more Christmas

Christmas morning we were packed up and ready to head to see all the grandparents houses for a little more Christmas fun. The nice thing was that they were not all on the same day but after five days of opening presents I think the girls were on present overload!

At grandma and grandpa McLeland's ready to open more presents!

Mikayla got a cute little kitchen and after she opened it she looked up at grandma and grandpa and started clapping, it was very cute, she loved her kitchen.

Jennifer opening up one of her felt boards, she is going to have hours of entertainment with these and the best part, we didn't have to cut out all the little pieces that came with them!

The next day it was off to Grammies for even more presents! Mikayla is getting kind of sick of having her picture taken with other kids at this point, as you can tell by her face.

Jennifer got a microphone and after she opened it she was ready to put on a show! She pretty much talked nonstop after opening it!

And still more presents to open at Mama and Papa's house! Once again Mikayla wants nothing to do with sitting with her cousins, this picture thing is overrated in her mind. I think she was ruined a few days earlier when we were trying to get 12 kids to sit for a picture a Bill's family Christmas, it got slightly loud for her with all those kids.

We have watched this movie 3 times already and she asked several other times to watch it, oh how we love it!

Not the greatest picture of Jennifer but oh how she loved her helmet! After opening it she proceeded to wear it pretty much the rest of the evening. It will be used and I quote Jennifer, "to ride a bike and ride horses!"

Then it was home to find places for all our new toys! Our girls are spoiled and Bill and I decided that next year grandparents you need to scale back!

We had a wonderful time with all our family at Christmas and we hope you all had a Merry Christmas too!

Christmas fun

It is hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone. We are enjoying the last few days of break after a busy few days. We got the girls a few presents so Christmas Eve morning they opened them up. I think I say it every year but I really do love to see Jennifer's excitement as she opens things up. I do fear that someday she will lose her excitement for even the simplest of gifts but for now we will enjoy it and hope that Mikayla will share in the excitement too, this year she just wanted to eat the paper.

Getting ready to open presents with two cute girls! The first presents! Jennifer can't wait and Mikayla doesn't really know what to do.
We got the girls matching jammies and of course we had to stop to put them on. There was too much excitement to get a good picture.
Each of the girls got new books. Jennifer loves these books right now so she was very excited to get new ones!

Mikayla just really wanted to eat the wrapping paper this year. She loved unwrapping the presents but really could care less what was inside them. Although we don't like to encourage Mikayla to eat paper it was pretty cute.
Bill handed this present to Jennifer and she looked and him and said, "It's a football!" She was right! Bill gave Jen a football last year too but some how we managed to misplace it so we are trying again. Jennifer was very excited to get a new one.
A new movie how exciting! One of her favorites, the look on her face may not seem like she is excited but she really is.

The movie was the last present to be opened because we knew as soon as Jennifer opened it the next words out of her mouth would be, "I want to watch it!". We were right! So after opening a few presents the girls are relaxing watching a new movie. (Mikayla only watched for about two minutes because she was off to something else.)

Christmas break

Christmas break has begun! I have to say I am looking forward to having Jennifer home for a few days. As we get ready for spending time with our families we of course had to do some baking. It is always nice to do a little baking on a snowy day and it seems we have had a lot of those lately.

The girls getting ready to make sugar cookies. Even Mikayla was going to get in on the action this year!

Jennifer was very fun to watch. She of course had to do everything "all by myself, go away mom, scoot over mom, all by myself". She did a great job rolling out the dough, cutting them out and getting them on the pan. Very fun to watch her having so much fun!

Bill gave Mikayla her own little piece of dough. At first she wasn't too sure what to do with it.

But eventually she realized what the dough was all about... eating it of course!

We had to take the dough away after a few minutes because she was getting a little carried away, she would have eaten a lot if we would have let her. Very cute to watch her!

Showing off a star.

Love the giggles and smiles from this sweet girl!

And what can I say about this sweet baby... I love her smiles and giggles too.

Not sure where we went wrong but by the time we were done we had a mess on our hands. Jennifer was slightly messy

and well lets just say the table had to be wiped down several times before it was really clean. (Mikayla is having some crackers, don't worry she did not eat cookie dough the entire time.)

