Playing in the...snow???

We found out that some good friends of our's were getting away to the mountains for a few days after Christmas so we invited ourselves along (really, we did).  It was great to get away and spend time with other families.  Our friends actually had another family invite themselves along too so we were 6 adults and 8 kids for 3 nights in a hotel.  That was excitement!  It was fun because the kids entertained each other a lot and the moms got to get away for coffee a few times and the dads got out for dinner so everyone was happy. 

One of the draws to go to the mountains was because it is one of the few places in this country to go play in the snow.  We knew that there hadn't been much yet but we were optomistic as to what we would find.  Those of you who live in snowy climates will laugh when you see the "snow" few found!  It was man made and mostly ice by the time we got there.  Who knows when it was made!  There were actually a few people trying to ski!  The kids didn't know the difference and it was kind of nice to have grass to sit on while we watched the kids sled!  Not a bad combo, really! 

Ready for the snowy adventure!

 Katie and Daddy sledding down the BIG hill!

 It was kind of cold!  For us, anyway!

 Wow, just look at all of that snow!!!

Down in the town where we stayed we found a great park that we went to a couple of times.  Here's Katie practicing her rock climbing skills! 

 The park had a lake with paddle boats.  The dads took the kids out and they all had fun!

 Bye for now!



Christmas!

After more than 5 years over here this was our first Christmas without visitors!  I think we've been pretty unique with all of the visitors that we've had so we weren't too surprised that this year finally came along. 

We really had a nice Christmas!  We definitely missed our families!  But we've also been blessed with good friends here that we were able to celebrate with - I'm so thankful!! 

Another fun aspect of this year that I think helped to distract us from being "alone" is that Katie is at such a fun age to really enjoy the fun of Chrsitmas - the presents, the TRUE story, the lights, the tree, the excitement of it all!  And of course Carly follows right along with her big sister so we had two super fun, excited girls this year!

Unfortunately I didn't do a very good job of taking pictures (like ONE on Christmas Eve!), but here are some that I did take.  Enjoy!

On Christmas Eve we had a family over that is here for a year learning the language and then they're on their way to Africa.  This was their first Christmas away from "home."  They have kids the same ages as our girls so they all had a blast playing together and exchanging gifts.  We did my family's tradition of hot chocolate and cookies and reading the Christmas Story together.  With a 5 year old, two 4 year olds and two 2 year olds we went with a kid's version and read it quickly!  Attention spans are short! 

Before bed our girls left cookies for Santa.  Yum!

Thanks for the Christmas PJs, Uncle Tim!

Christmas morning!  We did NOT feel the need to wake the girls up early!  We got up when they did (yeah!) and then we took our time opening gifts.  We opened a few, played, ate cinnamon rolls, opened some more, played, until we were done.  It was a lovely, fun, lazy morning!

 A train set!  Getting ready for a BOY in the house, I guess!  The girls love it!

 Yum!  Cinnamon Rolls!

 Investigating...  Who's name is on this one???

 New blocks!  These girls LOVE to build with their daddy!

My sister, Teri, made this amazingly sweet book for the girls!  She made it as a way for the girls to get to know something special about each of their relatives - since we live far away and don't get to be together nearly as often as we like.

 It's so cute!  We've been having fun reading it together!

Well, that's where the pictures end.  Bummer.  The rest of the day was really fun too (and we eventually changed out of our pjs!).  We went over to some American friends' house and our Australian friends came over too.  Between our 3 families there are 7 girls - and one boy!  I think that one boy will enjoy having another boy around in a few months!  We're all over here without family this year and we had a great time hanging out and being family for each other.  One of our friends took some great pictures of the kids doing their gift exchange and they're on my FB page so check them out there, grandparents!  :-)

Ponies!

On Christmas Eve we got to do something new!  A friend of ours with a daughter around Katie's age invited us to take the girls for a pony ride!  There's an equestrian center nearby and it turns out that with a little phone call and a nice tip you can ride a pony for a half hour and explore the center.  We weren't sure how Katie would like it but she did great!  It was also good exercise for the parents walking next to the little ones making sure they didn't fall off!  

Here is Katie and her friend on the ponies and the nice gentleman who takes care of the ponies.

He's Here!

Nope, not our baby - did I make you wonder??! 

But Jesus is here!  We finished our Advent Callendar on Christmas Day with the arrival of baby Jesus.  The girls really enjoyed this Advent Callendar project and we'll definitely be doing it next year (just remind me to start it on time, ok?).

I'd like to make some changes in the pictures since poor Mary and Joseph are quite cut and pasted - or find a whole new set - but gererally this worked great!  Below is the text that we read every day.  It is an adaptation I found on someone else's blog originating from Noel Piper's Noel Callendar.  I've never actually seen the original text but this worked great for us.  I changed a few things based on the pictures I had to work with.  No pig, a cat instead, etc. 

By the way, there are 3 camels - one is just VERY small!  I envisioned them walking in a line but Katie thought the wisemen needed to ride ON the camels.  Ok, no problem, right? 

Here's the text in case someone else is interested in using it.  Rememeber that every day you start back at Day 1 and add to it.  Halfway through Katie was already reciting the begining with me.  "Jesus is the greatest present of all!"


