Icee

Matthew got an icee maker for Christmas!

It was really easy and fun!

First flavor he picked of course was blue raspberry!

Couple more Christmas Pictures

Here are a couple more Christmas pictures:

Christmas was so much fun this year!  Matthew got so excited over all the things he got!

He was a little disappointed that Santa forgot a dinosaur!

He did get a microphone and loves to sing into and play this guitar.
Scott starts songs on You Tube and Matthew plays and sings along.

 He got lots of other things from Santa but in all the pictures he is either turned away or not interested in looking at me for a picture. 
We love reading Llama Llama books!

 This one was the first to come out of the box!

We had an awesome time this Christmas!

Hopefully next year Santa will remember to bring a dinosaur!

My side of the Family

My side of the family:

(I'm the first one of the left, Scott wasn't able to come to this party due to his work schedule and Matthew is front left)

 Mom and Jerry with their grandchildren minus a few that were not there.

 My mom with her 2 sisters, brother and mom (My grandma)

 "Old" Grandma with her great grandchildren (she has a few more that we not able to make it to the party).

We had lots of fun at the party! 

Can't wait to do all the fun things that we have already planned for next year (I mean this year 2012)!!

One Christmas celebration

We had lots of Christmas celebrations this year.  Some of them I took pictures of and some of them I didn't.

Here is a couple pictures of Matthew with a few of his favorites:

He got so many gifts that I can't even list them all.

We did go to see Alvin and The Chipmunks Chipwrecked yesterday and the movie theater.  He loved it but was scared in a couple spots.  I thought it was a really cute show.

Christmas Tree

Here is a partical picture of our Christmas tree:

Most of the ornaments are homemade by either my great grandma or my sister and the others are little picture frames.  We also have name ornaments and a ornament with a picture of our church on it.

PS Since we have decorated for awhile, we were so excited to start decorating for holidays that our Halloween decor was still hanging in the window.  Our angel sat in the window without be lite up because we could find her plug in.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!!!!

Christmas Program at Church

This is Matthew's first year in Sunday School so it was his very first Christmas program.

He was a "cow".

The last 2 years I have been taking pictures of all the kids that are in the program.

 Matthew standing by his cousin, Emma, and they are singing This Little Light of Mine.

 Then our little cow started grazing and I'm sure he was saying Yum Yum Yum.

Right after he got his costume on, he starting acting like he was eating the carpet and saying Yum Yum Yum!

 Here is our wandering cow:

We were both very surprised that he stayed in the program.  He did wander a little bit but he did a great job!



Christmas

The whole month of December has been a crazy busy month for us!

We have had or have been to lots of Christmas parties already!

We had a wonderful evening with Matthew's birthmom and her family a few weeks ago.  It was a wild one and I haven't laughed like that in a long time. 

Then last weekend we had a fun evening with Matthew's birthfather's family (we were really sad that his birthfather couldn't join us because he ended having to work).  We will have a schedule another time with him.

Here is what birthparents and grandparents received this year from Matthew

(Mom if you are reading you might want to stop right here or it will spoil your Christmas present from Matthew)!

I started with 4" x 4" tiles from Home Depot and some Mod Podge:

 Put the Mod Podge down, then picture and then Mod Podge on top:

 The tiles as they were drying.

After they dried, Scott put 2 coats of an acrylic spray lacquer on them. 

Each birthparent and grandparent received 4 picture coasters tied with a ribbon!

I found this idea on Pinterest!  It's a great website to get great ideas but it is addicting!

I heard the same comment from all who received them that they will NOT be used as coasters



Cousins

This picture was taken on Christmas of the cousins! 

 It sure is hard to get 3 children who are 3 and under to look at the camera at the same time! 

My niece Annabelle

My niece Annabelle with my mom!

See where she gets her red hair from!

Can you believe that she is going to be 1 in such a few short weeks?

I sure can't believe it either.

Christmas 2010

Christmas was so much fun this year!

It's a combine and also a book.

It's a pack pack like Matthew would say!  It was full of books!

Checking out his stocking!

One of the things in his stocking was fruit rollups called Stickerz!

A few days after Christmas I let him have some and he said "Love it"

I didn't get a picture of him opening his big present which was his train track but here is a picture of Daddy and Matthew setting it up!

Don't you just love his jammies?

The shirt has a santa on it and it is says What Santa doesn't bring me, Grandma will!

I think he got everything that he possibly wanted plus more!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was a relaxing day!

  I had did all my food prep the day before so we could have a relaxing morning.

We went to one of the Christmas Eve services at church.

An annual tradition at church is singing Silent Night by candlelit.  Matthew was mesmerized by the candle flame.

After church we went to Grammie and Papa's for Oyster stew and lots of other yummy food.

Then we opened gifts!

Matthew got some new jammies!

Some farm legos!

A "Frank" combine from the Disney movie Cars.

(Did you know that Disney Cars 2 is coming June 2011?)

A John Deere tractor!

Playing with "Frank"

Our nephew Levi hamming it up for the camera!

Our niece Emma waiting to open her last present (a new bike)!

We also found out that Emma and Levi are going to have a baby brother or sister due in June!

Gingerbread House

I decided that doing a gingerbread house with Matthew would be fun!

It was LOTS of fun and LOTS of mess! :)

I don't remember ever doing a gingerbread house before so I had this vision in my head what I wanted it to look like.  I quickly realized that I should have known better to have a vision.

I decided to just let Matthew be creative!

It was way more fun and less stressful!

I got a little silly and put frosting on Matthew's nose.

He thought that was funny.

So he must more frosting on his face!

We had candy everywhere.  Some little marble shaped candies came with the kit and they went everywhere!

He decided that he wanted to do the icing himself.

He did pretty good but I had to keep pushing it to the tip.

As you can see, we had frosting everywhere!

Here is our frosting covered boy with his finished gingerbread house!

Putting the frosting on his face was not a smart idea on my part. 

 His face broke out in a rash! 

I was lucky and it cleared up pretty quickly!



My Mom's Family Christmas Party

This is my family! 

We are growing by leaps and bounds.

I'm going to be an auntie again!  My sister and brother in law are expecting.  Baby is due in July.

• Front row (L to R): Scott, Matthew, my mom, niece Annabelle, nephew Austin, my step dad, his son Troy
• Back row: Me, brother in law Wayne, sister Susan, sister Patty, Mary (step-dad's future daughter in law She is also expecting), step dad's son, Jerry

This is my Grandma with most of her grandkids and their spouses. (she has 4 more)

Grandma and her great grandchildren (she has 3 more).

She is known to her great grandchild as "Old" Grandma.

Close up of my adorable niece Annabelle who is almost a year old and will be a big sister in July!

Our gifts for our white elephant game.  Here is how we play: You get a gift if you roll doubles.  We time it so that we know how long it takes for the gifts to be taken.  After all the gifts are gone, you open what you have but don't put them away because now you can roll doubles and steal gifts but we only have as long as it took the gifts to disappear from the center.  Usually there are one or two popular gifts that could round and round.  I was pretty unlucky that night and only rolled two doubles but then my gifts were stolen.  Matthew had a hard time at first.  Once the gifts were open, he seen a tractor and got it when he rolled doubles again.  He was pretty excited about the tractor and he ended up with it and played most of the night with his tractor.

My cousin and his wife just had a baby on Thanksgiving so we loved her up.
Matthew wanted to touch her.

And hold her!

And love her up some more!

She slept through it all!

This is my aunt and her family!

My other aunt and her family.

We had lots of fun and ate lots of yummy food!