Christmas is coming!

On December 8, we went to Sioux Falls to celebrate Ashley's birthday and spend the evening with family.  We ate pizza for supper and then drove around looking at the many displays of Christmas lights.  Dorian couldn't wait to stop at Falls Park to climb up the tower which overlooks the park.  This year it was snowing outside which added to the ambiance...but made it hard to take pictures and also made it very cold!  We enjoyed eating Christmas cookies and sipping on hot chocolate and hot cider before heading back home.



 



On Monday night, we took out Nathan's train set that's been boxed up for many years.  It was fun to watch the boys setting it up and taking turns running it!  What a fun memory.  :)

Dorian discovered that he is able to read the entire book "Hop On Pop" by Dr. Seuss!!!  Nathan and I have each heard it multiple times this past week.  I'm not sure who is more proud...him or us.  :)  He is learning a LOT in Kindergarten so far!

On December 5, Levi got to celebrate his half birthday at preschool. This was a pretty big deal! They sang happy birthday to him, he got a special birthday crown, and picked out a matchbox car from the gift box. He also got to ask the kids in his class to put their heads down and surprise them with a birthday treat of peanut M&M's that he picked out. He is now officially 4 1/2!!!

Last night was Levi's Christmas Preschool Program. He couldn't wait to be on the stage! They sang about 10 different songs and said about 10 different Bible verses that they have memorized so far. It was quite impressive!

 

And today at preschool Levi is the Lucky Duck which is also a big deal. He had fun packing his bag with show and tell items and we were the first ones to arrive this morning! :)  I can't wait to hear all about it.  He is usually very talkative and excited when I pick him up and I'm sure that he will be today!

fun family time at home

It's amazing to me how many pictures the boys have colored since moving the little table into the kitchen and setting the coloring books out. 
Last week Thursday I was babysitting and it was fun to see Eden and Levi coloring pictures for each other!

Dorian loves his doggy!  He requested that I take a picture of him.  :)

On Friday night we were invited to the Brunner Household for supper, dessert and to make gingerbread houses!

Saturday, December 1.  We had the entire day ahead of us and no plans had yet been made.  I love days like that (most of the time:).  In the morning, we decided to move the office stuff into our new office room.  The boys did a great job helping with moving all of the books from the bookshelf! 
Mid-morning we sat down to each have a cup of hot chocolate!  Yum!  As you'll be able to tell from the pictures, we all really enjoyed ourselves.  :)  The boys had fun making milk mustaches, taking pictures and being silly for the camera. 

 

Every so often it is necessary to find some new rewards for the boys to keep their behavior in check. We have been giving tokens for positive behavior lately and the boys really wanted to cash in some tokens by taking a bike ride to the park. Sounded like a good afternoon activity since the weather was sunny and mild. The boys went to the park and then to the bakery for donuts and to Fareway for a few groceries. Dorian has really been enjoying bike rides lately.  They had a lot of fun!

On Sunday afternoon, after a busy morning at church we decided that each of us needed to have some quiet time.  It was so peaceful and enjoyable that I found that I needed to take pictures to capture the memory.  Nathan was working in the new office.  Levi was playing with the Duplo Fire Station that Dorian and I had previously built together.  Dorian was playing downstairs with cars and beanbags.  And I was reading a book!  After moving our bookshelf, I've discovered some books that would be good to read.  :)

 

 

And now it's Monday, a new week is here.  We had a busy morning getting both boys ready for school.  Levi is having pictures taken today so we had some tears and debate about what he was going to wear.  Dorian didn't want to go to school and wanted to stay home so we had to encourage and motivate him.  But once Dorian was dropped off, Nathan went to work to attempt to get the many things on his to-do list started on.  He's very busy at work right now.  I dropped off Levi and went on to pick up TRIP money for the month at SCCS.  I stopped at McDonald's because I saw that if you bought a $5 gift card, you got a free Peppermint Mocha and that sounded like a good deal to me!  Then I went to Nathan's office to download blog pictures which is amazingly faster to do there than it is at our house.  And then I stopped to see if I could find an ugly Christmas Sweater for a party that we were invited to this weekend.  :)

 

Now Adria is taking a nap in the swing and it's nearly time to pick up Eden and Levi from preschool!  My life is good.

Giving Thanks.

 

Thanksgiving Day 2012

I have so many things to be grateful for.  It's fun to think about them and write down the good memories that have been made. 

We spent Thanksgiving day in Sheldon.



Dorian made a pilgrim hat at school.  On Wednesday evening, he was so excited that he made hats for all of us!  :)

 Emma was playing the piano and Levi was turning the pages for her.  :)

After church, mom and dad were busy preparing a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner for nearly 40 people!

Ashley discovered that she really liked taking pictures with my camera.  It worked out well because there were tons of really great pictures at the end of the day!  Thanks Ashley!  I really like this picture of Emma and I.

 Emma's baby is her dog Macey, and my baby keeps getting bigger!  :)

 Love my grandma!

 

The Lamfers made a Turkey out of veggies!  Gotta love Pinterest ideas.  :)

 This is how you know that all of the kids are having fun.  :)

 

On Friday Nathan and Dad willingly watched all of our children, so that I could go shopping with Mom, Kerry, Heidi, Emma and Adria.  Since the stores open much earlier in the morning than we are willing to get up, it doesn't even feel like Black Friday shopping.  It is nice to have most of my Christmas shopping done already. 

