Merry Christmas!

On Christmas Eve we slept over at Nanny & Papa's! We had such a great time hanging out together and cooking Chinese food!

The kiddos were excited to open their Christmas Eve presents! And they looked so cute in their new jammies!

Here is Cooper J. in his p.j.'s - playing with Daddy!

And playing with Zoe. He really likes Zoe, and she is really nice and patient with him!

Derek opening his pajamas!
Derek and Mauri in their new, comfy jams! Now they are ready for bed! (in theory at least, haha!)
The kids slept in until almost 8:00 on Christmas morning! We all had such a great time watching them open their presents and play with their new toys!
We were all a little worn out after a very fun morning! I love this picture of Erica and Harley taking a nap!
Cooper J. having his first taste of scones & honey butter! Yummmmmmm!
I love the day after Christmas almost as much as Christmas- it is so fun to just be together and play!! Here Ry and Derek are playing with the new track Derek got!!
Merry, Merry Christmas everyone! And have a very Happy New Year!

Getting ready for Christmas!

We have had a lot of fun getting ready for Christmas! We decorated our tree a few days after Thanksgiving! I love decorating the tree! One of my favorite things is all of the ornaments that Ryan has from when he was a kiddo! ...You can't really see the whole tree in this picture, but it is a good thing that it's small because Cooper J. has pulled it over twice! Luckily he was fine & so were all of the ornaments!
I love this picture! He's such a sweet boy, and you can't help but catch his enthusiasm when we're doing fun things together!
Both of the boys tried a candy cane tootsie pop! Derek is not a big fan of candy canes- but Cooper liked it a lot!
At the beginning of the month we went to the Festival of Trees. It's this really fun event where they have tons of decorated trees, wreaths, gingerbread houses and other things like quilts and yummy treats - all for sale. It's so fun to walk around and see all of the trees; lots of them are made in memory of people who have passed away, and it is both neat and sad to see pictures of them next to the tree. One of my favorite things about the Festival of Trees though, is that all of the money they raise goes to Primary Childrens Hospital. It was neat to talk with Derek when we came home that night & tell him that the money they raise at the festival helps kids who are really sick and have to stay in the hospital. Derek loved it and asked when we were going back to the tree festival!


I know this picture is blurry, but I had to post it because I love the smile on Cooper's face!

Let it Snow!

In the first part of November we had a really good snowstorm! The little hill in the backyard is perfect for sledding down! ...And of course Ry thought it was super funny that he captured this picture for posterity! haha! What can I say though?! It was so slippery! I told Derek to hold my hand and so he wouldn't slip and then I totally slipped -and pulled him right down with me! It was pretty funny!
We had so much fun sledding and making snowballs and just playing! Cooper kept watching through the back door window and he had a look on his face like 'why am I not out there with you guys?'

I love this picture! Snow is so fun and magical!

Thanksgiving!

This year we had Thanksgiving dinner at our house- and it was so much fun! My mom had to work that morning, so we thought - what if we just have it at our house?! It was so nice of everybody to drive up! Here is Scooter Boy in his pilgrim hat that he got at his Thanksgiving Feast at preschool!
Derek and I had a lot of fun making these cute little turkeys!
Harley - being such a good doggy! I kept teasing my mom (before Thanksgiving) that since Harley is so big, we were going to have a Thanksgiving dinner like in the movies - where the giant doggy snaps the turkey right off the table and takes off! haha! ...this hypothetical scenario became less funny when we decided to have dinner at our house, haha! But Harley was great- just like always! He's such a sweet dog!
Watching some football with daddy!
Everyone always loves it when I say, "Can we take a picture of everybody?" They pretty much wrestled each other to get the best spot!...we sure missed having Lins, Gman and Mauri with us for Thanksgiving!
Playing with our sweet Merry Sunshine!
Derek, Erica, Myke & Harley
I love Thanksgiving! I try to remember often throughout the year the many things that I'm grateful for- but I think it's so awesome that we have a holiday specifically for remembering what we're thankful for!

Holiday Catch Up....

We LOVE Halloween! We start celebrating it in September by making Halloween goodies and crafts, and we go right up til Halloween Day! We had a lot of spooky fun this year! We carved pumpkins!
Hey- why don't I get to carve one?!


We bobbed for apples....baby style!


We made cookie spiders! These spiders mysteriously acquired more and more eyes as we went along!

We were so excited to dress up and go trick or treating!

We enjoyed some witches brew!
Derek got TONS of candy - including two full size snickers! What a great day!

Road Trip...Continued!

Continuing on with pictures from our fun, fun trip to California....We were able to spend a very fun day at Auntie Cook and Uncle Bobs house! We had such a good time! The day that we had to leave - Derek asked if we could go to Auntie Cook & Uncle Bob's house just one more time!

Enjoying an apple with dad!
Yummmm! That's good!
Snuggled up on the comfy couch!
The famous picture board! Barb had such a great idea to take a picture of this last summer when we were in California- so I decided to take a picture this time! I love to look at all of these pictures! It is so fun to see all of the family history in pictures!
Grandma and Grandpa - two of the cutest, sweetest people ever!! We sure love them!
Family pictures before we left!

We had such a great time - and we were really sad to leave! But soon we were back in the car. The Nevada scenery was interesting at some points....
...but it mostly looked like this:
I thought the California scenery was prettier & more interesting!

We stayed in a hotel again on our way home! Cooper had fun with the toilet paper, haha! We went swimming again and ordered room service! That was super fun! Derek asked if we could do it again the next morning!

We had such a great time in California! Looking through these pictures again made me feel so happy- we are so glad we were able to take such a great road trip to visit our amazing family!!