The Christmas Season - Part 1

We had such a nice Christmas vacation. We were able to spend lots of time at Grandma's and Grandpa's houses and had so much fun. We are truly blessed by all our family, thanks so much!

On the night we got to Grandma Peggy's house we made cutout cookies and then we decorated them the next day. As you can see, Bella really loved decorating the cookies. She got to have so much frosting! Uncle Jon helped her out, by putting the plate up to her face so all she had to do was lick it!

After dinner that night we all opened gifts and we had so much fun!

Whenever Grandma had the camera out, Bella wanted to go right up to it and see what she was doing.

Then we traveled to Mukwonago and visited Adam's family. It was such a great time. Here's Bella opening some gifts from Grandma so she would have toys to play with! Grandma's are always good about that! :)

And Bella got to play guitar with Daddy a few times. She really likes doing that now.

Playing with toys at Grandpa's house. Uncle Ben and Oliver were so much fun!

Boxes make the best toys.

Can't keep this one away from the camera!

Bella with Grandpa, she wouldn't keep her eyes open though...silly girl!

Opening some great gifts!

Playing with the toys from Grandpa! What a great gift!

A little bit of man time!

Uncle Adam teaching Oliver how to strum the guitar.

Just playing around!

Bella loved her cousin Eliot.

Every Christmas the boys take a picture together, this year they went crazy and took quite a few...here's just a selection of the charming photographs that were taken! :)

We hope you all had a great Christmas too and are doing well!

Our Christmas Tree Hunt

So, as promised, and only a little late, here are the pictures of us hunting down our beautiful Christmas tree from this year. I forget if I said that we got to cut our trees down in the State Forest this year because my Mom got permits and it was cheap and fun! But, it was in the middle of deer hunting season, so there were hunters hunting on state land. Luckily my older brother, Jon, is a hunter and had plenty of blaze orange for us to wear so we wouldn't get mistaken for a herd of deer walking through the forest. We looked so funny, but it was truly a tree cutting experience that we won't forget!

Here we all are by a pretty stream.

We had a couple of blaze orange neck warmers, perfect size for Bella waist, so she had to have some blaze orange too. (Purely for safety reasons of course, not because I thought its was funny and cute!)

Mom and Bella out in the cold hunting our Christmas tree. If I remember right, I think this little thing is the one that we cut down to bring home!

I know they're hard to see, but there are actually 5 trees here and these are the ones that made the cut for us to take home! (how sad it that!)

Here we are with all the trees in the back of the truck. We thought it was pretty funny that there are 5 trees back there and we didn't even have to tie anything down because they're all so small!

Hope you all enjoyed it!

Snow Day!!

We had a snow day yesterday and we had so much fun! All of the kids that I watch have parents that are teachers, so they all were home and Adam got to be home with us too. So, here's all the stuff we did on our family fun snow day!

We started off our morning by coloring at the kitchen table. We all made some pretty cool pictures!

Then after Bella's nap we went outside an played in the snow. Here she is before I put all her snow gear on.

And then after. She's ready to go!

It was her first time playing in the snow and she loved it!

Of course she had to get a taste of it...

and another!

Then we came in and played a game that Adam's Mom got me for my birthday. It's called "In A Pickle" and it was a lot of fun! Thanks again Mom, I loved it!

We got out some educational toys for Bella to play with (as you can see on the floor) and all she wanted to do was lean on her toy box and chew on her baseball.

We got some junk mail with a fake credit card in it and we gave it to Bella to play with. Good thing she doesn't know what to do with it!

While Bella was taking her second nap, Adam and I played Yahtzee. He knows how I love playing games and he was so gracious to play two in one day with me!! After this game we watched "The Dark Night". Adam had seen it before and I really liked it too.

So that's our family fun snow day! We really enjoyed ourselves and it was a great day to be home.

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Here's some other random pictures from the last week:

Bella looking like she's ready to go to school, not yet babe!

Fun window time with Daddy!

And as promised, here's our sad little Christmas tree. We love it though!!