Christmas!!!

We had a wonderful time having Christmas (a few days early at Mom's). Our week has been interesting, Wednesday at Mom's, Thursday is another story altogether which I'll save to the end of the post. We had such a tough time finding a date where we could all make it so a Wednesday evening it was. We had turkey a la king for dinner and then on to presents. We drew our adult gift inspiration from the letter "N" for Niki thinking the letter N would be easy inspiration for shopping on a limited budget. Not really! Mom got creative (which I ended up happily bringing home pj bottoms "nightwear" and both Bill and Jason picked up whatever they could find on the way to dinner. None of us really minded though, all of us but Niki were happy with our gifts. Poor Niki ended up with Jason's remote control helicopter, I don't remember how he translated that into "N", new toy??? Anyways, the kids had a blast playing together even though Brecken was a little on the cranky side for the first half of the evening and loved their new presents.

Camera hams

Always trying to get a shot of all 4 of them where someone is not crying or running away.

Ealier in the week Reagan and I stopped at my Mom's Club party, we walked in the room and Reagan shouted "hi Santa" with a great big wave. She has really started coming out of her shell. Well after getting our coats arranged we headed over to the big guy and up on his lap she went. It was cute, they had an entire conversation but every time she saw I had the camera in hand she turned to smile as if she were a professional model. Silly girl.
Brecken still has problems focussing on her own gifts, she was more interested in everyone else's. It's pretty cute to watch.

Piper's 1st Zhu Zhu pet, she has been asking and asking for these things. I haven't paid much attention but they are really cute little toys. Maybe I'll have to actually let the girls take me down the toy aisle from time to time to check some of these things out.

Grandma got her an art set with some sketch pads, which she spent hours using the next day.

Let's see how many girls can fit into a foot stool.

Ring around the rosie is one of Brecken's favorites and the girls are all too happy to help play a few rounds.

I was blown away by Grandma's gift, she made me a gorgeous quilt. I took it out and said "it's so pretty" to which Mom replied, that is exactly what you said when you saw the fabric at Grandma's last summer. I don't remember that but I guess Grandma did, lucky me!

Reagan and her Tangled doll, she is obsessed with anything from that movie right now.

We had a great time Wednesday and were all excited for our Friday and Saturday activities but come Thursday morning Jason woke up riddled with a terrible cold and spent most of his day in bed. Reagan and I were fine and ran some errands but Piper kept declining going outside, to the grocery store, to do just about anything. I didn't realize until around dinner time that she wasn't looking quite right, she was pale and developed a fever. We all sent her off to bed hoping she'd be fine by morning. Well the stomach flu hit her first, then Reagan, then myself all thourought the night. Jason was our superhero taking care of all of us while not getting more than 15 minutes of sleep at a time until around 8am the next morning when the girls and I all stabilized and camped out in our bed sending him off to get some much needed sleep. Needless to say we spent the entire day Friday in bed recouperating not even realizing that Mom was also stricken with the same bug at her house. We didn't get to do our traditional Christmas Eve with Jason's family going to church and enjoying our fondue dinner at his Aunt and Uncle's and Mom and Tim didn't get to enjoy their trip to see his parents in Omaha. Bummer! Saturday we started feeling a little more like ourselves but decided to skip our outing to his Grandparents in Glencoe so we didn't infect his entire family. We waited the 24 plus hours past the last symptoms and then finally headed to Dad's for dinner. That will be our next post. Christmas just isn't the same without all our traditional family get together's, we really missed seeing everyone!

Winter, yeah, I'm over it!

We knew we were going to have an adventure and there would be a learning curve to winter out here. Who knew our first winter here would start with a bang? The first snowfall we didn't have our snowblower. The second major snowfall was a doosey, dumping over a foot at once coupled with a raging wind and very cold temperatures. Luckily this one hit on Friday/Saturday because we were stuck! We tried to remove the snow as it came but the wind just blew it right back and by the next morning it was packed solid in knee to shoulder high drifts. Our township couldn't even get a regular plow threw our street up to our driveway, they had to find a guy with a thrower to come out. Luckily he did not work for the town and was willing to let us hire him to dig us out. He was our hero that weekend! Now, with the latest snow, my car refused to get up the driveway after only 2 fluffy inches of snow. I ended up getting it stuck pretty deep and plowing a good portion of the yard to get it loose only to end up sliding deeper in before using some not so pretty language and giving up to let Jason give it a try. He got it out only to get it stuck in another part of the driveway and I had him try to push me with his truck, well his truck is taller than my car and took out one of my tail lights. Now my 10 year old car with the non-matching gas cap cover has one head light missing and a tail light broken into pieces. It's starting to look more and more like an old clunker each day. I am cranky about the month of December and am hoping January will be milder.

