Christmas Twice

We drove to Wisconsin for Christmas Eve.  Grandma Bakkel sold her house recently, so this was the first time we all stayed at a local place to celebrate.  I think the boys had fun seeing their cousin Ella and running up and down between rooms to visit everybody.  The time went so quickly, but we were thankful for the opportunity to get together and see Great-Grandma, too.  To top it all off, we had a beautiful snow on Christmas Day...which made for a dicey drive but we made it back to Grandma and Grandma L's house to celebrate that night.

 

Sitting with Dad before reading Luke 2 and opening presents.

Walter took this picture of Aunt Gayle.

Walter passing out presents - they both thought this part was lots of fun.

Ella with her grandma.

Checking out the Lego set he'd "wanted forever!" (and then decided to return before promptly changing his mind and running upstairs to open and assemble it!)



Ella and her mom

 

Assembling Lego sets with Mimi Megan.

Christmas night at Grandma and Grandpa L's house.

Looks like they were pretty disappointed with these gifts, huh?

It's a frequent event to hear Walter whisper in my ear, "Mom, pretend I'm Indiana Jones, okay?  You're Maria ('Mary-uh,' otherwise known as Marion)..."  He had a homemade whip and bag for his Indiana gig, but he was in need of a belt that fit and a hat.  Look out!

More Lego work with Dad.

Mimi Erin joining in on some Lego assembly time.

Grandma opening her gift.

More Phone Pictures

I found a few pictures on my phone that I forgot about...

 When Nate was hunting in S.D., we stayed overnight at Grandma and Grandpa L's house on Saturday.  The Mimis took Henry and Walter to see a movie and I did some Christmas shopping.  That night the boys had a sleepover and watched "101 Dalmatians" while I meet my friend Mary for dessert (A huge "Thank you" to my family for giving me a some time away!).

Walter took a few pictures of Dottie by the tree.

 

While Henry was at school Dottie, Walter and I got out the sled and played in the snow.

 

Fast-forward to December 20, the boys decided they were ready for their own library cards.  Here they are signing their names. 

Christmas Programs

Our church Christmas Program was last night.  Once again, it's fun to watch the kids...and also a little nerve-wracking as you never know what your child is going to do or say!  No Han Solo and Chewy comments were made this year, although Henry performed a little air guitar during a few numbers.

 

 Walter's class sang "Twinkle, Twinkle God's Great Star," "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" and "Away in a Manger."

 Henry sang his little heart out.

 

Walter and Amar after the program.

 A few brother pictures before the night was over.

 

Tonight was Henry's school program - it was so much fun to watch!  It was a wonderful program.  I am really frustrated with these pictures -  Because of where Henry stood onstage, we sat in the front row of the balcony in order to be able to see his face.  There are black railings along the whole balcony so almost every picture I took, the light reflect off the railing!  Ugh - the only one that turned out was the picture I took while leaning over the railing!  But Henry's still visible and adorable.  :)

 

He had been looking for us in the audience and finally found us.  Just a few seconds earlier he gave us a big wave. 

Appropriately for Henry, they sang, "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth."  This was his favorite part, he would throw his head back, close his eyes and sing:  "It seems so long since I could say, 'Sister Suzy sitting on a thistle.'"

Dottie, Dottie, Dottie

I think this picture is pretty self-explanatory...the dog did it!  It never occurred to me that the Christmas tree and Dottie would be a problem because Kenda was never interested in the tree or ornaments. 

 

The first thing I noticed was that the tree skirt was always pulled away from the tree.  I'd put it back and a few minutes later it was gone again.  So I gave up on that, but then the ribbon in the bottom branches kept getting pulled out...Hmm.  And finally, as we were reading one afternoon I watched Dottie as she stood on her hind legs trying to grab ornaments.  I moved all the ornament to the top of the tree and thought that would solve the problem.  On Friday afternoon I was washing dishes when I heard a clinking sound and turned around to see a glass ornament roll across the floor after being  dropped from Dottie's mouth.  I had a moment of panic as I realized that this ornament had been at the very top of the tree...how did she get it?  This is what I found when I got to the living room!

 

Last night was our church Christmas program so bedtime was a little later than usual.  Dottie loves to hop into bed with the boys each night but she's can be a bed hog.  I moved her from the middle of the bed to the foot of the bed, turned off the light and then heard Henry saying, "Ouch!  Who is that?"  We turned on the light to see:

Apparently the foot of the bed is not good enough for her because she repeated this one more time before Nate came to take her downstairs.

The Works

Last week we tried out The Works museum.  On our way into town we found out Mimi Megan had the day off and we were very happy to have her join us.  Henry and Walter gave the museum a thumbs up.

 



 Walter and Mimi Megan trying out their experiment.  You had to build a car and then power it with air from a balloon.

 Meanwhile, Henry and I were building with GeoMagz.

 

Then off to build a car or two before we ventured downstairs to the other part of the museum. 

This was a sensor maze.  You could try to figure out how to locate and activate all of the sensors as you went through the maze or you could try to sneak past all of the sensors. 

Trying out the pulley experiment. 

Programing the bug to navigate through a maze.

 

We stopped for a little pie, sundaes and French fries after our field trip.

Friends

The week after Thanksgiving we had our friends over for dinner.  The kids had fun running around, jumping in the bouncy house, trying out a Rainbow Loom and eventually watching a short movie before heading to bed.

Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving involved a quick day trip to Grandma Bakkel's house.  Grandma sold her house and the process of sorting, packing and cleaning was well underway but we still had a delicious dinner with our family.

 

The talk at our house has involved a lot of Indiana Jones and whiskers lately.  Mimi Megan found some sticky mustaches for the boys and we all got a good laugh out of them.   Unfortunately, Grandma Bakkel took her mustache off before we could get a picture of her with the boys! 

The "Partyboy" mustache

The "Bandit" (Left) and the "Partyboy" (Right)

 This is one picture I never seem to be able to capture well!

We got back to the Grandma and Grandpa L's house late in the evening so we stayed overnight.  The next day, the four of us went to see "Frozen" and then Henry and Walter got haircuts.  I'm drawing a blank on the rest of the day...but we stayed another night and got home on Saturday afternoon.

 

Walter and Henry enjoyed playing with the barn set from Grandma and Grandpa Berg's (Bakkel) that we (sisters and cousins) spent many hours playing with when we were kids.  Walter would look at each animal to see if they had "gutters" in order to figure which ones were girls.  The stories they invented while playing made me smile.