Christmas in a nut shell

We had an enjoyable, relaxing time up in Northern Michigan over Christmas. We were up there for about a week. We experienced our very first flash mob, went to a special Christmas Eve service, opened presents, saw old friends, saw relatives, took naps, played games, watched movies (including Yogi Bear in the theater), watched cable TV, setup wireless internet for my parents, Skyped Lee's parents, did some small town shopping, went sledding and played outside, oh and I forgot to mention ATE a lot! I'm sure we did other things, but those were the first to come to mind. Here's some highlights in pictures:

Isabel is cute, but I like Ana's "cheese" face in the background too:)

Playing hide-n-seek.One cute bug!Dollies from great-grandmaChristmas Eve serivceThis is what a stocking is for huh?Isabel says this is her "most favorite" present...a computer just like mommy and daddy.We got Isabel this fishing game for Christmas, but I think the adults had the most fun playing with hit.This was Ana's favorite present...packing peanuts......see how much fun?Sniff sniff...my little girls are growing up. They shared bunk beds and did GREAT! I was shocked. It was Ana's first time in a Big Girl bed. Now that were back home Ana cries for "Belle" before going to bed cause they are back in their own rooms. Aw. Sledding was fun for all

When Lee got tired driving Ana jumped in:)Now we are home and it feels good. Yesterday we will celebrated New Year's Eve and Lee's birthday (pictures to come)! Looking forward to this new year to see what God has in store. I know we feel blessed already!

Crash and burn

We had a very nice Christmas. I'll hopefully blog about it soon, but right now I'm still in relaxing mode. Here is a video of one of our sledding adventures. Actually it doesn't really reflect how well Ana did sledding. Most of the time she'd just bounce around on the sled all the way down the hill, but here she crashed.

Random Act of Christmas Joy

9&10 News - People Broke Out In Song At Ludington Meijer Store

We arrived in my hometown just in time to witness the above Random Act of Christmas Joy, organized by my dad! It was a special exciting moment! Take a peak!

Proud Auntie

I don't get to post pictures of my nephews all that often because they live on the other side of the world, but here is a recent picture my brother emailed. Aren't they handsome? These are the 3 older boys of their family. In this picture they had just finished their school Christmas concert in which two of the boys played piano and one had a solo. So proud of them!

Christmas came early

We had our family Christmas this past Friday. When Lee and I were first married we never waited until actual Christmas day to open presents. We usually would find where each other had hidden presents and just ended opening them. I guess we're passing that tradition on to our kids.:) No, it just worked out for us as we'll be with other family on Christmas.

We had Christmas donuts (haven't you heard of that before?)
We read the Christmas Story and had the girls act it out using their Little People Nativity. Then we opened presents. The girls gift this year was a little kitchen, which they played with most of the morning. It has been a great toy addition. Hopefully it will continue to be for awhile.

We had family movie night watching Toy Story 3, another Christmas present.
The next day we played in the snow. Well I should say Lee and the girls played in the snow. I made hot chocolate.:)
We hope all our friends and family have a wonderful Christmas and enjoy this Season of celebrating Christ, born as baby, our Savior!

Wedding bells are ringing

The last three days have been eventful, to say the least. We have been cleaning, decorating, preparing, and participating in our dear friends, Josh and Laura, wedding.

Laura lived with us a few years ago for the summer when she moved to the area for an internship. Then again she lived with us the past couple of months before she got married. We know Josh from our church and have sung/played with him on the worship team for several years. They are also part of our small group and we consider them like family.

A few days before the wedding Laura came down with a bug and was feeling awful, so we had to change wedding decorating plans. Our small group came together and kicked in to high gear to help out the bride and groom. I know they were, but we are also so thankful for our small group and how they helped out.

Isabel's role was to be the flower girl. My role was reception coordinator, and Lee played his drum in the wedding. It was a beautiful wedding in an old catholic church that's not a church anymore, but just used for events. The reception followed there as well.

So our friends are married and we are so happy for them to start their new life together as husband and wife and to see what all God has in store for their future.

A few pictures from setup and the wedding. The church is pretty dark so hence the pictures are a little bit dark.

Mother of the Bride

So where does this go?

It's a sweeping competion

My cute friend Mandy, the Matron of Honor, mopping up a bucket of water that spilled...at least the floors were shiny

Making chocolate dipped strawberries for the wedding - 400 strawberries. It was actually a lot of fun. Let's just say we had plenty of strawberries...:)

Isabel the next day after a late night of decorating. I went to wake her up from her nap, cause she had already slept 3 hours and we had to leave for the rehearsal. I woke her up, she looked and me and grabbed her pillow and put it over her face. One tired little girl.

Ana and Isabel at the wedding

The flower girl and ring bear, Michael...too cute. These two did SUCH a good job! They did everything we asked them to do when it was time for them to walk down the aisle together. It helped there were suckers awaiting them when they were done. THANK YOU Verst's!Waiting to walk down the aisle. Our family with the newly married Bride and Groom

Does this remind you of anyone?

She's 17th months old and her daddy has ALREADY influenced her in "proper" picture taking facial expressions...and he does love cereal...I'm seeing a pattern here...

The snow is falling...already?

Wait...wasn't it just August? I feel like the last few months have just flown by.

We had a nice Thanksgiving with my parents visiting and spending time with close friends. Somehow in all the business my camera didn't get out that often. Maybe it's cause I was cooking a turkey? Or maybe it's because we went out shopping on Black Friday...no, I'm not one of those people that goes at 3 am.

Poor Ana all by herself waiting for everyone else to sit down.:)

Pals

She must have snuggled Papa for 30 min. I thought she'd be down playing and went back and she was still snuggled up in his arms.