A view looking up the driveway. The big drift on the right was just below my shoulder height.
From the top looking down, there were parts of our cement still showing after the big storm, the wind just kept making drifts in odd places.

Our hero. I really admired his snow equipment, it looked like a lot of fun!

Piper couldn't wait to get out into the fresh snow only to realize that she was going to keep falling through. Neither of the girls have braved sledding since this storm, trying to walk up the hill is too much work for them. I tried to clear them a path but only made it half way up the hill.

Jason standing in front of the snowpile he made while trying to dig his truck out.

Jason took his truck down the driveway during the snowfall only to reach a drift and come to a stop. After 15 minutes of being stuck you couldn't even see the tracks behind him, the drifts had filled in that quickly. We've just decided if we are expecting snow than one/both of us are parking near the bottom of our driveway as it's much easier to blow/shovel the lower portion out if we need to get out and about rather than being stranded another 1/4 mile up the road.

Thanksgiving is down, now on to Christmas

It was time again for our annual tree cutting expedition with the Salmos family. Instead of driving for over an hour to our usual awesome tree farm we tried a local place that wasn't quite as accomodating to our traditions. Last year it was in the 50's and sunny and we got to drive right through the lot and it was hard to pick the perfect tree as they were all so great. This year it was cold and snowy and we had to walk. It may have been that a few of us were cranky (me, Reagan, Alicia was a little and Kaiden) but none of the trees were up to par. After walking about 3/4 of a mile we found one for ourselves and Jason took it down. As I told Alicia, if Geof finds one it will be in the back of the lot. Yes, he found his 14 foot tree, in the back corner. It took all his and Jason's strength to juggle that thing back to the parking lot. Alicia and I thought it was quite humorous. I somehow lucked out and got my own drug up to the lot by two awesome 7/8 year olds.
Alicia and Kaiden

Geof and his monster tree

Kyle and his friend TJ taking a break, they still had to bring it down and hill in back of them.

It was hard to get Piper to take a break from playing with Konnor to take a picture.

Reagan looking cute! For most of the adventure she followed me around crying about having to walk. She's developed quite the attitude lately.

We finally decorated the tree tonight. It smells so good and the girls had so much fun putting their bulbs up. Seeing their eyes light up is so much fun!

Layla had to be part of the action.

Piper started her paper chain tonight. I wonder how long it will get this year.

Our first snowfall

Well our first snowfall came and it was an adventure. Jason and I like to be prepared but we rarely put forth the effort to be so and as usual, our snowblower was not in working order. At least it was in the shop and we got it back in great working order about 5 days after the snow. Well I never looked for the official reading but I am guessing we got 5 inches of the heavy wet stuff. It showed up Friday night and into Saturday. Trading off shoveling duties it took us the entire day to clear the cement portion of our driveway. Me being me, I couldn't wait to take Jason's truck down the driveway to get our paper and check out the driving conditions. Well I didn't realize his 4wd was completely out and I only managed to make it partially back up the driveway. We decided not to take my car out until it cleared up a bit, so Sunday we decided to give my car a try at the driveway. Well one of the kids knocked on my dome light and killed my battery. With Jason's truck stuck at the bottom of the hill we felt defeated and called in reinforcements. Our friends Geof and Alicia came to the rescue by jumping my car. In the meantime I was feeling pretty cranky about being stuck at home for 2 days so I started shoveling the gravel. It wasn't that bad, but it could have been that I was so cranky, I had a lot of energy to expel. We got almost all of it shoveled and after having Jason's 4wd fixed we haven't had much of a problem. Now of course I'm waiting for another snowfall so I can play with my snowblower.

