Congrats

My Cousin Tyler & Kristie had their baby boy 12.30.09!

Jakson Scott, weighing 7 lbs 13.9 oz.

What a way to bring in the New Year and they are both excited for their new bundle.

Christmas

Since New Years is today, Yea for 2010 !! I better share about our Christmas, what a wintery one it was.

Jim gave us the idea to start out our Christmas trip visiting a water park in Brained. It was quite nice and CMW did not want to leave. But now we know she really likes the water, even when she is turning blue. It was a nice and relaxing way as a family to start out our long weekend together since there happened to be some glitches in 'plan of events'.

Pequot was where our festivities started, along with the snow. It was so nice and peaceful. The snow was coming down in big flakes and the first snow fall was white and fluffy, the second snowfall was very went and heavy. My friend Lyz asked 'what's one thing you hold onto a little longer?' (referring to Christmas) and I think it's the peacefulness of snow in Minnesota. Since i'm a true Minnesotan, the snow in ND is just not the same. It always blows away and is mostly hard and compact, nothing soft and fluffy. I think that is one thing i miss, plus the nice 30 degree temps.

Anyway, back to Christmas! The celebration of our Savior, Christ Jesus. Since the storm was coming, we had fewer relatives to celebrate with but we still went to Christmas eve services, dinner was still wonderful, and the gift giving was just right. I think my family needs to start a tradition of remembering Jesus besides attending the eve service. I think it would be wonderful for everyone to remembers the true meaning, I guess next year i'll have to try a little harder and come up with an idea or two. My family did get to enjoy our time with both sets of grandparents, my sisters family and my parents along with nice weather a lots of new snow!

After the family celebration, on Friday Jim, C and I packed up our car and headed to the Olson's Farm for a small visit and then on-ward home bound. The visit was wonderful and we got exposed to the new game 'Banana-grams' it's similar to scrabble and it's fun game. But our continued trip home did not happen until Saturday morning (to much snow in ND). And when we did get home Sat. we were snowed out. Yes, that's correct, not 'snowed in' but 'snowed out'. A very nice snow drift always covers Footer St. when there's a storm and the other 2 roads were also cover with snow. So, we walked in until the 'man with a plow' came by to break a path. And our house was at 52 degrees since our furnace exhaust was covered. The good news, God watched over us on our drive from MN to ND and I just can't leave out our trusty chickens. Even through digging them out of a snow drift, they survived the storm. Now that we were safely home from travels, in our house, started warming it up and the chickens were safe. We bundled up to ventured over to the Waa's for a time of visiting & dinner. It didn't really seam like a time of gift giving with so much going on, games, computers, movies, dinner preparation and what not. But oh well, visiting was nice and CMW got some pretty nice gifts. And our Sunday was another day of digging out to get to town for groceries.

A visit from Maga & Papa

It was a great weekend and boy did I get tried out!

My parents came up to see CMW and of course us. It had been a long time and it was so nice to see them.

My dad was all geared up and had his tools ready to help Jim with sheet rock in the 'man cave'. They got it all up and 2 rounds of mud on the walls.

My mom decided she was going to get the Christmas shopping done for the year and that's just what we did. We hit a lot of good deals and didn't break the check book! How sweet is that! We only shopped for 4 hours including travel time but there was nothing left of us. We even stopped to eat lunch and recharged but when we got home, we both crashed and Jim got C. My parents also brought a delicious white sauce chicken/spinach lasagna (it was so good) in which we invited the Waa's from across the lawn for dinner. It was a great time and Jim build a great fire and it was cozy warm. :-)

It was just so nice to visit and catch up and now Christmas at their house won't feel so crazy since we've seen them recently. CMW certainly does enjoy her Maga & Papa when they come to visit. Papa Art has his tic-tac in which he always shares and this time around Maga got to help out a lot with C's dolly's. They also brought us more wood and we continue to burn it up in the fireplace. Needless to say, I excited for Christmas and traveling home to see my parents once again plus all of my family and friends! Oh, the joy of family!

C & Jim sitting with their feet crossed resting on the foot stool after dinner.

Got to love the girl!

CMW in Papa Art's rubbers.

Celebrations of many...

