Holiday Traditions

Last night the Young Women made gingerbread houses and I had a TON of icing left over, so Logan and I made some at home. It made me reminisce about some of the traditions that really make the holidays. Every year growing up my best friend had a gingerbread house making party and I loved it. Tiffiny, this house is for you.
Logan and I have been talking about what traditions we'd like to have in our family and I'd like to hear what some of your favorite traditions are. Here are a few we had growing up, and a few we'd like to do in our own little family.

1. Hosting a Christmas party
2. Reading Christmas stories at night during December
3. Making gingerbread houses
4. Reading Luke 2 on Christmas Eve
5. Fondue on Christmas Eve
6. Driving around looking at the lights
7. Sleeping under the Christmas tree
8. A service activity
9. A talent show/program on Christmas/New Year's Eve

That's just a small list, we'd love to see what you add to it! Hope you are all safe and warm where you are, we're planning on a weekend in, as we're supposed to be hit with a major storm tonight (around a foot of snow). Can't wait to see some of you soon!

Did Summer actually come, or was I just dreaming?

Outside

InsideWell, we started up a new exercise program we hadn't used in awhile. We like to call it moving snow. Shoveling snow sounds too useful. We just move it somewhere else so we can add more to the pile in a few days. The count is now 16"+, but it's not over, so if you'd like to join our health club we are now accepting new members. We'd particularly like to invite Al Gore and his groupies.

Anyway, we're doing well here. As you can see, we had a snow day and Carli was so happy to have her daddy home for the day. When he came in from the garage after attempting to go to work she said, "Yay! Dad!" It was pretty cute. I'm sure this won't be the last post of this nature, so bear with me. It's going to be a long winter.

The Promised Video

Notice that the end of all the videos are the same, regardless of what she is doing in it. I've just learned to stop the video before she grabs the camera.

Happy Birthday/Thanksgiving!

On Saturday Logan's family came to visit for Thanksgiving, so we met them in Chicago and stayed at Logan's uncle and aunt's house for the weekend. They have a beautiful house and it was fun to see some of the sites.
To start our trip off, Carli was supposed to have been taking a nap, and I looked in on her to find this. Take notice of a few things: the binki across the room, the blanket that was in the crib that's on the floor, her pants that she was wearing that she is no longer. Can't imagine what she was doing instead of sleeping. . .On Carli's first birthday we went to the aquarium in Chicago. It was a free day and it was a lot of fun. It is so hard to believe that she is a year old. There were quite a few times when it felt like de ja vu because of Thanksgiving last year. I was sure glad that the one this year didn't end in a stay at the hospital, even though we were thrilled last year's did. And I'm sure that Logan's brothers were especially glad that their X-Box game didn't end the same way it did last year (with a gush and then chaos, if you get my drift. . .) We have certainly been grateful for our cute, spunky, happy, determined, friendly, lovable little girl ever since that time. Anyway, here we are with Grammy in the cute jacket she got for Carli for her birthday.

Papa Tommy was good to take Carli around in the stroller while we all looked around the aquarium (sorry for the weird candid shot).We watched one of those 4-D movies and Carli did pretty well in it until we all got sprayed in the face by "dolphins". Isn't her daddy handsome?
Uncle Will and Uncle Kelly (aka Wilbur and Kelby) pose next to the statues in front of the aquarium.

We celebrated Carli's birthday by eating some fabulous Chicago style pizza. Yum! Carli even got some ice cream, which she thoroughly enjoyed, as you can see. Her dad even let her have the spoon!

After dinner Carli got to open presents. Thank you Grammy, Papa Tommy, Wilbur and Kelby for the fun gifts! She sent each gift through a strenuous round of quality assurance testing with her teeth, as usual.

New fun poky balls!

Thanks Aunt Shanna, Uncle Daryl, Nathan and Josh for the cute book. We love it!

She is now the proud owner of a cell phone, much to her delight.

Carli waving goodnight after her fun day of family, museums, good food, opening presents, eating cupcakes and all of that excitement.

Grammy cuddling with Haven and Carli before the crew had to leave to go to the airport.

I know, I didn't get any pictures of Thanksgiving, but it was great. We certainly had a feast. It was so fun to be able to host everyone here at our house. We love when it is filled up with company, especially our family. I'm very grateful for my family in this season and it is such a blessing to be able to spend time with all of them. Thanks for coming!

P.S. I will put a video up soon. Carli took her first real steps a couple of days before her birthday and now she is a walking maniac. I'm almost regretting letting her have the walker Nana gave her, but she sure is cute when she walks.

An ominous sign. . .

Yes, the rainbow is the ominous sign. Why? It was the last sign of warm weather before winter hit. It was the signal for everyone (people and animals alike) to hole up in their houses and not come out until the spring thaw, which could be the end of April if the wooly worms (or whatever it is the Farmers Almanac gets its information from) are right. I guess it's a good thing I like my house and the people in it.

