O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

With Thanksgiving weekend over, we thought it was time to decorate the house for Christmas. Abby was so excited to drag out our boxes and boxes of decorations and to begin. For the first time, we set up a fake Christmas tree. I was very apprehensive about it. I grew up with a real tree. I love the smell. I love hunting for the perfect one and then cutting it down. But it just got to be too much for me to set it up and take it down by myself. So we got a fake one. I was surprised at how easy it was to set up. There was no great pine smell, but there were also no needles on my carpet. It's not the world's best Christmas tree, but my girls are in love with it and it does look quite cute.
Abby helped me hang the ornaments while Grace was taking her nap. But she quickly left me to play with all the nativity sets while I put all the rest of the Christmas decorations around the house. Now the lights are out and we're watching the twinkling lights of our magical tree. Yep, we love Christmas time.

Abby begged all afternoon for me to bring up her nativity set. This is the set made by my parents. She loves moving all the pieces around and having them all talk with each other. Who needs a live nativity scene, when you can just watch Abby play it all out in your living room? She looks so cute playing with it.

I wanted to have a picture of Grace to put on the blog so I quickly snapped this one. She was in her happy mood and just toddling around the house. Man, I love this girl!

Happy 90th Birthday Grandma!

Tonight we had a birthday party for my grandma. She's turning 90 years old. 90 years old people!! That's old. But with my grandma you wouldn't know that she was 90. She looks so much younger and she acts younger too. It was also my Uncle Vic's birthday, he's turning 60, so we celebrated them together. We had such a great night! I documented the night in pictures. Enjoy! Here's half the gang right before dinner started. We had a feast. There were three different raclette grills and lots of choices in food combinations.

Here's the table where we sat. We all had chopsticks in remembrance of our Aunt Eva, who is teaching right now in Japan. We had so much fun with those chopsticks. :)

Jeff said he was going to eat everything with the chopsticks. The rest of us quickly gave in to our forks and spoons. But not Jeff. He stuck with his chopsticks. In fact, he even ate his applesauce using the chopsticks. That was quite comical to watch.

Here's our feast combination: marinated chicken, pork, steak, asparagus, onions and red peppers, with potatoes and bread toasting underneath. All I can say is YUM!

Laughing together, that's what sisters do! And we do it well! :)

I am so happy that this picture turned out. Usually Matt is making faces behind me. In fact the pictures I have from Thanksgiving Day have funny faces in them. Yep, glad we got a good one.

My mom's gift to grandma was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! She typed out 90 reasons she's glad she's her mother. Then bound it all and put it together. It was so great! Each reason was so specific for grandma. I'm sure it will bring back great memories.

Happy 60th birthday Uncle Vic! We all had funny gifts for him. This one was hilarious! It's a bucket full of 60 dumdum suckers and a sign that says, "Being 60 sucks, but you can lick it!"

We even got out the computer to skype with Aunt Eva in Japan. It was so good to see her and talk with her. Everyone got a change to talk with her. We can't wait until she comes home next month.

Not all the grand kids were there, but here are 5 of us with grandpa and grandma. We ended the night with desserts all made from grandma's recipes; blueberry pie, date cake, and oreo cookie dessert. Then everyone got a piece of grandma's Candlewick china. I was so excited! I got 8 dessert plates and a beautiful bowl.

It was a great night! It makes you realize again how blessed you are. The Lord is definitely faithful from generation from generation.

A Weekend of Celebrations

We're still here in case you were wondering. I've been severely reprimanded by several people for not updating the blog, but the comment from my niece really brought it home. She knew the exact number of days it had been since I've blogged. So to Lauren and to the rest of you, I say, "I'm sorry."
In our defense, we have been extremely busy. I've had report cards to work on and parent teacher conferences for several nights. I also didn't have my camera for a few days and everyone knows you can't blog if you don't have recent pictures.
But excuses aside, I've missed you Mr. Blog. It's nice to be back. The girls and I have been healthy for several weeks in a row and it's nice to be done with meds for a while. Abby did suffer from an allergic reaction to her medicine so we did go on some steroids to help her, but other than that (and of course all of Grace's teething) we've returned to the land of the living.
We celebrated Thanksgiving this week with several aunts and uncles and my grandparents. It was so much fun! I absolutely LOVE Thanksgiving dinner. When else can you eat a meal with that many carbs? Yum!
My sister and her family came into town yesterday to help celebrate my grandma's 90th birthday. I had her family and my brother's family, and mom and dad, over for dinner last night. The cousins love being together and play so nicely. Grace just runs around after them and makes some noise. It's cute to watch her try to interact with the others.
Tonight we're headed to the 90th birthday celebration. I'm looking forward to it. The great grandchildren are staying home so it will be an evening with only adults. Ahh...doesn't that sound nice? I'll post some birthday pictures later, meanwhile, enjoy these from last night. The kids literally took over the dining room table. There are 8 of them now. Aren't they the cutest!!!

