Christmas Highlights

We started the Holiday Season by making a Gingerbread house with some of our friends from church. They had the great ideas to make trees out of waffle cones and the cool train.

We had fun making and eating this house.

Then I got crafty for a Christmas gift for my nephew. I made a Mr. Potato Head out of felt. It was fun, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. :)

We spent Christmas Eve at my parent's house with my family. Good food and good company. It was great!

Erik got some cool construction trucks. This is his wheel loader but he also got a dump truck and he LOVES them!

This is my nephew Matthew opening his Mr. Potato head. He was happy with it for a few minutes-he is only 18months old. But his parents loved it!

Paul got a camping lantern! We can't wait to use it camping this summer. :)

My mom w/her gift from us. This was exactly what she wanted, I can't believe I guessed right, awesome!

Christmas morning at our house!!

We were really excited to give Erik a tricycle so we woke up before him and got him up. It took him a bit to wake up and get excited about presents-luckily the candy in his stocking helped :)

It's Woody! He's got Buzz too and loves playing with them.

There's Erik's Trike in the pic below.

The newest XBOX 360 with the Kinect system!!!!

Wow do we love playing this! I had some sore legs yesterday from playing an obstacle course game. It was full of squats and jumps-yeah my legs hurt, but it felt good to be active.

A mug! Paul's Favorite! From Yellowstone too, Thanks Papa!

Paul gave me this awesome sweater. I love it!

Erik got a Curious George book from Grandma JuLee about the library and the picture on the last page matches the George poster he has on his door, I HAD to get a pictures of that.

My parents came over later for Lunch.

Erik had the idea to sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and blow out a candle. We liked that idea so we did it. I was a little slow to grab the camera so I missed him blowing the candle out.

Playing with all the new Christmas toys.

And taking the new tricycle our for a spin. Erik loves this! He was outside for bout a half hour on Christmas day on the trike. He's getting a lot better at steering. It's so fun to see him pedal around.

The Christmas excitement has kinda thrown Erik's sleeping patterns off. The other night he had a hard time staying in bed. We found him on the floor like this. I don't know why sleeping on the floor next to the door is better than his bed, but we couldn't open the door cuz he was in the way, so I had to snap a pic.

Merry Christmas to everyone. We sure had a wonderful time!

Happy Birthday Erik!!

So I'm a little late in getting this post up, oops and sorry. But hey guess what we've got a 3 year old in our home now! Here's Erik playing with a balloon before his party.

Then one night we decided to make a paper bag town. All the art and ideas came from Erik's cool Highlights magazine.
The birthday festivities!
We decided on a Curious George theme because Erik loves him.

I found the cupcake idea online, thank you to the internet, and Pawly and I made a pinata together. We tried to include Erik in the making but he didn't like getting his hands all sticky in the paper mache glue. So Pawly and I had all the messy fun!

The opening of the presents:

A Mickey Mouse puzzle!

New clothes!

Guns!! Oh boy was he excited about this one. Oh and so was his cousin, who's head is in the picture. Cousin Isaac showed Erik how to use his new guns and they played with them all night.

"Ooo a sleeping bag!" said Erik. Actually they are snow pants, but close enough bud.


And a cool hat to go with the snow gear.

The sheriff and his gun holsters.


Cake time!!

We had a great time celebrating Erik's birthday with our family. Thanks everyone for coming and bringing Erik great gifts!

Let it Snow!

It's been snowing a lot over the past few days, especially for our town-we normally don't get much snow. But on Wednesday it snowed so much that the kids got out of school. So before it all melted away Erik and I went out to enjoy it. This is what we saw when we walked out the door.

That's our car buried in the snow, and I don't know if you can see, but the snow was still coming down.

Erik got right into the snow! He started digging and quickly caught on to throwing snowballs.

Here is his first snowball attempt. Later he would come at us and say he was going to attack us with the snow-then our knees would get a snow ball. I love this kid, it was so fun to play in the snow with him :)

I know this pictures is kinda blurry but I wanted to show how deep the snow was on little Erik.

He loved stomping though the snow. He was even able to get himself back up when he fell down.

Erik and I worked on building a snowman together and hunted around for things to decorate the face with. Erik really wanted a banana smile, but I told him this snowman was too small for a banana smile, so we used berries from our 'back yard' bush.

Then we added a hat.

Isn't he so cute?!



Then Daddy got home early and we went out for a second round of fun. By this time the snow was much easier to pack so we built a BIG snowman.

This time Erik got his Banana smile.




Mommy and Erik saying "Banana!" for the camera. :)

Then Erik wanted to sit on top of this post so Paul hoisted him on up there. I think he enjoyed the view from way up there :)

I'm really glad we took pictures of our snowmen because they really didn't last through the end of the day. The small one fell over backwards and the big one lost his banana mouth. Then the next day we saw the big snow man leaning forwards as if he was looking for his lost banana smile. We love the snow, keep it coming, or at least let us have a white Christmas too.