Snowed in At Home for Christmas

Although we missed seeing our families at Christmas, we really loved our snowed in Christmas at home - it will be one to remember! We ended up with 25.1 inches of snow, which they are saying is probably a record snowfall from one storm for Grand Forks. It was truly a wonderful weekend and I wouldn't mind being snowed in for Christmas every once in awhile just to slow down the pace and relax. Here are the pictures we took this weekend and now we'll look forward to seeing our families over New Year's!

Christmas Break Slideshow

Last Wednesday was the first day of Christmas break and the kids spent the morning making penguin ornaments and decorating sugar cookies. Today was our first day for the daycare to play out in the snow....enjoy the pictures!

Snowpiles

This week I only have 2 daycare kids and they are older, so we are going to be able to get out and enjoy some more fun in the snow. This morning was too cold for sledding at Lincoln Park, so we marched over to the church near our house so the kids (and Bailey) could have fun climbing on the giant snowpiles in the parking lot. They all had a lot of fun! Here are a couple of videos from this morning.

Rounds 1, 2 and 3

Here is how the girls used the sleds when they couldn't get outside....

Round 1


Round 2


Round 3

Sleds?

Santa was extra good to the girls this year - knowing that we would be snowed in and all, he really went all out Christmas morning! One of the favorite things brought by the jolly man in red would be the new sleds. Since we can't actually make it to the sledding hill (i.e. the dike) because of all the snow on the roads, the girls gave the sleds a try in the living room. . . they work great on carpet! Hopefully Monday we can try them on a real hill! I will get videos of the sled practicing loaded later!
We've been LOVING our Christmas at home. So relaxed, so calm, so quiet, so peaceful...... so thankful we got snowed in! Don't get me wrong, we love spending Christmas with our family, but I'll take this every once in a while - it's been amazing and everyone has enjoyed it.
As of last night we had 17.6 inches of snow from this storm and it snowed overnight and has been snowing lightly all day too - can't wait to hear how much we end up with by the time the snow stops!

Daycare Reminders

Just a reminder to daycare families:

I will be open on Monday - Wednesday, December 21-23 this week. I will be closed the 24th and 25th.

I will be open next week, Monday - Thursday, December 28 -31 and I will be closed on Friday, January 1st.

Thanks to everyone for getting back to me on their schedule for Christmas break - have a wonderful Christmas!

Daycare Christmas Party

We had ou daycare Christmas party Friday morning with goodies, a craft and presents. It was so fun to see the kids excited about their new toys. THey played with them all morning long! Hope all my daycare families have a wonderful Christmas!!

Dug the dog...

One of Emmy's favorite Christmas presents is her talking Dug dog from the movie "Up". He says about 15 different phrases and she loves him!

My Favorite Kind of Hamster...

The girls have been having a blast playing with their new ZhuZhu Pets! Bria's is the black and white one named Winky and Emmy's is the yellowish orange one named Nugget... too funny! And Bailey enjoys them too.....

Fun Trip to Radloff's

We want to say another big Thank You to Ted, Jill, Trenton and A.J. for letting us invade their house last weekend so that Jon and Ted could attend the Vikings game on Sunday. Even though I think all 4 kids were exhausted by the time we left on Sunday, the girls had so much fun! There was sledding behind the 4-wheeler, playing in the hot tub, Wii games, chasing games, making cupcakes, baking cookies and lots of playing. Thank you guys so much for the weekend! EMmy and Jill working with the cupcake frosting
Bria with her completed cinnamon cupcake

AJ busy decorating his cupcake

Trenton wanted ALL the colors on his cupcake!

Bria enjoying her ride behind the 4-wheeler

Emmy loving her ride

sledding behind the 4-wheeler

Trenton and Emmy playing

Bria and AJ watching a movie

Jon and the kids watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer after playing in the hot tub

Enjoying the hot tub!

Loving this Time of Year!

It feels so good to be in Christmas-mode. I love having the tree up and the snow on the ground and the cold temperatures and bundling up to go outside. Not much else to say except just that I am thankful for life as it is right now - it's really all good! Emmy's Christmas tree for school

Bria choose R2-D2 to add to our collection.

Emmy picked a dog ornament this year.

Slideshow from Santa's Village

Our Morning at Santa's Village

We had a fun and successful visit to Santa's Village this morning! The kids had a great time looking at the Christmas trees, drinking hot chocolate (Talasia LOVED it) and making crafts. They were all really good and had a lot of fun. Now we've had lunch and everyone is down for a nap so I'll try to put together a slide show of the pictures this afternoon. While I get that done, here are a couple of pictures from this morning. . . .

Listening to Kids Play

This morning I have a small crew here for daycare: Sophie's sleeping and Reed and Talasia are busy busy busy playing in the playroom. It is hilarious to sit and listen to them this morning. They are busy playing "life"..... they are a family and they are doing all the different things that families do.... grocery shopping, naptimes, , trip to the movie theatre, traveling, trips to the park, going to see Grandpa Dennis, going to school, going to work, etc.... anything and everything families do is being played out in our playroom this morning. Some of the phrases and expressions are just too funny! They sound like little adults ......... just too funny!

On another topic, the kids had a great time decorating wreaths this week. I found some fun stuff around the house that they arranged on their wreaths and then I hotglued them in place. They were all very excited to take them home at the end of the day!

A Whilrwind Thanksgiving!

On Wednesday last week at 4:30 we had our Thanksgiving plans all set: Thursday lunch with some friends who invited us over to eat with their family. Thursday afternoon shopping for a new game to play this weekend. Friday maybe some early morning shopping - getting up at 5 or so. Friday afternoon getting out some Christmas stuff and Bria's piano lesson. Saturday we were going to go see "Old Dogs" and Sunday would have been church and finishing up with Christmas decorating...... a fairly typical Thanksgiving at home for us and we love it.



By 4:45 our plans had changed entirely! The couple who invited us over for lunch on Thursday had a child sick with the flu, so that was cancelled. So we were kind of moping around and thinking about what to do for our Thanksgiving meal instead. 5 minutes after that.... we were packing to head to Iowa! We decided to head on down there this year instead.



So we got up at 3:15 Thursday morning and made it to Alcester, SD to spend the day with Jon's parents and grandmas. By about 8:00 Thursday night we were in Harlan where I met up with Tabbi. After getting Emmy settled into bed I headed over to Tabbi's so that we could meet up with her mother-in-law and sister-in-law to do all night shopping in Omaha. We made it to ToysRUs at 11:30 and we finally finished shopping at about 9:00 Saturday morning. Then it was back to Logan so Jon could pick me up and bring me back to Harlan.... just in time for the girls to get a ride in the combine, then showers, lunch and around 2:00 I was able to sneak in a couple of hours of sleep. We hung out for the rest of the night and Megan and Greg showed up in time for dinner. So after being awake since 3:15 Thursday morning, I finally made it to bed at 10:15 Friday night..... so in a 43 hour stretch of time I managed to sleep for about 2 hours...... it was fun though!


Saturday was Thanksgiving with my family and then we drove back home on Sunday. So it was a whirlwind of a trip, but it was a fun change for us for Thanksgiving!
Oh, and when we got to Harlan, Emmy tried to break Aunt Megan's nose..... she was so excited about the birthday present from Megan and Greg that she charged Megan for a giant hug and managed to get her nose in there instead.... after a trip to the E.R. (just to make sure) Megan recovered without a break and even without black eyes! Sorry Megan!