizzeria" for one night only at their school this past Friday night. They had made invitations, menus, placemats and order forms, and then had a pizza making lesson from the Domino's man earlier in the week. That evening they escorted their guests to their seats, had a small program with pizza songs and poems, took their families orders and then served them. I don't think they made them do the dishes though! Jaren had a lot of fun and has enjoyed playing "restaurant" at home ever since.

Trip to the Pumpkin Farm

Birthday Girl!