For supper later that evening Mikayla fed herself mashed potatoes. Once again we had a mess on our hands. The pictures don't really do it justice but her hair was out of control sticking out from all the potatoes that were in it. Even messy she is cute!

snowy fun

I must admit I was not really ready for it to snow, I was a little crabby about it actually. However, Jennifer was very excited about the snow. When we picked her up from school on Friday she walked outside and very excitedly noticed the snow, she held out her arms and started shouting, "Its snowing, it's snowing!" Then Saturday morning when we went outside to play in the snow the giggles that came from my girls made the snow a little more bearable.

Mikayla all bundled up and ready to check out the snow.

Of course I thought I should get a picture of the girls together. It didn't really work so well, Jennifer had more important things to do and Mikayla just wasn't impressed with me at all.

As this picture shows I needed to just put the camera away and move onto playing.

Mikayla was not all about trying to ride in the sled with Jennifer so Jen thought she would pull her. Really it was very sweet. Both girls thought this was great! Jennifer was pulling Mikayla around the yard, talking to her as they went and Mikayla loved it.

Jennifer was going to try to make a snow angle but it didn't really work out for her.

I wasn't sure if Mikayla would try to move around in her big snowsuit but she crawled everywhere!

Each year we set the camera on the front step and take a family picture in the snow, usually the picture doesn't happen until towards the end of the winter season but since we were all outside we thought we would get an early winter picture.

Christmas tree

Jennifer was very excited to put the tree up once again this year. I must admit I sort of stand back and let Jen and Bill do their thing with the tree. Simply because I love to watch them.

Putting the tree together.

Getting the top on. Jennifer wanted to pretty much do everything this year and so she did pretty everything.

Even Mikayla got in on the fun this year. Last year at this time she wasn't even sitting up, this year she is every where!

Maybe I will pick this branch to go on next!

Making sure the tree skirt is where it needs to be.

Jennifer put almost all the decorations on the tree, by herself. Bill put a few up top and helped Jen get a few on but otherwise our tree was completely decorated by Jennifer and I love it!

Mikayla just tried to eat the decorations so she didn't really get to help with that part.

Our finished product. If you could see the one side of the tree you would notice there are no ornaments and that is because Jennifer focused mainly on the front of the tree.

I took this picture the day after the tree was up and if you look at it today it may look a little different. Jennifer takes the ornaments off every now and then and puts them back in different places. Makes me laugh. Today she took off an ornament from her first year in preschool, she was three. There is a picture of her on it, she brought me the ornament and said, "Mom, look Jennifer, baby, baby Jennifer." Made me laugh, she does look a lot smaller in that picture. I love that she is so excited about the little things of Christmas.

Thanksgiving

Over Thanksgiving I had a couple of family members tell me that I have been doing a poor job of keeping up with our blog. Yes, I admit I have. All of our pictures go onto Bill's computer and well Bill has been ever so slightly busy with school work lately. This means I have no time on Bill's computer to do things like update our blog. So I do apologize, I will try to be better!

Now onto Thanksgiving... We spent Thursday with Bill's family and silly me I did not get my camera out there. Friday we had Thanksgiving with my family, what a crazy but fun time!

The kids getting ready to eat. It ended up being more of a lunch on the go for these three, I don't think they sat very long to eat.Even with a mouth full of food Mikayla is one cute kid!Enjoying a little building time after lunch with Aunt Jen.Mikayla once again just being cute. Things get a little loud with Jennifer and the boys and Mikayla at times was not all about it, so she is on the couch, which for her was a little safer place.Jen and Ben playing in the basement with Papa. Who knew a hula-hoop would also make a good train?Once again just being cute.Later in the evening after eating a light supper the kids thought it would be fun to play in the kitchen of all places. The chairs are set up to be a train and there was lots of signing and laughing happening.After a fun weekend with family it was back home to get ready to put up the Christmas tree. Jennifer was very excited but had to wait while Bill and I moved a few things around so we could get the tree up. Jennifer decided to catch up on some football while she waited.The putting up of the tree pictures will come soon...