A highlight of our weekend was going as a family to get our [live] Christmas tree. When I was a little girl I always got to pick out our Christmas tree. So now that Isabel is old enough to understand we let her pick this year's tree out. The tree was the very first one she saw and a great one! We had a fun evening listening to Christmas music, decorating the tree, talking about what Christmas really means, and running around making sure both girl's didn't break every other ornament.:) The bottom limbs had several ornaments just thrown into the tree (by Ana). I think I've recovered most of them. I don't know about anyone else, but when the lights are turned on the tree I could just sit for hours and be mesmerized by it's beauty.

The perfect tree

Ana helping daddy with the lights

I especially love this picture because I took it right after Isabel had just said, "Daddy I love so much. Mommy I love you so much."

He one up'd me

This afternoon I was playing with the girls and made a pretty sweet tent...you know the chair and blanket kind. We had fun playing in it and Isabel called it her house.

Ana and I chillin in the tentWell tonight I went out and when I came back home I found this in our basement

Yes, that would be our tent (as in for camping) Lee setup in our basement. He one up'd me!

Football season is over...

...well high school football at least. One of the [dis]advantages of living close to a school is that we get to hear all the football cheers, announcements, band, almost every Friday night in the fall.

This happened weeks ago now, but I wanted to post about it before I forgot. We had talked for weeks about taking the girls to a game for the whole experience, but things just kept coming up. Finally, on the last game of the season it worked out for Lee to take Isabel. She LOVED it! She loved the people cheering, watching the cheerleaders, watching the band (her favorite part), and people loved watching her too with all her enthusiasm (so I'm told). She will randomly ask me from time to time if we can ALL go to a football game sometime. I keep telling her we have to wait until next year, which of course in a 3-year-old mind is tomorrow.

life.

Hmm, my last post was from Halloween...time for an update huh?

Life has just been well...life. We've been getting used to the cold weather and enjoying the warm weather when it comes. We've been doing "school," playing, watching movies, visiting with friends, going to the doctor, the normal life stuff. We're trying to get into a routine, but it seems each week brings random things that change that routine.

Isabel has been a great big sister lately. There are moments where the girls play together SO well. They chase each other around or Isabel helps Ana do things she can't quite do on her own yet. I feel like Isabel is really starting to get school stuff. She loves picking out letters on signs she sees when we are in the car and will say, "mommy the letter 'D,' like for daddy." She's getting pretty good at writing her name. On Sunday I looked over at a table she was coloring at and she had written almost all of her name all on her own. I just want to hold onto her little girl sweetness before it disappears before my eyes! I could have pages of things she says that are so darn cute. Today a friend suggested to her she could ask for something she wanted for Christmas. She said, "Mommy, how do I call Santa on your phone?" Ana's growing by leaps and bounds too. She had her 15 month appt. not too long ago and she is tall and skinny, the pattern of our kids thus far. She LOVES to brush her teeth. She would brush them 5 times a day if I let her. It's kind of nice cause she will just sit on the toilet and brush them while I finish getting ready in the morning. Speaking of teeth. I think all of hers decided to come in at once. She has an amazing vocabulary. Should I be scared when our doctor warns us she's extremely advanced for her age? I'm not sure why God blessed us with two very talkative girls, but He did. Someday I'm looking forward to how He's going to use this. Should I call it a "gift?" My favorite thing she says now is, "I get you." And does anyone else get their kids voices confused? There are certain times when they are both calling for mommy I can't tell who is who.

And then there's us. No it's not how we look all the time, but it's probably how we feel most of the time. Isabel took this picture. We had this deal when we traveled like 30 hours to the Philippines. If one of us was about to lose it, flip out, etc, we'd just look at each other and give, which ever one of us it was, this face. The idea was we'd snap out of it and just laugh. We DID use this method and I think it worked...most of the time.:) We feel so blessed to have each other and fall in love more and more everyday.

A puppy and a kitty

Ana's 1st sucker - she LOVED it!!!:)

When we got home from trick or treating Lee negotiated with Isabel. He would buy all her candy for $15.00 or she could keep some and he would give her $10.00 for the rest of it. She chose to keep some and take the $10.00. So today we went out to Kroger and she got to pick out a toy with her $10.00. I love this "tradition" Lee (really started by his dad with him - buying his candy from him) started with Isabel. She still gets to have fun, gets less sugar, and gets a fun "treat" in the end. Last night I asked her what she thought she wanted for a toy and she thought about it for a minute. She then said, "a TV I can put in my room, cause I don't have a TV in my room." I told her, "maybe when you're in college."

So today, she decided on an Ariel princess toy she can dress up.:)

Family Fun

Awhile back we got a super good deal (like 75% off) some tickets to Coco Key Indoor Waterpark and yesterday was our day to go. If you've never been it's really fun. They have stuff for little kids and big kids (aka adults). Both our girls (especially Isabel) love the water so it was an extra special treat for them. I'd highly recommend going, but if you do find a deal cause the tickets can be pricey otherwise. It wasn't busy at all and I often felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. My only wish was that Isabel was a little taller so she could do some of the bigger slides. I know, she'll be there before I know it. The other thing was the girls got cold after awhile. They keep it warm inside but just being in the water and getting in and out they got chilled, like as in there lips were turning blue. So we took wrap up and get warm breaks every now and then. All in all it was a great morning!The night before our small group had it's annual pumpkin carving party/contest. Last year we had done Elmo and Cookie monster. This year we decided on Micky and Minnie Mouse. Lee was excited to take home the title for best carved pumpkin. I have to admit, I'm a proud wife:)

So after all the excitement the last few days, what did we do today? Went out and bought the girls new tooth brushes, which for them seemed equally exciting:)