It just so happened the Sister's Family Christmas in Mankato MN which is a wonderful gathering of Jim's moms sisters & families was the same weekend of CMW's 2nd birthday. I would not and could not leave out her big day. I wasn't really thinking of making her celebration into anything real big, I just brought this cake to add to the sweets of the day and to help others to remember her. We did sing happy birthday and she tried to blow out the candles but her dad helped after the 3rd try. I made a delicious chocolate cake with a sour cream/chocolate filling and frosted with cream cheese. I still taste it, mm,mm. So, between celebrating birthdays (there was 2), we ate, had a great time of fellowship and enjoyed a round of white elephant gift exchange.

My girlfriend Sam decorates cakes and she helped me out a lot! Thank you, Thank you!

CMW is trying to blow out the candles but she doesn't quite have enough lung power or spit control to blow them out yet.

(Jim, CMW & Cousin J.)

It's crazy to think our little lady is now 2 yrs old. How exciting! Her check up was just last week and she weights 23.4 lbs. and is 30" tall. Just a petite girl and she's doing well, according to Dr. Hordvik!

(CMW stealing a cookie off the sweets table at the Sister's Family Christmas gathering.)

The Family!

Since we did not remember to bring our own camera, Aunt Ginny took these pictures for us. Sunday the 6th is the actual date for CMW's birthday and before heading up to the Twin Cities we visited the mall for some Christmas shopping & some play time for C. She did not want to get in that car seat, it was not a good ride down and she remembered. Her dad took her to the play court for kids and she ran and climbed all over those germ infested toys and then we sanitized her. She also got to ride the Carousel at the mall and she really did enjoy it.

We had a wonderful weekend of seeing family and friends and a wonderful time Celebrating C's 2 years of Life! What a gift we are given by our good Lord.

Thanksgiving & Beyond

(i guess i thought I posted this, and i did not, oops... enjoy it a bit late)

I just need to write and tell all my family and friends how great my Thanksgiving holiday was. I would say it was spectacular!

To start early on Monday, my girlfriend Sara and her husband Shawn and Lily the dog drove though town and we met them for lunch. They were passing through going to MN from Montana. The first time since last October that we've seen each other. It was a quick nice visit!

Moving to Thursday, it's the start of Jim staying home for 4 days! Yahoo! I really enjoy Jim being home all day, it's nice to have company and someone to help with CMW. I not only like him to be home, I enjoy it when he comes shopping with me. :-) Which is what we did on Friday and Sunday. But we can't forget about turkey day. We, the Waa family showed up at the Waa family across the yard for the great turkey meal. The Mrs. Evan Waa did all the cooking and it was great! It was a yummy meal and we stayed all afternoon and visited and watching movies.

Friday I was dropped off at the Chiropractor and he with CMW went to Menard's with not a lot success. Then off to Joann's Fabric and got what we needed. Thank goodness I was not going to get fabric because the line was super long and was taking forever even with 5 cutters on the line, yikes! Blow's Sew and Vac was calling our name, just to look was our plan and I had seen an ad about their great Black Friday deals. We have been contemplating getting me a new sewing machine but I kept putting it off, but not this day. With Jim's quick advice, we walked out with one. A super-duper nice quilting/sewing machine. I got a table to go along with machine for quilting and extra feet all wrapped into the discounted price of the machine. It's amazing and i'm quite sure I am over the amazing part yet. Since i've had my great new machine I have sewn a pair of slippers for CMW and i'm working on a small quilting center piece for winter/Christmas. I will have to say it's pretty nice machine!!

I will have to add that I was not the first to sew a project. Mr Jim was and do you want to know what he did? He fixed a pair of underwear! Yes they are new and the waist band busted open after one wash. And we can't just get rid of it because of the waistband, don't ya' know? So, he showed me his great sewing ability! To end the day we got together with some good friends and had dinner and dessert. It was so nice!

And the rest of the weekend Jim and I traded off on what we 'wanted' to do. He got sheet rock for our basement and worked downstairs some and I went out with some girlfriends for coffee and fellowship. I also cleaned up my sewing room and reorganized. It felt great! We went to church and went shopping for CMW - new socks, undies (contemplating training for CMW) and a few Christmas gifts. We also got a tree! Yes, I am so excited and I have not been this excited before. Usually in my family the tree goes up just before Christmas and comes down shortly afterwards but not this year. We have our tree and it's going to get decorated this week so we can enjoy it all of December, yippee!

Once again I need to say it was a great Thanksgiving weekend. We didn't travel, we saw family, we shopped, we spent time together at home and with friends and I talked to many of my family members over the phone and we are awfully Thankful for all of this to happen. Now I'm ready for the Christmas season to begin and thankfully recharged for what is coming in the up coming month!