On Saturday morning we enjoyed having Steve and Sara and their kids at our house!  In the afternoon we turned on the Christmas music and had fun putting up our Christmas decorations.  I'm quite sure Molly didn't really enjoy getting a Santa hat put on her...but thankfully she takes a lot from the boys!

Yeah!  I love having our Christmas tree up.  Nathan was replacing bulbs.  Dorian was very proud to be putting his homemade candy canes on the tree. He made them a couple of years ago out of pipe cleaners.

Time to hang up all of the ornaments!

The tree looks good, but the boys certainly make the picture spectacular.  :)

We hung 5 stockings!  Nathan, Lisa, Dorian, Levi, and Baby.  :)

I've been doing a lot of thinking about moving rooms around and making the current office into a nursery and the toy room into our office.  I decided to start by picking up the toy room and moving many of the toys downstairs (mostly because Nathan was bored and willing to help move the bookshelves for me :).  There was a stack of papers on the piano that was growing to be about a foot tall of all of the papers that the boys bring  home from school, etc.  I "sorted" them and put up my favorites on our art wall.  I love organizing.

I don't think it's ever looked so cozy downstairs.  I think I'm going to like having most of the toys down there! 

On Sunday, Dorian spent much of the church service finding words that he knew in the bulletin, circling them and writing them down.  He is really having a lot of fun finding and reading words that he knows how to read and sounding new words out.  I love it!

November News

Pumplefest:  What a fun name for a Fall party where you have to bring either a pumpkin or apple dish!  The Wallace's moved here in July and we have enjoyed getting to know their family.  It was the tradition where they lived previously to have a Pumplefest party and vote for their favorite pumpkin and apple dishes.  I daringly tried out a new recipe of Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies which were good, but weren't voted number one.  :)  We certainly enjoyed our evening of adult conversations and good food.  And the boys were excited to have a sitter.  It worked out well.  :)

Football:  It's becoming a pretty strong tradition at our house to watch football on Sunday afternoons.  In fact, the boys asked to watch football a while back when Nathan was out of town.  :)  Anyway, this past Sunday the boys were both pretending to be football players and would run from one end of the house to the other.  They wore their super hero capes which of course makes them run faster!  We had to cheer for their team and even got to watch a tackle.  Fun times.

Speaking of football, on Sat. the 3rd, my parents joined us to watch Dordt's home football game in the afternoon.  The boys did enjoy watching, but I think they were most excited about the merry-go-round that Grandma took them to.  I think Dorian was a little motion sick from the merry-go-round and fell asleep on the couch when we got home around 4:00.  He ended up sleeping from then on until morning!  The rest of us ate grilled steak for supper and then we played Settlers of Catan after Levi went to bed.  It was fun...not just because I won...but that was fun too.  :)

Christian:  Dorian's friend from kindergarten was recently diagnosed with cancer.  Horrible.  I hate cancer.  At the teacher's request, Dorian found out at school and told me later that he almost cried.  He said that it made him sad that he was going to be sick from the medicine and lose his hair.  And he told me that his mom must be really sad too.  It is sad.  But the thing that I loved about our conversation was how empathetic Dorian was.  His heart is big.  There are times when I have a hard time seeing eye to eye with him.  At a moment like this, I was reminded again of his loving and caring heart.  Please join us in praying for Christian Postma and his family.  http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/christianpostma

Election Day: With the recent time change, the boys were up before 6:00. :( Nathan took them to go and get donuts from Casey's Bakery and then he was going to take them along with him to vote. Well, plans got mixed up a bit because I was hungry and also needed to vote. So they came home first and there was still plenty of time before needing to leave for school at 8 to all go over and vote. The boys were very interested. :) Levi thought that we were going to see the president. We were thankful that there were no lines, so voting took about 10 minutes. Later that morning, Levi and I were having seconds on the donuts and he informed me that he would like to be the president some day. And moments later wondered if presidents can eat donuts. :) It made me smile!

Some other things that made me smile:
The fun file box that I bought at Target makes me happy and it made me even happier when I cleared off my side of the desk and dusted it.  So often the desk looks like a complete disaster of papers and other things that need to be taken care of.  I'm determined to keep it looking neater!  :)

Yeah!  I was excited to borrow Kerry's Cricut for a few days and finish this sign that I had started making at MOPS.  It also makes me happy that Thanksgiving is coming soon!

I'm excited about having some time and motivation to work on the boy's scrapbooks this past week!  I'm going to be caught up in their books through Christmas of last year by tonight.  :)

Dorian was very excited about his Pilgrim hat and the Thanksgiving dinner that he had at school.  So it made me happy to get an email from his teacher with this picture attached.

Last night Dorian and Levi were very excited about what they made at JAM.  Do you like Dorian's awesome King's crown?  It made me happy to see them making their usual Sunday night pizzas.

Some things that made me not so happy:
Well, it seemed like I had a cold that lasted forever (2 weeks actually) and some days it just really had me drained and worn out.  But the good news is that for the last couple of days I'm feeling myself again! 

Looking forward:
I'm really looking forward to the Thanksgiving weekend!  Nathan made stuffing and I made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies which are both in the freezer for our Thanksgiving dinner at mom and dad's house.  I have the ingredients to make 2 pumpkin pies on Wednesday for a dinner that they are having at church.  I'm working on getting a shopping list and coupons together for our shopping day on Friday.  And I can't wait to take out our Christmas decorations and have the boys help put ornaments on the tree again this year.  I did put greenery and lights on our railing already one day last week when I noticed that our pumpkins were rotting.  It was super nice out and the boys were playing outside.  It's a fun time of year!