Happy New Year!!!!!

New Year's Eve 2011 finds us at home enjoying some family time!!!!  We started the evening making a yummy dinner of appetizers....little BBQ wienies, grilled wings, sweet potato fries and crescent pepperoni roll ups! 

The kids in their New Year digs!!

We spent some time reviewing the highlights of 2011!!  The kids each filled out a form highlighting things from 2011 and looking ahead to 2012...what a hoot!!  We also printed about 65 pictures from this year and together placed them in our family photo album!

Looking forward to seeing how God is going to bless us this year and so thankful for all the amazing things He did in 2011!

The Windy City!

Thursday we decided to take the kids on a trip to Chicago on the train to visit American Girl and the Lego store!!!  We arrived about lunch time and because we were blessed with such a beautiful day, we decided to picnic at Millennium Park!!!!

First stop was Lego!!!!

Next up, American Girl!!!  Lots of choices...it was a tough decision!!!

Looking out over the Chicago river....like I said, it was a beautiful day!!!

On the train trip home.....Emerson is all dressed up in her new outfit!!!

And we hadn't even left the station before Will's new Surge Lego guy was put together:)

Christmas Highlights 2011

We are so very blessed!!!  Our Christmas day started with our little princess loosing another tooth, and quite literally fit the song "All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth!"  Then it was on to family parties and lots of memories!!!!

Kole family Christmas

Payton had taken off her socks and started trying to take mine off too!!!  So precious!

Ryan trying out Will's new Optimus Prime helmet...hilarious!

Stehouwer family Christmas!

What a Blessed Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas!!!!

The Eve of JOY!

This Christmas Eve found us busy with family time!!!  We started this a.m. by opening our stockings (we figured the stuff inside would keep the kids busy while we prepared food)!  After a mandatory afternoon nap, we decided to open gifts with our little family so there is no need for rushing in the morning!!  The kids were elated and surprised!!! 

After supper out at Logan's (our families favorite) we arrived home to play!  We also had a birthday party for Jesus and read "Twas the night before Christmas!"  The highlight of the night however, had to be playing our new Wii game "Just Dance" with the kids":)

Transfers

Today's advent activity was to build a snowman....and seeing as we have NO snow, we substituted the activity with making these shirts instead! 

Kid-friendly

A kid-friendly Christmas craft was what was on the list for tonight's family activity!! I cut out some Christmas trees, trunks and stars and set out a bunch of different materials and let them decorate....notice Ryan is just one of the kids:)

Sprinkles!

 The only things we needed for this afternoon's family advent activity!!!

 Hard at work deciding what colors and sprinkles to use.....

The finished product.....so pretty!

Need I say more!

Lights!

Tonight we warmed up the car, grabbed some hot chocolate and a few of the kids' favorite Christmas CD's and drove around looking at Christmas lights!  It was so fun to hear the kids' comments about all the different lights we saw!

I didn't post about yesterday's activity because I left the camera in the car.  We went out for a Christmas treat.  We took the kids to downtown Holland for a steamer at JP's and then to the Peanut Store to pick out some candy!!!!

Beauty!

Snowflakes were the activity for tonight!  I spent quite a bit of time finding just the perfect snowflakes to make and hoping the kids could cut the designs themselves!  Unfortunately, the kids still needed to tell us which shape they wanted us to cut out and where, but the results were beautiful:)

Peppermint

This afternoon we enjoyed hot chocolate with candy canes as stirrers for our family advent time!!!  We loved watching the effects of the hot liquid on our candy canes:)

Jingle!

Today we called our grandmas and grandpas and sang them a Christmas song!!  The kids chose "Jingle Bells" and did a great job singing the chorus loud and clear....Grandma K even sang the verse and the kids joined in for another round of the chorus!!   So fun!

Games!

Today's activity was back to basics......board games!!!  Unfortunately we only were able to play one because we couldn't handle not winning.........

Baking Frenzy

Today's family advent activity started around 9 a.m. and didn't end until we delivered the goodies to the neighbors around 4:30 p.m.!!!  We chose several goodies to bake and then take to the neighbors....we started with some candy cane blossoms, peanut butter temptations, and caramel brownies and ended with some pretzel chocolates and chocolate dipped candy canes!!!!

All our ingredients!

These are delicious to stir hot chocolate!

The plates for the neighbors and come Monday the mail lady!!!  What are you baking this holiday???

Ice!

We took the kids to Edge Ice Arena to go ice skating for our family advent activity tonight!  The kids have never even really roller skated so it was fun to watch them try to figure it out...luckily we rented two trainers that they relied on heavily:) And we were blessed to be joined by good friends for an evening full of winter fun!