Our Christmas

The Friday before we left for ND we celebrated our own Christmas at home. The kids were so excited they could hardly contain themselves at dinner.

Here is Captain Insane-O opening her gift. She gets so excited about opening presents, it's quite hilarious!

The morning we left the kids were excited to see Santa had visited. Apparently he knew we'd be gone over Christmas so he stopped by early.

Oh Santa, always Mr. Practical...

Is it weird that this made me cry?

I have lots of posting to do to get caught up. But until I get organized (which could take another 33 years) I am just going to post the most important thing that has happened at out house. Here it is!

We have a very excited girl in our house. The tooth fairy visited last night which caused a whole new level of excitement this morning. Aidyn came barreling down the hallway, "I got money!" 10 seconds later Nolan came running "Give me money too!" Ah, the joy of children.

We got to hold a new baby!

Today we went to visit our friends Corey & Ana and meet their sweet little girl Claire. Nolan checked her out a little bit. Aidyn & I pretty much fought over whom got to hold her. She is a little sweetie pie and we are so happy for everyone. Congratulations Corey & Ana!!

Basketball

Last night was Aidyn's last night of basketball (until January!). Here's her team...

And our superstar with her medal. Next session Nolan will be playing too. Should be interesting...

Just for Ty...

This song is currently blasting from Ty & Deb's blog. Ty turns it on full blast to get his kids up and out of bed in the morning. How annoying would that be?? Anyway, while it was playing yesterday, Nolan got his groove on. I knew Ty would appreciate this, so here you go...

By the way, if you care to hear the song in its entirety, check out their blog.

Christmas Program

The kids had their Christmas program in church on Sunday. They both sang a few songs and then everyone sang together at the end. It was a very cute program and the kids did a great job!

Christmas Preparations

We've been busy getting ready for Christmas lately and I've been doing a poor job of keeping the blog updated. So here are some updates as to what we've been up to.
The kids made their gingerbread house (and ate half of the candy in the process).

We mixed up a big batch of homemade hot chocolate mix and even made homemade marshmallows to go with it. They are tasty, but a bit tedious to cut up. I don't think I'll be making those again.

We also visited the Macy's Christmas Display downtown and saw Santa afterwards. Aidyn had a nice visit with Santa, Nolan was more concerned about the gingerbread cookies he could smell baking in the bakery. Which we purchased and devoured. Good thing there is a Starbucks in Macy's so Mamma could have a little treat too.

Here's a little holiday cheer to get you through the day...

Nolan Newsflash

According to Nolan "Fruits and vegetables make you have handsome hair."
So all of you out there wanting to be a bit more handsome...eat up!

The boy's got moves...

Nolan requested we have some music on this morning while Aidyn was at school. He stood in front of the TV and got his groove on for about 20 minutes. It was so cute! Here's a little clip of him enjoying some Aly & AJ. Notice the rockin' arm move shortly into the show.
(Also, please disregard the pile of towels on the chair next to him...waiting to be folded. I have other things to do, like blog.)

Decorating the Christmas Tree

The kids were in charge of decorating the Christmas tree by themselves this year. I was there to supervise and place ornaments up high when requested.

They had so much fun. Can you tell how excited Aidyn gets about doing things like this? Her brother just gets caught in the love.
The tree looks just beautiful and there are a few presents under it already. The presents have created many questions such as "When can we open those presents?" "When can we open those presents?" "When can we open those presents?" "When can we open those presents?" "When can we open those presents?" You get the picture...

Quick Visit

The day we got home from Thanksgiving, Troy's family showed up on our doorstep. They came down to attend the Vikings game on Sunday night and needed a place to stay. So being the considerate sister I am, I locked the doors, closed the blinds and turned the lights off. But Aidyn & Nolan felt bad and let them in.

Sean read the kids books.

Kaitlyn spun Nolan in circles...
And then gave him Coke. At bedtime.

Even though it was a short visit, we enjoyed seeing them and had lots of fun hanging out with them.

