Christmas Recap

I'm finally getting all these pictures uploaded from Christmas! We had a wonderful time, and it was so good to see all of our family that we had not seen for quite a while. We started off in Des Moines and stayed a bit there and opened presents with Craig's mom and sisters, Jill, Michelle, and Michelle's girls.

Then we headed down to Kansas City on Christmas Eve.

I always love the chaos that comes with the whole family being together, which includes some roudy little kids! They have a blast playing together and it's such a special time for my girls to be with their cousins. I'll share some of the pictures here, but the rest can be seen on the slideshow on the top, left side of this page. (Click on the slideshow if you'd like to see larger pictures.)

Here we are all at the dinner table and then enjoying the Christmas story that my mom always prepares for the grandkids.


Of course, the kids had a blast opening presents and one of the funniest gifts (given to one of our roudy boy-cousins) was a pair of Incredible Hulk boxing gloves. They made punching noises as they came in contact with something, so all the kids (and many of the adults!) got a kick out of playing with them.

And, this was the year of the scooter. My mom bought scooters for all the kids that didn't already have them, so they all had a blast riding together. Another fun thing we did was to go to a gymnastics place to let the kids run around. This one was really fun 'cause it had an upstairs climbing structure that the kids could play in along with a bounce house, swinging rope and a zip line. Of course, my girls had a blast jumping on the trampoline, and one of Ashlyn's favorite things is jumping into the foam pit. She was waiting her turn when an older girl before her did a flip into the pit. I was completely taken by surprise when the next thing I know, Ashlyn is doing a flip into the pit! I never expected my 2 1/2 year old to be doing flips, but she did it over and over again. (We even caught her trying to do one into the pillows on the floor last night...that didn't go over so well.) Pretty soon Jaclyn and Katelyn came over and started doing flips too, so they all learned a new trick and loved it.

Here's a cool picture of Ashlyn running down the trampoline (they had a long, narrow one.)
All the cousins, worn out after playing hard at the gym.
We also made it to T-Rex, the restaurant with replicas of dinosaurs and really cool exhibits.

We had an awesome time on our trip! It was so good to spend time with my family. We got home on Dec. 30th, so we have had a couple days to get resettled at home before all the busyness of life starts up again.

On New Year's Eve we had some friends over and had a blast hanging out and letting the kids play. I didn't really get any pictures, but I did get this one. Some of the girls were down stairs and had made a hideout in our closet where they were having a sleepover. I thought it was pretty cute. Happy New Year to all of you! May the Lord bless you and your families in 2009 and may you be comforted by the fact that no matter what happens, we serve a sovereign Lord.

Merry Christmas

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, full of special memories with loved ones. We love you all!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

What a great weekend to be at home and open presents! With the snow & ice and the terribly cold temps (did we reach 5 degrees today?), it was a perfect time to stay inside and have our little family Christmas. It was pretty fun this year with Ashlyn now at the age where she actually enjoys unwrapping gifts. They were both so delightful. After every gift, Ashlyn would exclaim, "I LOVE it! Thank you!" and then give me a great big hug. She's really expressive at this age. She was also saying, "Happy Birthday to ME!", so we have to work a bit on the occasion, but it was pretty funny.

These are the Special Times

Tonight we are getting an ice storm, and although at times I get annoyed with winter (especially come Feb & March), I also realize that with winter comes dark, quiet evenings at home, just with the family. As I was laying on the couch, watching my girls, I knew that some day, when I look back and remember, that nights like this one will be what I recall as being the most special. Nights when we're all together, just hanging out and doing nothing but just being together.

After dinner we turned on some Christmas music (thanks, Kristan, for the awesome Casting Crowns Christmas CD!), and for a while we just laid on the couch listening to the music with the lights off while the girls pretended to be putting us to sleep. Then after about 45 minutes, that CD changed over to the Mercy Me Christmas CD (another awesome one), and with the more peppy music came a fun time of just dancing and being silly (what my girls do best!). It was so fun and so sweet.

Braids!

Most of you can probably remember the rough start Ashlyn had with her hair. To start it all off, she was just born in a tough spot...coming after her sister who was blessed with tons of great hair from birth (well, almost from birth...the first 5 months she had really crazy hair!). From the very beginning, Ashlyn has had to compete with her sister for the best locks. Then, it finally started growing and looking cute by age 2...only for it to be drastically cut off by that same sister! (I'm sure you all remember that sob story!) So, I was completely thrilled today when I was FINALLY able to do Ashlyn's hair in 2 cute little braids! We've made it! (Not that hair is the only thing that makes a person beautiful...Ashlyn, we have loved you immensly from the very beginning and your personality and heart more than makes up for any deficiency in something as vain as hair.)

Here's my cutie in her very own braids!

Funny Things She's Done

It seems like every day there's something new that my girls say or do that makes me chuckle. They are so imaginative at this age, and I love it.

Today, Jaclyn found some extra wrapping paper. Immediately her eyes lit up as she grabbed the tape and ran upstairs to wrap the perfect present for someone special. I gladly let her go because I knew it would spark her imagination and keep her busy for about 20 minutes. A little while later she came down with a very special present for Ashlyn. (I'm sure it was a box full of random things from her room that will now not be seen until Christmas. Hopefully it's not anything important!) But, she was so excited as she showed it to me and then proudly placed it under our tree.





And then, last week Jaclyn was playing nicely on her own, when out of the blue she says, "Look, Mom, I'm a pastor."

(She's playing with a microphone headset that up until now has been used to take orders at "McDonald's". Our pastor wears a very tiny one that is not very noticeable, so she must be paying closer attention than I thought!)

At least she didn't say, "Look, Mom, I'm Brittney Spears."

The Mom Song

Any time that I get on my blog site and Ashlyn sees me, she runs over because she loves to watch the videos that are on there, thus ending my computer session 'cause she inevitably takes over. So, that was our current situation this morning, so I took her over to youtube so she can access all my videos. While I was there, I spotted this video, so I thought I would share it with all of you. It's probably more appropriate for Mother's Day than Christmas, but fun any time of the year! (Don't forget to pause the Christmas music at the bottom of the page!)