The Christmas Story
DEC. 1 Jesus is the greatest present of all. Long ago, God made a promise. He said “O Bethlehem… from you will come one who is to be ruler over all.” In Bethlehem, there was a stable for the animals and a MANGER, filled with hay…
DEC. 2 … for the animals to eat. There were animals like a CALF…
DEC. 3 …and other animals living in the stable like a PIG…
DEC. 4 …and a DONKEY…
DEC. 5 …maybe there was even a HEN looking after baby chicks…
DEC. 6 … One day the animals had a big surprise. A woman came to stay in the stable. Her name was MARY, and she was going to have a baby – very soon!
DEC. 7 Her husband JOSEPH was with her.
DEC. 8 Out in the fields near Bethlehem, there was a SHEPHERD…
DEC. 9 …taking care of his SHEEP.
DEC. 10 Maybe he had a DOG to help him.
DEC. 11 The dog would run round and round the SHEEP so they wouldn’t get lost
DEC. 12 along with other SHEPHERDs to protect the sheep from wolves.
DEC. 13 In the sky, there was a very special STAR
DEC. 14 Far away, a WISE MAN saw the star and said “This is the sign that a special king has been born.
DEC. 15 …I must find him and worship him. I’ll bring him a royal gift of GOLD.
DEC. 16 So he quickly got on his CAMEL ready to travel
DEC. 17 …and he brought along another WISE MAN.
DEC. 18 …who had a gift of sweet smelling perfume called FRANKINCENSE, for the king
DEC. 19 He came on his CAMEL
DEC. 20 …and the third WISE MAN wanted to go with them too.
DEC. 21 So, he prepared a gift of special oil, called MYRRH, to give to the king.
DEC. 22 When he had packed his bags onto his CAMEL, all the wise men set out on the long, long journey to find the king that God had promised.
DEC. 23 One night, an ANGEL of the Lord appeared to the shepherds. The angel said, “Fear not. I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord and lying in a manger.
DEC. 24 Suddenly, there was a multitude of ANGELs, praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.”
DEC. 25 When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the BABY JESUS lying in the manger. And when they saw it they went to tell people about the best Christmas gift ever. Since you and I are sinners, we were separated from God who is perfect. Jesus didn’t want us to hurt or strive to pay for our sins so, Jesus died and rose again to conquer sin and give us a clean heart. Jesus is the best Christmas gift that we could receive. Praise the Lord that He loves us and came as a baby in a manger on Christmas day.

Birthday Girl!

OK, so December is a busy month for our family so I have a lot of catching up to do!

First - Our Katie turned 4!  We celebrated with some of her friends and then we took cupcakes and (by special request from her teacher) chocolate chip cookies to share with her classmates at school.  It was fun to celebrate our sweet girl!  It's amazing how grown up she is already...

Pin the nose on the snowman!

 Opening Presents!

Lots of new toys!

 This little one loves her big sister!

 Two-sided birthday present - perfect for sharing!

Waiting for the goodies at school!

 Happy Birthday to me!

 Such a big girl!

Happy birthday, Katie-bug!  We love you so much and we're so proud of you!  It was such fun to celebrate YOU!

Advent

I have to admit that I am rather proud of myself that I actually thought about doing something for Advent leading up to Christmas this year - before December actually started! 

Now that our girls are getting a little older I want to make sure to build some family traditions that really point to Jesus as being the reason for Christmas.  All of the other stuff is fun but I don't want the real meaning of Christmas to get lost in all the rest.  So there's one main, significant thing that we're doing and two just for fun things to go along with it. 

For the girls I got the 99 cent chocolate advent calendars from the grocery store and they are LOVING getting a little piece of chocolate every morning. 

Try explaining that we want to actually see their faces, not the boxes of candy.  Oh well!

 I was super excited when I heard about this as a Christmas gift for Jonathan.  You might not know this but my husband still loves Legos - and this is a Lego advent calendar!  He gets to open a new figure or piece to build every day - how fun is that?!  Katie loves getting to see what's in each new box every day.  It's pretty cute to see them playing together. 

I'm am very blessed with a terrific husband who also happens to be a wonderful father...

This is the more serious - point us all to Jesus advent activity.  I got the idea from a book called Treasuring God in Your Traditions and then I saw several blogs of moms who have adapted it to their little ones. 

The idea is that we started with an empty stable and every day we add a new piece to the scene.  Every day you reread the parts for the previous days so the story keeps building.  It starts with, "Jesus is the greatest present of all..."  I wasn't able to find a scene that had the number of pieces needed to cover all of the days so I quickly improvised by getting pictures from one of our kid's Bibles.  It's not exactly the set I'd love to use forever but it's working great for now. 

 Here we are on day 8 - waiting for Jesus!

Praying that these sweet girls understand the real reason for all of this celebrating!  Jesus is the greatest present of all!!!

What a Fun Surprise!!

This afternoon a large - and heavy! - package was delivered to our door!  Only Carly was home so I made myself have the restraint to wait until Jonathan and Katie got home to open it up.  I'm so glad I did!  It was so much fun!

Our adopted Sunday School class from one of our churches put together this wonderful box full of birthday gifts for the girls!  It was such a sweet surprise!  I wish I had pulled out the video camera because their squeals of excitement were SO cute! 



Fruit Snacks!  And Gold fish Crackers!  These are GOLD over here!!!

 Carly settled in and tried realy hard to get this bag of M&Ms open by herself - hillarious! 

 Cute shirts, crayons, markers, colored penicls, coloring books, hair bows....

 A new My Little Pony!  It's on a scooter!  She's in love!

 A new movie!!

 It's hard to see Carly's face here but she was SO excited!  She kept saying, "What is it? What is it?" and "Wow! Wow!"  So cute!



So, thank you BBG for loving our girls so much!  They were absolutely thrilled!  You made our day!  You made our week!