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving with Jeff's family this year. Here are Craig & Brett getting in some cuddle time.

Donna read Nolan A LOT of books on Turkey Day. He was in heaven!
He did stop over at Troy's house since my entire family was there for Thanksgiving. Here are all the grandkids together.

And here is how the kids looked at the end of the day. A pumpkin pie induced coma...

Hoedown

Aidyn had a Hoedown at Kindergarten before Thanksgiving. She was supposed to dress in 'Western Wear'. Being a full-fledged city kid, her wardrobe was limited. We did manage to find this hat.

And this accessory which made the entire outfit. Yep, that's right...she went old school with her mamma's cowgirl belt. NICE!

Makes sense to me...

I saw this video the other day and thought that Keith Olbermann hit this one out of the park. I completely agree with what he says, it just makes sense. I know some of you out there will disagree with this and that's fine. That's the beauty of our country, we can all have different views and opinions and yet be one united nation. But just listen to what he has to say, just consider it...

Girls Weekend!!

This past weekend, myself & 3 friends had a girls weekend getaway. Too say that I had been looking forward to it would be a bit of an understatement. We left Friday morning and hit the outlet mall on our way to the resort. We were....ummmm....Christmas shopping! Yeah, that's it!! After we got checked in, we sampled some wine that we had brought and then headed to a wine tasting at the restaurant we were planning to eat at.
Here we are at dinner on Friday night. Allison, Me, Katie, LoriAfter dinner, we checked out karaoke.

Before we sang, everyone needed a little liquid encouragement.

I guess the encouragement helped as we were soon belting out show stoppers.

In case you're wondering, yes, the karaoke stage also doubled as a dance floor.

We headed to another bar and met some interesting people and were able to stay up until MIDNIGHT!!! I know...just like in college. Here is Allison at the end of the night...

Saturday we spent most of the day at the spa getting rubbed, scrubbed, polished & painted. Ahhhh, so relaxing! We had dinner out, a few drinks and then headed back to our cabin to hang out and chat.

Sunday rolled around and we packed up to head home. I was sad the weekend went so fast, but it was nice to get home to see Jeff & the kids. We had such a fun time, I think it may become an annual event!

Church Choir

Aidyn's choir performed in church this morning. They sang 'If I Were a Butterfly' which Jeff & I both remember singing as kids. My memory consists of sitting together in a circle while nuns played guitar and we did all the song actions. Quite lovely.As the kids were singing, I thought 'Hey I should record this!' So enjoy the recording below. It is short and the ending is not pretty...

Notice how at the end of the recording the camera starts moving and then sort of falls off to the side? Shortly after I started recording, Nolan began swinging his church backpack. I reached over and tried to get him to stop. He didn't. At the end of the recording when the camera falls off to the side...that is when Nolan launched his backpack across the front of the church. It was one of those times I was thrilled that we let the kids pick where to sit and they chose the 2nd row. Oh well, we had a great seat to enjoy Aidyn's lovely singing and most of the congregation got a laugh out of Nolan's antics.

Cuddle Time

The kids were watching a movie the other day and this is how I found them. Cuddled up together enjoying the show. Ahhhh....so cute!

Trick or Treat!!

Yesterday was a very exciting day as any of you with kids know. By 10:00am you would have sworn that the kids had already consumed 400 pieces of candy. They were bouncing off the walls in anticipation of going trick or treating.

Here is our beautiful Princess Fairy and our stinky little skunk.
We went out with our friends Alana & Sean. It's always more fun collecting candy with friends.
When we got home, the feast began. Mostly for Jeff & I because we pigged out on the kids candy after they went to bed. Shameless, I know. Oh well!!

Both kids had so much fun last night. We hit more houses than we have in the past because it was such a beautiful night. We had 80 trick or treaters at our house, which is quite a decline from past years but that's OK. It just means more leftovers for us!!
We hope you all had a wonderful Halloween!!!