Jason entertained the kids and himself by sledding. He is thinking of all the fun ways to sled through the yard and pasture, removing fences and all. I think he wants to be a kid again. Nothing wrong with that, I wish I had more of his imagination and enthusiasm.
Rea was determined to go down her slide all covered in snow. It was so thick I'm sure her little legs got tired slogging up and down the hill.

Piper was having a blast, she couldn't wait to start building a fort and a snowman. Unfortunately she didn't get too far with either of them before she was soaking wet and had to come in to dry.

Oh their giggles were so priceless!

Happy Thanksgiving

Now that I have a dining room I was excited to host our 1st Thanksgiving here at the new house. We had 17 people including the Piper, Reagan, Brecken and Vienna. I was insisting on sitting everyone together at one table and unfortunately my dining room isn't big enough to hold all the tables I put together. If the doorway wasn't quite as narrow we could have made it but alas we ended up in the kitchen dining area. Oh well, I really like my new dining room with Grandma Miller's hutch and buffet and Doug's matching table and Great Grandma Warhol's fostoria, it's all so pretty. All our happy guests. We had a great day, although I was a little nervous, we planned to eat at 1pm, the turkey was saying it was done at 10:30am and I was expecting everyone to show up a little early but our first guest didn't arrive until 12:15. I thought for sure the turkey was going to be awful but it was great and I am a lucky hostess as all I worried about was the turkey, rolls, vegetable (which I actually forgot until half way through dinner) and a dessert. Mom brought wine and made gravy, Robin brought the mashed potatoes and her delicious broccoli dish, Niki brought the green bean casserole and a bunch of delicious snacks to munch on and Bill stressed out making the silver creams which finally turned out perfect until something went haywire on the drive out, they turned into soup but still tasted great. Bill wasn't a very happy camper, I'm not sure when we'll get him to attempt Silver Cream pies again. I may have to snag the recipe and try my hand at them.

Setting the table. I finally got to use the dishes Robin and Lonny gave us for our wedding. I didn't even realize I had them until we moved in. I never had a place to store them so I had them packed away in the attic and after 10 years forgot we had them.

When the chairs came from Doug they were still sporting their original 70's green/orange and brown fabric which had seen it's day and then some. I spent hours in the fabric store and finally got fed up and went with this fabric thanks to my friend Holly. I got it home and was very pleased as it matches the furniture perfectly.

A couple pictures of the dishes, it's so cool, I have a mix of both family's dishes in there and I FINALLY have a plate I can put cake on.

Halloween Hoopla(s)

We had fun getting ready for Halloween, we started celebrating a week early at the Kocina's Annual Hayride at Jason's Aunt and Uncle's house. Jason was off hunting so the girls and I hitched a ride with Lonny and Robin. We all had a great time.

Piper was in heaven getting an opportunity to ride a horse. She just jumped right on like she's an expert, she took a few spins around the pen and took time to pet the horse and talk to him. I think we will have to look into riding lessons for her, luckily there are a few places nearby.
It was such a beautiful day/evening. We put our coats on for the hayride but barely needed them, it was 70 degrees that day and it didn't cool off too much as the sun set.

Now to continue our traditions we went to Mom's to ride the Excelsior Boo Train. The kids just love doing this and have been talking about it for the previous month and a half. As usual, they had a great time and Mom cooked up a delicious dinner for us all.

Mom's friend Barb and her niece Carrie Jo joined us again this year.

Reagan and I riding at John and Sandy's. Reagan would have gone alone with Grandpa walking beside her but I wanted an excuse to take a ride as well. Our horse's name was Chic.

As usual Piper made friends with all the other little girls at the party and had to sit with them on the hayride.

John and Sandy have such a fun place and always do a great job of keeping the kids entertained with all their toys.

Now on to Halloween night, we are making it a tradition to venture over to Heather and Brant's house to trick or treat. They have family over for a little potluck and then all the kids get out to trick or treat. We had quite the entourage of people this year and had a great time!

Little Princess Reagan with Aydan and Laura Ingalls Piper

They looked so cute!

Pumpkin carving, Jason whipped through 4 pumpkins in record time this year. We enjoyed designing them even though we are the only one's who saw them.