Here are a few adults in the kitchen finally getting a chance to fill our own plates. You've got to love Thanksgiving Day leftovers. :)

After dinner we were treated to a performance of The Nutcracker in the basement. The kids practiced and put together a cute show, everyone had a dancing part.

Going Shopping??

Grace grabbed her Tinkerbell purse and was all about saying "BYE" and going shopping. That's my girl!!

Smile therapy!

This afternoon we were bored and Abby started playing with her lips. Don't you think this picture is hilarious? We're still laughing about it! My girl is funny!! We hope this put a smile on your face too.

We've been busy!

We've been so busy lately! I haven't found time to update the blog in over a week. So sorry about that. I'm in the middle of report cards so my nights are taken up with filling in all the parent comments. By the time I finish with those, I'm tired and I want to go to bed so there's absolutely no time for blogging.
We've also had the privilege of visiting Urgent Care again. Seriously, this was our 8th time since school started. Abby had just finished her meds from her infection and on Wednesday she broke out in a rash all over her body. I mean ALL over! As it turns out, she's allergic to sulpha meds. I was just glad that she was not contagious and she was able to go to school.
We were super busy this past weekend and had so much fun! Friday night we met up with our SCAM group and headed downtown to the Children's Museum. November is adoption month and there is an adoption networking group that rented out the museum for the night. There were only adoptive families there and it was so nice to mingle with families like ours. There was a kid friendly dinner, a raffle, puppet shows, singing, and of course the children's museum. As we were leaving, they were handing out tickets to the Grand Rapids Ballet showing of The Nutcracker!
Abby's favorite room at the museum was the grocery store. There were kid sized carts and shelves of food. There was a kid sized cash register and she loved it! She filled the cart over and over again. A shopping girl! I couldn't have raised her better. :)

I love this picture of Abby! She was in the mirror tunnel. The effect is awesome!

The fireman section was also a huge hit! Abby played with both Alex and Levi for a long time. There were outfits to put on, ladders to climb, slides to go down and of course buttons to push.

Meanwhile, Grace played at the light table with the magnets. It was just her size and she had her friend Nyah right next to her. I'm not sure if she thought it was more fun to play with the magnets and build things, or to just throw the magnets on the floor. Either way, she was happy!

Then we ventured downstairs and Grace found the balls. It was so busy there and it felt good to go downstairs and find some fresh air and a little breathing room. We found a nice corner where we could sit and chat while the kids played.

Elaina and Grace sat in strollers waiting for the puppet show to begin. Don't you just love their stripe pants? Apparently it's all the rage for one year olds. :)

Abby and Levi were such great dancers at the puppet show. They participated and answered questions and hula danced all night.

On Saturday night we headed out to Teusinks Farm for a birthday party. Our friend Diviyah was turning one year old. We met her on our trip to Ethiopia to pick up Grace and found out that she lives in our hometown. How fun! Our SCAM group members were also there and there was so much to do. We started out on the hayride which quickly became Abby's favorite part because there were bunnies on the wagon. She sat with 2 bunnies on her lap and loved it. Then we fed the goats, hit pinatas, ate a great dinner, and celebrated with cake.

Here we are checking out the horses in the pasture. What is it about horses that get little girls all excited? Both Aliya and Abby were all about the horses.

It was spitting rain during the day so I was happy to find out that the hayride was a covered wagon. Don't you just love how neither girl is looking at the camera? I don't think I'll ever get both girls to pay attention at the same time.

Everyone got three hits on the pinata. Abby tried hard, but didn't break it. It took a while before the older boys got it to break. But Abby had no trouble running in to grab her fair share of the candy.

Family Dinners

Tonight we had everyone over for dinner to celebrate my mom's birthday. Her actual birthday was on Monday, but everyone was available on Saturday, so today was it. We hadn't seen each other in a while so the kids were eager to play together again. They made a store to sell things, played dress up, attacked the doll house and even pulled out the princess tent. All the adults got to sit and chat, which was so nice.
Abby adores all of her cousins and couldn't wait to have playmates for the night. Grace, on the other hand, had no idea what was going on, but it didn't bother her. She just walked right into the action where ever it was happening. Happy Birthday mom!! We love you soooo much!!

Micah and the others were so excited to put the candles on the cake. Mom was worried that she wouldn't be able to blow them all out in one breath since there was no rhyme or reason to the candles. But she did great! And got every single one.

Here's my brother Dave, and his look-alike...my nephew Seth. Such handsome men!

Here's the girl side of the table. Abby had picked out where everyone was sitting and ended up with girls on one side, and the boys on the other.

Grace quickly figured out that Aunt Jodi would pick her up if she went over to her. Needless to say, she was Aunt Jodi's friend all night.