Getting Ready for Christmas

Little text, lots of pictures. :)

Lucia discovering her Nikolaus boot. You can see Rhea's little boot in the bottom left corner. Discovering the contents. Lucia had a book, cards, new slippers, and a couple other little things.

Rhea mainly found little snacks like Snappea Crisps and crackers. After they were done unwrapping, Lucia said she was said Nikolaus didn't put anything to eat in HER boot. :)

The annual tradition of decorating the tree. Lucia loves to be part of it and helped again this year! We had (again) quite a few ornaments at knee-level...

... which Rhea very much appreciated. :) This picture looks like she's helping decorate too, but she was mostly helping to UNdecorate. Which only gave Lucia more to do. ;-) But we did put an end to this new favorite game eventually.

Checking out the angels

A little bit of sister-love

Papa's Christmas party from work

At which we got to dance to "Move to the Groove" :)

Enjoying the first WI snow of the season

Getting her first taste of snow

And then warming up with hot chocolate :) Aah, sometimes I just want to be a little kid again. But then... it's also REALLY nice to be an "adult". (I still don't really feel like one though. Haha.)

Mom and Dad up for another little visit before they started their trek across the country, which was fun. It's always nice to spend time together, but sometimes hard to have time and opportunity for good conversation when it's a bigger gathering and there are more kids and activities. :)

Grandpa and Lucia puzzling on the living room floor. (Lucia asked Gpa to please come play with her... "in my ROOM!!" ... which he thought would be a bit lonely :-), so he suggested she bring a puzzle to do together.)

"Helping" Grandma wash the dishes

Reading a book together for the 328th time :)

Getting started on the gingerbread house (end result forthcoming)

Having some eggnog by the fire

One day, Lucia's friend Kirsten spent the day with us and the girls wanted to go outside to play in the snow. It was fun for Lucia to have a little friend to accompany her and enjoy all her little play scenarios with her. :) ... because sometimes it gets a little tiring for Mama and ... I just don't to as good of a job "playing" as another 3-year-old does.

Feeding each other snow

And just generally having fun together!! I'm so thankful for their little friendship. :)

Rhea has discovered the castle in Lucia's room and the Playmobil people that "live" in there and has been playing a lot with them recently. Lucia oftentimes gets frustrated that Rhea "messes up" her play, but Rhea loves the little "peepo" too! Sometimes they play well together, or at least well side-by-side. :)

More Quality Family Time

After we got back from Iowa, we enjoyed a few more days with the Abuhl/Myers clan. David took the whole week after Thanksgiving off, so it was a really nice break and quality family time. It was especially fun to see Jaida the first days of her life.

Story time with Grandpa - and Westen seems to enjoy it too! :)
Helping Grandma in the kitchen... :)

Checking out baby Jaida - all of a sudden, Rhea's not the baby anymore!

We also joined my aunt and uncle for dinner one evening, which was fun. They always pull out all the toys for the kids, and here Uncle Phil was showing Lucia how to work the Brio train set.

Then, the first snow of the season fell, so the girls enjoyed going outside and playing a bit. Of course, I hadn't brought their snow clothes, but we still managed to have some fun. :)

Whenever Rhea is nowhere else to be found, you can always check with Grandpa. He'll pull out snacks from anywhere and Rhea happily "obliges". :)

And the big cousins enjoyed a few movies together...

All in all, a great and memorable trip! :)

Oh Where to Begin?!?!

Much, much has happened. I just checked what the last pictures that I posted were of - and it was the Santa Scamper! I think that was in November! So... I'm finding myself three months behind, and this is the beginning of The Catch-Up. :)

For Thanksgiving, we drove down to Chicago to spend it with the Myers as well as David's parents. We were all anticipating the birth of Lucia and Rhea's THIRD cousin, and Julie especially was hoping the little one would be born before we all decended upon them (considering she was planning to her her baby at home). However, little Jaida had other plans and wanted a few extra days to get ready for the COLD out in the real world, so she stuck it out in there until November 27th! It all worked out beautifully because my dear aunt and uncle, who live just 10 minutes away from the Myers, happened to be in D.C. over Thanksgiving visiting their son and his family and graciously offered us their home so we'd have a place to escape to once Julie went into labor.
We got to see little Jaida on Saturday morning, when she was less than 12 hours old!


Proud new Grandpa (now x5!)
And the happy family of 5!

Then, after our visit, we left for a quick hop over to Iowa. Grandma Abuhl was celebrating her 80th birthday, so we (minus Mark, Julie and little Jaida) wanted to make sure we were there for her celebration! Since I was chasing the kids most of the time, I didn't get as many pictures of that event as I would've liked. It was fun for me to meet many of David's cousins and aunts and uncles, since not all had made it to our wedding (and even the kids who did are now 5 years older and ... well, you don't have much time with people at your own wedding. :) ) It was great fun and definitely worth the trip.

Rhea took a little nap in the car on the way there, hugging her bear, Finn, and holding onto her fuzzy. We don't go anywhere without her fuzzy. :)

And I couldn't whip out the camera fast enough to get a good picture of Grandma with Rhea - Rhea wanted to be on the move! :)

We spent the night at Aunt Sharon's and Uncle Dale's, since the drive was too long to do twice in one day with little kids. So we took advantage of having a little more time the next day to see Grandma's place and then also stopped by Great-Uncle Wayne's farm. The kids LOVED riding around for a bit in the Gator. :)