Englerville USA: December 2006

Christmas morning at our house, Kaylin opening her stocking

He Came! He Came!
Our tree with all the presents from Santa on Christmas Morning

Momma and Isabella opening her 1st Christmas gift on Christmas Eve (at my moms)

Kaylin with her decorated Gingerbread cookies - she did a really good job : )

mmmm, gingerbread cookies. I never thought I liked these,
but I snatched up a mix at Target that was on clearance just for
Kaylin to have fun decorating them, and they were really tasty! She liked them too!

The Jump-Up seat is Isabella's MOST favorite place to be!
She will sit in this seat for hours on end, bouncing away, sucking
on her hands or whatever else she can find

Heather, Gianna and Kaylin making ornaments for presents

Making Santa Cookies

Kaylin, Marie and Sydney

Christmas Party at Amanda's

I love this shot! L to R: Jack is trying to cover his ears, Gabriel is trying to escape the madness, Dillon and Baby Aiden are the only ones sitting nicely and smiling, Ruthie is checking out Isabella who has just about had enough and Cheyenne and Kaylin are chuckling about how funny this is! Cracks me up!

Isabella: Branch Inspector

Kaylin the tree topping queen

Enough already

Alright, alright, I know it's been a while. But in order to have something to put on here, we gotta live a little bit right?!? Christmas has come and gone again. And so here we are on the verge of a new year. Still weird that we are in the "2000's", let alone that 2007 is only a few days away! Holy crap, life flies by...
We have been pretty busy doing the "usual" holiday things like making cookies, decorating the tree, buying and giving gifts, all that good stuff.
We had a pretty wonderful Christmas - spent alot of time with both sides of our families. I'll give a little recap of what the month of December has been like:

Well, actually I'll start with the day after Thanksgiving - every single year (well, since we have been married anyways) I beg Brian to go cut down a Christmas tree so we put it up, decorate it and the house a bit, all while humming along to the 24/7 Christmas music on 93.9 and sipping hot chocolate (I know, it's picture perfect isn't it?!?) And every year he's been kinda grinchy about it, wanting to wait until at least December. Well, this year, we actually did it! Why you ask was this year different? Last year after buying the crappiest $10 tree we could find at Home Depot and it fell over on little Kaylin and a pregnant me, he ran out and bought a fake tree at Target (hmm, feeling a little guilty I think... ; ) ) - so no more begging! The tree will forever now go up the day after Thanksgiving : ).
The first week of December, we celebrated my brother Don's 35th Birthday (he thought he was turning 34, so he was a little bummed!), and had a little Christmas party with Amanda and Gina for all our kids at Amanda's house. The kids had a blast, making little candy canes out beads/pipe cleaner and decorating cookies.
The second week, we had our annual trip to White Fence Farm for some delicious corn fritters and chicken, went to see Heather and Gianna dance in their church's Christmas program and also in their dance show at the mall, made santa cookies at Sydney, Royce and Marie's, and went to visit Santa. Kaylin did pretty good with Santa. She wasn't keen on the idea of sitting on his lap, so I held her and Isabella sat on his lap. After a few minutes of chit chat with Santa and Mrs. Claus, she was warming up to him and telling them all about her baby sister.
The third weekend, Heather and Gianna came over to spend the night (which actually turned out to be 2 nights) and we all made snowman ornaments and several different food-related craft/goodies for the holidays.
Christmas Eve's Eve, Isabella started feeling sick. Then of course on Christmas Eve, she was totally out of it. It wasn't horrible, but she was not at all her normal smiling, bouncy self by any means. Not sick once her entire life, but Christmas Eve and Christmas day, go figure! Anyways, Christmas Eve we went to a candlight service at the Homewood Church, then back to my mom's for dinner/gift exchange. Christmas morning Kaylin was delighted to find out the Santa had indeed came, and "he ate the cookies and nilk!!! he did!!!" (mind you, this was after she woke up at 12:30 in the afternoon!!! she was sooo excited she didn't fall asleep until almost 2:00am!). That day we had dinner at mom and dad's, dessert at Grandma C's, and gift exchanges at both plus at my mom's - seriously, I wish I would've taken a photo of what the living room/dining room/play room looked like after we brought everything inside. It looked like we just won the lottery and went on a shopping spree. It was unbelievable - I thought we had a heap last year, but with 2 kids - holy crap! It took me the ENTIRE following day to go through everything, take it out of the packing, put it together (well, this was mostly Brian!) and get all the trash out. How blessed we all are to have such a caring family to want to give so many nice thoughtful gifts to each of us!
Kaylin has been having such a blast! She put on these cute Cinderella PJ's Grandma Cathy got for her, and she does NOT want to take them off! She's making tea and having a fruit stand sale, and bouncing on the pony and coloring and making tea again, and reading up a storm! It's fun to see her play like that : ) Hopefully the pictures will go up alright and you'll see what I mean.
Well, since I wrote so much here, I guess I'm good for about a month or so ; )

Royce, Isabella and Robert

Thanksgiving at my mom's

The "after" photo

myself and Isabella (5 months), Shanna and Robert (about 3 months), Marie and Royce (about 5 weeks). I love this shot cause Royce looks bigger then Robert!