Our dear friends, the Schuttinga's, moved away to Indonesia this month. Dorian is especially going to miss his best friend, Anderson. Dorian had fun at the pool for Anderson's 8th birthday party!
Dorian and Levi both did a great job at the church Sunday School Christmas program. They also had a Christmas program at school.
These are Levi's treasures that he made at school for Thanksgiving. The pilgrim man says that he is thankful for dogs. Dorian brought home a wonderful Thanksgiving writing which was about how he was thankful for food, family, and his house. I love to see what they've worked on at school!
Grandpa and Grandma Tintle came to visit us from the 17th to the 20th!
Levi spent some time looking at penguins on Grandma's iPad. Now Levi wants an iPad for his birthday. :) Mason discovered the fishing game since I moved all of our games to the closet upstairs.
The boys had fun opening their Christmas presents!
I love Levi's expressions!
Thanks for the games! Nathan had fun figuring out the rules to a few new games and we all had fun playing them!
Let Christmas break begin. I was excited to bake Dorian's favorite kind of cookie for an after school snack on their last day of school before Christmas vacation. I also had to try out the giant Hershey kiss that Grandpa and Grandma Tintle brought from Hershey, Pennsylvania. :)
Christmas Eve!
Our day didn't go as planned. We were planning to have our Christmas party as a family: opening Christmas presents, making cut-out cookies, setting up Nathan's train set, etc. But, Mason threw up in his room multiple times during the night and Levi woke up with a high fever. Despite that, Mason seemed nearly fine the rest of the day and Levi slept for a good part of the day on the couch. So, we ended up still being able to open presents!
Dorian's absolute favorite thing to do right now is to play board games with his dad, or whomever will play with him. :)
Mason loves to climb, so we thought an indoor slide was perfect for this winter (and hopefully the next one as well ;). How fun!
For supper, Dorian and I went to Sheldon for the extended Bolkema family Christmas party. We had pizza for supper, and many Christmas goodies to snack on! We had a gift exchange and played Bingo to win little gifts from my Grandma. We played a game of volleyball and Dorian played the whole game with me this year! What fun traditions!
Christmas Day!
The boys each had an ornament in their stocking and a stretchy, sticky frog to play with. :)
Dorian and I went to church with Grandpa and Grandma. Then we had a very delicious prime rib dinner! Levi was feeling well enough to come for a little while to eat lunch and open presents with everyone!
Mason was having fun with his very own little remote controlled fire truck!
Yeah, we can't wait to go sledding!
It's not Christmas without hearing Christmas carols!
December 27 was Dad's 65th birthday. We spent the afternoon playing games with many of the extended Bolkema family at Kerry's house, had soup for supper, and then surprised dad with a trolley ride to look at the Christmas lights in Sioux Falls. It was a lot of fun!
Mason sat in the back on Janelle's lap and fell asleep for about half of the time. :)
Levi gave Nathan and I a very nice Christmas gift of all things that he made at school. Precious!
On the 30th, we enjoyed spending the afternoon with my Grandma at her apartment. It is our annual tradition to bring her Christmas cookies and play games with her. Mason was happy with the cars that she had!
During the month of December, I also hosted a cookie exchange with some women from church. It was fun to just be able to get to know some other women better (and the cookies were delicious as well)!
I did nearly all of my Christmas shopping online this year since we didn't go shopping on Black Friday. It was kind of fun to get packages so frequently. And I enjoyed checking the mailbox in December to see who sent Christmas cards! I also had fun putting our Christmas card together using the family pictures we took over Thanksgiving weekend.
We were invited to have lunch with Pastor John and Mary Jo on one Sunday and on another Sunday we invited the Saarloos family to join us for lunch at our house.
My dear friend, Kristin, and her husband Dave were visiting from MI so we were blessed to spend an evening talking and playing games with them!
I started working on my scrapbooking projects again! I was caught up until Mason was born, so I have nearly 2 years to catch up on.
We planned our summer vacation to a cabin on a lake in MN. Dorian can't wait to go fishing! We think it's going to be a lot of fun!
December was filled. It was filled with kids being sick, many FUN traditions, presents, and seeing many friends and family members. I am thankful.
