Christmas Eve

Since most of the residents in the ward stuck around Toledo for Christmas, we invited them to our house for some Christmas caroling and chocolate fountain. It was a lot of fun to spend time with our church family since we couldn't be with our other families! After everyone left, we watched 'The Nativity' and read the Christmas story. Then we headed outside to spread some food for the reindeer. We wouldn't want them to miss our house!
Next, back inside to open one present. Tanner said, "I hope it's not jammies!" Guess what....
...here they are in their new jammies. The girls loved them. Tanner was unimpressed!
We read a Christmas book, put a plate of cookies out for Santa and sent them to bed. This morning they all slept until 8 am. I wonder if we will be that lucky tomorrow!

Just in case there was any question where our loyalty lies after all these years in Ohio....in honor of last night's victory....

Preschool Sing-a-long

Friday we attended Ella's preschool sing-a-long which was quite fun. The kids did a great job with all their songs. I have a new respect for preschool teachers as each of the songs had a different noisemaker (tapping sticks, jingle bells) and as soon as they handed them out, the noise was constant! Ella is right in the middle of this picture...of course dressed in pink!
We were lucky to have Grandpa Wilson here for a few hours and he got to come and see Ella's program. She didn't know he was coming and was really excited to see him!

Student of the Month

Our sweet little kindergartner was chosen as student of the month for December. The school chooses a child from each class that meet a list of requirements and honors them with a breakfast and a dress-down-day pass. This morning was the breakfast and it was actually really good. I expected donuts and juice, but we had pancakes with fruit and a variety of drinks. This picture is of Tanner and his teacher, Mrs. Haas. Way to go, Tanner!

When we unpacked our Christmas decorations this year, Ella was quite disappointed to find that her stocking was very un-pink and un-princesslike. It is a very cute print with Santas and Snowmen, but not very girly. A few days later, Marc was talking to his mom, who has made all of our stockings for us and told her of this problem. She said she couldn't make any stockings because she didn't have the pattern (they just moved), but would make a new one as soon as she could.




Imagine our surprise when just a few days later, a package arrived in the mail addressed to miss Ella. She was thrilled by that! When she opened the package, she found this lovely un-christmas like but very girly, very pink and princesslike stocking. Needless to say she was ecstatic! Thank you Grandma Wahlquist for the lovely new stocking!

It's sNOw fun...

...when church is cancelled because of a snow emergency and we have to stay home all day! Here are some pics of the boring time the kids and Marc had outside today!

Making snow angels. (I was really surprised that Sarah got so into it)Trying to make a snowman but the snow is too powdery.
Many hands make light work. Marc had a lot of help shoveling the driveway.

There was also a snowball fight, some tackling in the snow and a little shoveling the neighbors driveway that didn't get captured.

Bedhead

Sarah has this wonderful, cow-lick-ridden head of hair which is difficult to control but makes for some pretty awesome hairdos in the morning or after her naps.

This is Sarah this morning when she first got out of bed. She was still pretty sleepy, hence the dazed look

Some things are just too funny not to document for the teenage years, right?