My parents were here last week visiting and we miss them so much. We had a lot of fun hanging out and seeing some of the sights around here. They celebrated Logan's birthday with us, which was fun. I never seem to take pictures when it really matters to me. This one is of Carli "helping" Grandpa fix the door handle. She just had to see what was going on. We're glad it will only be a few more weeks before we see them again at Christmas. And we're excited to see all the aunts, uncles and cousins then too. We're also excited to see Grammy and Papa Tommy and the uncles next week for Thanksgiving. I can say all I want about winter (which I do actually like, I just wish it weren't so long around here), but I sure do love the holidays and getting together with family.

Of course, I saved the best for last. I took a couple of videos, and Logan wanted me to put one up, and I wanted the other, so here they both are. The first one is success, and the second one is just plain cute. Thanks, Nana, for the fun walker for my birthday next week!

Happy Halloween. . . or is it?

Happy Halloween to you all! I put these pictures up and realized that Carli is not happy in any of them, so I put the one below just to top it all off. Hope you all have a fun and safe holiday. I also hope you get our family costume, some people had a hard time, maybe we'll have to be more clear in the future. (Just think Atkins. . . :) )


Am I a mean mom because I think this face is just as cute as her smiling face?

A day in the life of a Snapagus. . .

We all went on a hayride a couple of weeks ago before it got too chilly. It was a lot of fun and we saw some beautiful country. Regardless of what the girls' faces look like, they enjoyed the trip too.
Carli has been busy, busy lately and into anything and everything. I guess we hit that age. The one where no matter how child-proof you think your house is, she'll prove you wrong.

The look of a crazed Snapagus who realized her hiding place between the wall and couch had been discovered.

Next we move to the kitchen where we figure out how to take the garbage bags off the roll one by one. If this girl is to be happy, there better not be anything organized - everything should be on the floor, and it's her favorite game to make sure its that way.

Another perfect hiding place, once all those darn pans are extracted. Of course, you have to test out the roominess in the cupboard and turn around to grin at the camera to get the full experience.She stopped her exploration for a few minutes to take a picture with Mom one Sunday afternoon.

Poor girl had Roseola this past week, so things were a little rough for awhile. Afterwards though, she had to catch up on her rest to keep up her busy lifestyle, and the crib just won't do for that kind of beauty sleep. That calls for the pillowtop with Mom.

Fun Visitors

Our good friends Robby and Julie (and little Robby) came to visit us this past week and we had a blast hanging out and catching up with them. It was great to finally meet their little guy and to relive the good old days of staying up late and playing Hearts. We had a really fun time at the zoo and introducing Julie to custard and fried cheese curds, and don't forget butter burgers. Here are a few of the pics we got at the zoo. I'm sad we didn't get a picture all together, but hopefully it won't be too long before we see them again.

On the carousel.
In front of the lions, they were pretty interactive, so we got a lot of pictures.

It's pretty fun to be that close to a lion.
For some reason the lioness took a liking to the Robbys. She scratched the window and kept nuzzling the window where they were.

The dads and the babies. They're only one month apart and they had fun playing together. We miss you guys and can't wait to hang out again!

More Fall around town

Of course, I had to add one of Carli - just hanging out listening to her Ipod.

Reasons to visit us - a celebrity endorsement and more!

Fall has become quite spectacular around here. These pictures were all taken from our yard. I keep meaning to take a picture down main street of our quaint little town - it really is beautiful with the sesquicentennial houses and the brick street lined with the fall trees. I wish/hope you can all visit sometime, you wouldn't regret it.

Speaking of people visiting, do you recognize this woman? That's right, Supernanny came to visit our little town. She was filming at a house at the end of our street, and on the last day she took pictures with people and signed autographs. We didn't really want to take other people's limited time since we've never even seen the show(and believe me, there were some very excited people), but we did snap a couple of pictures from across the street. Ours is the one on the right. She never really looked our way, but I think you can tell it's her from the back. As sad as it seems, that's about my only claim to fame.

Here's the best reason to visit our little town though. Man, she is cute. She did, however, find her inner tantrum buddy yesterday. I have a feeling we may have some brief, yet profound episodes of drama in this house over the next 18 or so years. Hopefully they are few and far between, but I sure caught a glimpse of the magnitude of them yesterday. Luckily, she almost always looks like she did in this picture, and we're crossing our fingers that it stays that way.

A couple of weeks ago, Carli finally decided that the Snapagus Shuffle, as her daddy liked to call it (army crawling) was just not cutting it. So, here is the new and improved Carli Crawl. Make sure you stay tuned for the surprise ending. . .

Drive your tractor to school day

I thought Homecoming week in my high school was cool - check this out! The high school is at the end of our street, and when I drove by it today this is what I saw. Then, I was unfortunate enough to be driving through town when school got out. Stupid move. . . Getting stuck behind tractors happens fairly frequently around these parts.

Logan and I had a trip back to high school when we went to the Homecoming game tonight, except that it would have been a trip back to the alternative high school with a 10 month old. Anyway, you haven't seen school spirit until you've seen our little town support its football team. I've never seen an area as packed as those bleachers and fences were. It was fun to get to know the town a little better. We'd really get to know them if we'd been invited to one of the many keggers going on afterward. We live in a unique place, I have to say.

Carli's new tricks

Here she is waving at you all!

Carli's method of avoiding "plopping". Do you think there's a possibility of ballet in this girl's future?

My Little Cutie