Cookies!

William says thanks to Grammy and Grandpa for the train cookie cutters.

And Suddenly it was Quiet!

What has these three children so enthralled?

The birds discovered trash day.

ICE

Two blocks from our house is a park. I love that! Our park even has an ice skating rink, though it's subject to the weather, therefore not very smooth. Still, we had fun, and hope to continue having fun on it this winter. These pics are of New Year's Day, which was William's first time ice skating, and Alex's first time on the ice.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Well now that we've got all the Christmas decorations put away, it's time for a little blog. We weren't as camera crazy this year as we have been in years past, but seeing as it was Alex's first Christmas, we tried to get a few pics.

Alex with his first stocking:

We really love our kids. You can tell because we INTENTIONALLY gave them noisy toys.

Alex and his first Aebleskiver, our Grange Family Christmas tradition.

Merry Christmas!

Camera Woes

We've done a few really fun things, but for some reason or other we didn't get many pictures.

On December 22, Cameron had the whole day off, so we made a day of it. First we saw "A Christmas Carol" at the Henry Ford IMAX theater. Alex and I saw about half the movie before he couldn't handle the confinement anymore. Here is what he did instead.

Then the camera battery died. After the movie we played at the Henry Ford Museum. Then we went to Holiday Nights at Greenfield Village. That was AWESOME! There was ice skating, bonfires, carolers and street bands, hot chestnut and cider stands, beef roasting on a spit, model-t rides and horse wagon rides, Santa with two real reindeer, silent movies, historical reenactments of Christmas, and many other things. We didn't stay late enough for the lantern procession or the fireworks. The camera did get enough juice to take one more picture before dying completely. Here it is.

December 23-24 we had Keahi and Jarom visiting while their parents had a well deserved skiing trip. My excuse for not taking pictures was that I was taking care of five small children. My hands were full. We had so much fun, and my kids were sad to see their friends go. I did manage to get a picture of the gingerbread houses they made. Wish I got a picture of them MAKING said houses, but we can't have everything.

Then, of course, there was Christmas Day. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but I did take enough to warrant their own post after this.

December 30-31 it was our turn to leave kids with friends, while Cameron and I took a trip all by ourselves. We decided on visiting Frankenmuth, MI, which was very fun. We thoroughly enjoyed having adult conversation, and not worrying about anybody but ourselves. We even got to go into shops with breakable things. We visited the Frankenmuth museum, lots of shops (including the world's largest Christmas store), and a really cool mirror maze. We had way too much to eat at Zehnder's for dinner. Since it was just the two of us, we didn't really get any pictures of us. This is what we did get.

Thanks to the wonders of photo shop and Jared, we have this picture too.

New Years Eve night we were all very tired (too tired to take pictures), but we had a nice time eating cheese and watching movies. We decided to let the kids stay up as long as they could. Alex made it until 6:30. William crashed at 9:15. Esther was sure she would see the new year come in, but at 11:56, this is what happened.

We tried waking her up, but she was out cold.

Shall We Dance?

Let the Onslaught Begin

I've been out of the blogging world for nearly a month now. Time to catch up. We'll start with what Alex thinks naptime is for.