Happy New Year 2011!

The kids have been having a blast this week playing with the toys they got for Christmas. After building M's cabin with Lincoln Logs, he put the cowboy that came with the set in the house. D wanted one of her princesses to go in the cabin, too, so Ariel aka The Little Mermaid went up on the widow's walk. Ariel then proceeded to ask the cowboy to marry him and get married "over here...away from the cabin." Neither the cowboy or M was too interested in the marriage proposal.



My Uncle Robb and Aunt Lynne sent the music to Beauty and the Beast for D as she is so in love with the characters from this movie. When I told her what it was and started to play it, she immediately ran to get on a princess dress and found her two Belle's and the Beast and had a dance party in the play room.




Even Hunter Dan (M's turkey hunting action figure) got in on the dance party action.



She just loves that CD and I think we listened to it five times in two days...we'll all have it memorized soon!

D dressed as Cinderella for her friend's princess birthday party.



We spent New Year's Eve at the cabin with friends Ron, Jennifer, and their son. The kids just love running around the loft area.



We had the most fabulous spread of appetizers...so yummy! I may have to actually adopt a New Year's Resolution after eating this feast.



Thankfully Jennifer and I were able to go out cross country skiing a couple of times. We weren't sure what the conditions would be like after the freezing rain and cold, cold temperatures, but it was great! Saturday morning when we woke up there was a light dusting of snow on everything and the sun even came out while we were on the trails. It was awesome!





The kids played so well together all weekend. They did tons of puzzles, colored, played hide-and-go-seek, and in general just giggled together.





The silly face pose.



Family photos.





Saturday evening, Steve decided it was time to tackle another cabin project. So, he tore down the wall in the "bedroom" downstairs to make the room larger and make better use of the space beside the stairs. Our hope is to actually make this into a bedroom for the kids and put an egress window in the room, plus bunk beds for them and friends to use.

Here are the before shots:



We are going to take out the wall Steve is holding a hammer to and move it next to the stairway.



The hallway after:



This is the before inside the small room as it was before:



And after:



This is the view from the living area downstairs looking into the bedroom area:



Daddy and D put out corn for the deer, and they came several times Saturday night and were there Sunday morning when I opened the shades. The kids had a great time sitting in front of the window watching them eat and get closer and closer.



The kids had a great time going down the slide into the snow Sunday morning.



Can you read the temperature? I think it was like 10-15 degrees today. We think our cabin must be in the Bermuda Triangle for thermometers or something...every one we get doesn't seem to work properly or dies out on us, so Steve finally bought the old fashioned outdoor kind. After about three days in a row of it reading 20 degrees, we knew something must be up with this one, too. He took it off the tree and Ron flung some ice off of it, so now it seems to be working (hopefully!).



Sledding down one of the hills on our property.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The kids and I went the mall on Monday to visit Santa. The kids loved sitting on his lap and M eagerly told him he wanted a truck. D was a little too shy to talk to him, but that smart Santa knew she was asking for a doll. We splurged and did the train ride through the mall after getting some last minute shopping done.



Dancer and Prancer helped me deliver some Christmas cards and goodies to our neighbors on Tuesday. It was so nice to get outside for a little bit. One of our neighbors had a large Christmas village set up in their house. The kids were just entranced by it and loved watching the moving parts, seeing the lights, and pointing out all the figures and details on the houses.





Christmas Eve! What a beautiful, snowy day to spend some time outside. The kids were excited to put out some special food for Santa's reindeer.







The kids loved playing and sliding in the snow this morning. Can you believe this is how high the sides of our driveway are filled with snow now?



We had a special treat after Christmas Eve lunch. The kids got to decorate their own cupcake to celebrate Jesus' birthday. The cupcake was different colors to symbolize different things (purity, new life) and had a star on top like the one that shone on Christmas night. The lit candle is for Jesus's light shining in our world. It is fun to start our own traditions as the kids get older.





Another tradition we started this year is fondue on Christmas Eve night. Growing up, we used to do fondue on New Year's Eve as a family. The kids loved "cooking" their own dinner, although they were not fond of the cheese fondue. That was okay with Steve and I, as we gobbled all of it up! Everyone loved the chocolate fondue--I think we'll all be wearing elastic pants for the next week.



The kids in front of our tree.



Stiehl Productions also put on plays telling the Christmas story several nights this Christmas season. The kids really got into it and D knew all of her lines with Steve barely even having to prompt her--she always wanted us to read the Christmas story to her before going to bed. Here is Mary hearing a message from the angel Gabriel.



Mary and Joseph had no luck finding room at the inn.



Here an angel of the Lord tells the shepherds the Good News.



The three kings visited baby Jesus and gave special gifts to him.



We opened some gifts from Steve's family Christmas Eve evening. Here are D and M with Popeye and Olive Oyl from Grandma and Papa.



Christmas morning!



D was so excited to get Belle.



The cousins have now taken over our traditional family picture in front of the fireplace.



Taking turns opening gifts. That is true patience!





Merry Christmas!

Ugh

If you think that looks like a hole in our door, you're absolutely right. We got locked out of our house thanks to our mailman (who opened our door to put a package in our garage--why, I'm not sure--and set off our alarm) and the police (who came to check on our house and then proceeded to lock our door going from inside the garage to the inside of our house). Neither of us had a key, a locksmith was going to cost about as much as a new door, plus would be a minimum of 2 1/2 hours. Did I mention the temperature was about 15 degrees outside?

We went out to get something to eat and after exhausting all other possibilities (that credit card trick doesn't work by the way!), Steve decided to take out the ol' chainsaw and make a hole in the door so we could get in. I did want to replace that door eventually, eventually being the key word there. Doing it in below freezing weather doesn't sound like too much fun. Hopefully the 3M plastic will keep out the cold until we can get a new door!

Spritz Cookie Making

D and M love trains. Here they made one out of their toys and some buckets. Then each "conductor" got to drive his/her own train.



My sillies. They took all the toys out of their toy "boxes" so they could hide in them.



Yummm....delicious blue ring pop.



Cute pose in front of the Christmas tree.



My mom and dad and my sister's family came up on Sunday to do our traditional making, decorating, and baking of spritz Christmas cookies. The cousins had so much fun getting into the decorating and pumping out of the cookies. The spritz makers worked so good this year--the best I can ever remember in the history of spritz cookie making!











Cousin hogpile!



Cute cousins.