Sunday, December 25, 2011

Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas 2011!
Some of my pictures are still on my mom's camera, so I will have to post the pictures of the cookies for Santa and the carrots for the reindeer in the next week or so. Santa visited and left lots of goodies at our house this year.
Miss Kylie was the first kid up this morning. Can you tell she isn't quite awake yet? I love her Santa jammies. So cute!
Santa brought the boys each a Nike mini basketball. They were pretty excited!
We had to wake Tyler up and he wasn't quite ready to get up. He was a little shy for the first few minutes.



For Christmas morning, my parents were here as well as Mike's dad Dave, who recently moved to Burns. The grandkids were all very excited to have all their grandparents here!







The boys were very good helpers this year and wanted to be in on all the action! Kylie got a baby doll bed and she was trying it out for us.


Thursday, December 22, 2011

One last visit with Santa

We stood outside and braved the 32 degree weather for 45 minutes for one last trip to see Santa tonight. As you can tell, Tyler was freezing, poor guy. Zach was just excited to ask Santa one more time for a video game.
Our neighbor Gabe came along to help out and we had a blast, despite the chilly weather.
Merry Christmas!!

Monday, December 19, 2011

Christmas Tree & Presents

This is Michael asleep on the bed with Tyler laying on top on him watching TV. Nice, huh? Mike is the boys' human pillow most of the time.
Here's a picture of our very full Christmas tree. You can see the train under it. That's Tyler playing with the train and the village and all the other cars down there.

Kylie loves the ornaments. This is her showing me the Little Einstein's Rocket.
Somehow I didn't turn this picture, but it is her showing me Tinkerbell.

And since I had the camera out, she wanted to show me her Tinkerbell lunchbox. This is her 'say cheese' face. : )
This is Tyler showing me how he lined all of the presents up around our dining room and piano room. I wasn't sure where we were going to stack the presents since we couldn't put them under the tree, so he solved this dilemma by making a line around the 2 rooms. He is slightly OCD like me. Poor kid.

Monday, December 12, 2011

A little bit of everything....

We have been insanely busy with the holiday season upon us, but we have definitely been having fun! However, I feel like I need about 98 hours of uninterrupted sleep to catch up.
This last weekend was the Salem PD's Kids Christmas Party. It is our favorite holiday event. So many friends in one place, plus amazing food, great crafts, Santa, and presents for everyone!
Kylie was fine around Santa as long as I was nearby. As soon as Santa left the room, she asked, "Where's Ho Ho Ho?" and has been asking me that every day since. I guess she can't say Santa yet so "Ho Ho Ho" works for this year.
The girl on the left is one of my piano students, Jenna. She will turn 8 this week. The boys and Kylie just love her. Kylie sat next to her the entire time they waited for their presents. It was probably about half an hour. I was so glad to have a bit of a break and Jenna is such a great sport to play with her.
The boys got Transformers and Kylie got a talking Dora backpack. Kathryn got a $20 Jamba Juice card. Lucky girl.

This was Kathryn's 1st year of playing volleyball. She really enjoyed it. She is good at it with her height. I didn't do a very good job of getting pictures this season, but here she is with her team.
Kathryn's the tallest one.
And the boys are so into the holiday season this year. Every day they want to do something to make the house more Christmassy. Today they took pipe cleaners and beads and made things. Then Zach made me close my eyes and he took me to his room to show me how he had decorated.
It is hard to see, but he put Christmas ornaments that he made all along his upper bunk. Here is a close-up:
A candy cane and a wreath. I just love his spirit. And this year they really get that Christmas is about baby Jesus being born into the world. They are also understanding how fortunate we are to have money for presents and food, and a warm home to live in. Tomorrow we will be purchasing presents for a child who has no presents this year and they are so excited to deliver the gifts to our church for the little boy. Very proud of my family and their giving spirit.

Monday, December 5, 2011

7th Anniversary at Depoe Bay

7 years ago, on December 4, 2004, I married Michael. I am so lucky that he has given me 3 amazing children, plus allowed me to parent my 2 amazing step-children, and stay home to raise them as I have always dreamed. For our anniversary, we were able to to escape to Depoe Bay with friends to enjoy each others' company without screaming children constantly needing my attention. I have never seen the Oregon Coast so beautiful. It was as clear as could possibly be with no wind and about 53 degrees. Just amazing.
This was the view from our room. It was amazing!!!
The rest of the pictures were taken at our resort on the lawn out front of our room. These seals were really enjoying the sun.


Our wonderful friends Mike and Shari