Our Own Ice Rink

What do ya know! We have our own ice rink in our backyard!

Kinda freaked me out, but Craig took the girls out to the pond behind our house this weekend, and after checking very carefully to make sure it was solid, they started shoveling away the snow to reveal the ice. The girls, especially Jaclyn, were soooo excited! Now she's asking for ice skates...

Cutie Pie Kendall

She is so cute!
I'm just loving this age.

My grandmother has a poodle, Bow Tie, and Kendall LOVED this dog. The poor dog is very, very old, and can barely walk and probably can't hear. So, I think Kendall kinda terrorized him, but she sure was in love with the pooch. She followed him all over the place and just stared at him and laughed. Very, very cute. So, here is a picture of her with Bow Tie.

She also got this little bear for Christmas. It makes noises and moves and came with this little bottle. I have to admit, when she received it, I thought she wouldn't like it much...basically that it was too old for her. But, she will carry it around and feed it the bottle! I was surprised and love watching her play with it. What a big girl!

Just a sweet picture of the girls.

Christmas With the Fam

Well, this is very late, but I wanted to post these pictures. We did make it down to Kansas City again this year for Christmas, so here are some pics of us with my family.
One day before Christmas, Jaclyn decided to write out the Christmas story, so she had the honor of reading her story while Nana presented the pictures. She did great!

Presents!!

We gave Papa a picture puzzle of the girls, so here are Ashlyn, Katelyn and Papa putting it together.

Fun at the Salon!

We had fun at the salon today! Jaclyn decided that she wanted her hair cut short this time. I couldn't quite let her cut it as short as she wanted to (yes, Mom is more attached to her hair than she is!), but I went ahead and let her get quite a bit taken off. (I had to tell her that next time she could go even shorter if she really wanted to, so we'll see what comes of that.)

And then we had another little surprise. There was another girl there that I guess had nothing to do, so she let the girls pick out some nail polish and she did their nails! They thought that was REALLY fun. Ashlyn picked bright pink with sparkles on top, and Jaclyn picked pink on one hand and purple on the other, and with sparkles of course. Pretty fun. (I can see us having to do a birthday party at the salon one of these years...)

Christmas At Our House

We're leaving for Kansas City tomorrow to celebrate with my side of the family, so we had our own family Christmas on Sunday.

The girls got to open gifts after lunch. The big gifts this year were a bigger bike for Ashlyn and a two-wheel scooter for Jaclyn. So, they have had tons of fun riding around in our basement. That's definitely one good thing about an unfinished basement! The other gifts mostly consisted of books (they are very much into reading right now!)and some fun games for the Wii. Lots of great activities for being indoors during the winter months!

Cookies 'N More

Today was our Christmas cookie day. (I actually got this done two years in a row!) I did have some incentive this year. I found some adorable matching aprons for all of us, so I had to get them, and then of course, we had to bake! So, we started off our baking extravaganza with a little surprise gift for the girls.

We didn't quite have time to deliver our goodies, so we'll have to get to that tomorrow, but it was a fun afternoon. Ashlyn enjoyed it the most this year (which I was a little surprised by). Jaclyn was kinda done after a while, but Ashlyn stayed right with me. Here she is finishing up with the M&Ms at the end. Maybe I've got a little baker on my hands. (That would mean that her Mom would really need to learn something about baking!!)

We ended our day by opening stockings. It's pretty early, but we're leaving town on Wednesday, and Craig works through Tuesday, so this weekend is our only chance to have some significant time to open gifts.

Wow, cool socks!!

Ashlyn is actually really thrilled in this picture, although it's kinda hard to tell! She got a new game for the WII!! She's jumping up and down. :)

More to come tomorrow...

And She's Off!

Here's our little one on the go! Kendall started walking over Thanksgiving weekend, and now she's starting to get pretty good at it! I haven't been able to get a good picture of her in action (she always heads straight to the camera), but I was finally able to get some today. I had to run ahead, quickly turn around and snap the shot before she got to me.

I can't believe how big she's getting!