Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Winter Wonder Land

Our winter wonderland has become a little too wondrous! I haven't measured it yet, but there's about 3 feet of snow at our house, so... We have been camping out for the last two nights at my parents house! Neither of us are able to do much shoveling, since Matthew is still on crutches and can't put pressure on his leg, and I have learned from previous winters not to shovel while pregnant, unless I want some serious sciatic nerve pain!

The kids are having a great time helping Grandpa shovel and sledding with Grandma!



Here's what our house looks like. The deck is almost filled to the railing. It's higher than the windows.




Here's Matthew's jeep. Do you think he can get out? It has 4 wheel drive...
We did have our driveway plowed once, and my dad has been keeping it kind of shoveled between snowfalls, (and shoveling out lots of other people too!) but it's still too much for our van to handle! The jeep has already been shoveled out once, and this is the snowfall since then.



It's beautiful and could be fun, but a lot of work! I must officially be an adult now. Oh dear.

Friday, December 26, 2008

More from Christmas

Well, I seem to have loaded pictures in backward order again. Here are some tired kids in their new jammies at the end of a fun day. This year our usual gathering for dinner has changed since they all moved away, so I wanted to start a new tradition of having Christmas dinner at our house. It ended up with my parents being our only guests, because Matthew's parents are in Mexico, and friends had other plans, but it was nice to have a small group. I wanted to make it a fancy special meal, so we had soup and salad for starters, then chicken cordon bleu with a creamy wine sauce, and raspberry kiwi trifle for dessert. It was my first time making either of these, so I was glad it was just my family, but it all turned out pretty good! I think we have a new tradition!

Earlier in the day the kids and I got to play in the snow! It was so beautiful! We have about 4 inches. It's been sunny and around 20 degrees for about the last 2 weeks, Then it snowed right before Christmas!

I pulled the kids on their sleds for a while, but Brennen didn't last very long. I think his hands froze, and he just cried.

Meadow and I made this snowman yesterday.

We hope everyone had a good Christmas!






Thursday, December 25, 2008

Christmas Morning

We had a wonderful, white Christmas! It was fun this year because the kids were really excited, and finally know what it's all about. (The presents and Jesus' birth.) We opened presents to a beautiful wintery purple sunrise outside, then my parents joined us for breakfast. I made blueberry french toast casserole. Here are some pics from the day. Meadow is wearing her fairy wings while she paints a horse which is from a "paint your own horse" set we gave her.
Brennen didn't really open any presents, but he sure enjoyed playing with them. We gave him a drum set which he loved! He knew exactly what to do!
Cute brothers

Matthew had a bit of a different Christmas this year. He is recovering from knee surgery which he had two days ago. It was from an old soccer injury that has become worse and very painful over the past few years with all the work he does on his knees. The Dr. found that he has torn cartilage in his knee, so they cut out the damaged areas. He has had to spend the last two days with his knee higher than his heart to keep swelling down, but he's recovering very well.
He's enjoying learning to play his new ukulele. It's solid acacia wood and sounds very nice.






Friday, December 12, 2008

Singing Christmas Tree

We just attended the first nights performance of the Singing Christmas Tree. It was very nice! They sounded great and the whole thing went very smoothly- no glitches!The kids choir, directed by Jodi

The kids all enjoyed the singing and especially the cookies!


Here's a short video clip. I had a hard time holding the camera still because Brennen was fidgeting on my lap. You can also hear him singing along rather loudly! He loves to sing!

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Meadow's 4th Birthday!

Meadow had a fun party this evening! Her two best friends, Jenna and Juliette came. We played a game of pin the tail on the donkey, decorated foam crowns with sparkly foam stickers, had dinner- Meadow chose to have pizza and chicken nuggets, then had cake and she opened presents. She was very excited about each one. She got lots of princess things! (The photos loaded in reverse order as you can see. Oh well..at least it's working right now!)
Her cake was a pumpkin log with rainbow colored filling. She wanted an orange cake with red and blue so this seemed like a yummy way to do that.

The finished crowns
Making the crowns. Logan made a hat instead.
All the kids minus Brennen (who was probably off climbing on something), and big momma standing by. Wow...I can't believe she's 4!!






Monday, December 08, 2008

Bad Bad HP

I must warn anyone who may be looking for a new computer or printer. Stay away from HP!!! Far, far away! They are some of the worst products out there. We've had lots and lots of trouble with our computer and printer over the 3 short years we've owned them. They work fine for the first year, until your warranty runs out, then things gradually stop working. The supposedly wonderful phone support costs $60!! And then they lie to you and tell you the parts you have aren't even HP, and there's nothing they can do other than sell you something else!! We are very disappointed by it and can now barely even use our computer, thus the lack of posts and pictures lately!