Should've Gotten a Video

This is just hilarious to see in person - they've been doing this since Eliya was little - it's something between Mary's girls and mine. They hold them and say run and have a race just standing their with whose little legs can run the fastest. They are too cute!

Christmas Delayed

Mary took pity on the 'home-made' advent wreath we have been using for devotions and got us a beautiful wrearth with the girl's middle names on it even! Rachel kept trying to put it on like a hat, but it was kinda heavy so we had to help her :0) They also found them some beautiful necklaces with the girl's middle names on them.

We had a very late Christmas with the Andrews on Friday night. The girls and I were able to spend the weekend with them for Rebecca and Hannah's dance competition. Jim was still down in Sioux Falls so Mary met us to make the 'people' exchange while Mark did a hospital visit. He was planning on visiting the hospital again on Monday on the way home (driving back down Sunday for a Super Bowl party and to pick us up) however they took Jim home (to the Gettysburg hospital) on Saturday. He is on morphine to keep him comfortable, our thoughts and prayers are with the family through this difficult time. I was bummed that I forgot my camera on Saturday at the dance competition. The girls insisted on bringing their dance outfits along (even though they weren't competing) and Gabie wore hers the entire day we were there. She was so cute! Both girls performed awesome and it was fun to watch them.

Jam and Bread

It's a favorite bed-time snack request

Lacking...

...in pictures that is. I have no new ones, so I will simply update on our lives.
*Sunday was our church's annual meeting.
*Bridget is home, so Kirstie is home. We really miss her!
*Our car is FINALLY home in our garage, we made a 'quick' trip up to Aberdeen today to pick it up. Hopefully we're done with car issues and repairs for awhile! We had traded from 2 down to 1 and were quite happy with our 'new' used van with less miles on it. Unfortunately 3 days into owning it the rack-and-pinion (sp?) went out - power steering stuff! which would've been over $500 in damages, however they agreed to fix it for free, but of course that required taking the car back up to Aberdeen.
*Max is doing great, he's still considered a very good dog by all (yes, he has his vices, but they are few and far between).
So life goes on here for us - hope all is well with everyone out in blog land!

It's Not Easy Being Green

Green with jealousy that is...Kirstie and Eliya were invited to a birthday party on Saturday, and Mark left at the crack of dawn (or a couple hours prior) to go to Sioux Falls to visit Jim and then go straight to church at Seneca on the way home. So that left Gabie and Rachel and I to entertain each other, and they were less then thrilled with my company under the others' exciting days. They did play for awhile with each other and even set up a little bed for 'pretend' nap time - ha! Then I broke out the mini-cupcake baking set just for kiddos and we made cupcakes for the church dinner on Sunday. I made regular sized cupcakes for the church thing and they had fun making mini ones to decorate and eat - we even made frosting for them in Gabie's current favorite color - purple! Topped off with sprinkles I think it somewhat made up for being 'left behind' today :0) Meanwhile, Eliya and Gabie were taken swimming, out to pizza and to Claires where they were make-uped and hair-doed to their heart's content. What a perfect day for them! And what a fun birthday party for their friend. They came home exhausted!

Tea Party!

The kids were getting a little restless today - we had a couple of nicer days where they could get outside for a bit and then today was bitterly cold again (mostly because of the wind). So when they got hungry for a snack this afternoon I told them to go downstairs and get all dolled up (notice Rachel only got half-way undressed, but oh well) and when they came back up I'd have a surprise for them. Mark had gotten us a beautiful tea set for Christmas that came with four tea cups - one said 'Faith', one said 'Hope', one said 'Joy' and one said 'Love' ~ for those of you that picked up on it, yes the first three are the girl's middle names, and the last one he said is just cause he loves me 'aaawww'. So I let Kirstie borrow Rachel's and gave her an old one that wasn't part of a set (just in case - ha!) and we had ourselves a tea party! What a great way to break up the afternoon - they loved it and even Max enjoyed rummaging around for anything that might get dropped! :0)

Snuggle-Buddies

The first couple of night Kirstie and Elie shared the top bunk, but tonight they wanted to all sleep together in a tent. I draped blakets around the bottom bunk from the top and they all snuggled inside. I pulled them down once they went to sleep, and they sure were cute all snuggled up in there.

As far as Jim (kirstie's grandpa) goes - things haven't been going great. There was more bleeding in the brain, so they put a drain in today and hopefully that will help relieve some of the pressure, it's just a waiting game, which is so difficult! We are praying for the family and would appreciate any prayers out there for them as well!

Sad Day

I know I promised pictures, however our schedule has been somewhat changed. Our dear friends John and Bridget (Kirstie's parents) had to take off for Sioux Falls after John's father (also a member of our church here) had a stroke of some kind, we're still waiting to hear....meanwhile Kirstie's hanging with us, I always feel so helpless in these situations as to what to do, so it's nice to feel that we can help in a small way.

We also received sad news of a former camp worker's family (that I worked with at Camp Okoboji) that lost a child at the precious age of 7 months. Although I lost touch with her, my heart is just breaking for the family.

We've been saying a lot of prayers and not taking many pictures. Thanks for understanding, we'll get back into this soon I'm sure.

Hooray!!!

5 Great Reasons for saying hooray today....
* No school due to MLKJr. Day which meant sleeping in.
* Good friend came over to play/visit this afternoon - the kids played, the adults visited and we all ate some yummy zucchinni bread the girls and I made earlier and even all played some wii together!
* The weather FINALLY warmed up some (granted I never thought I'd be one saying that 30's is warm, but hey, it's definately an improvement!
* We were able to go for a walk this evening after supper as a family. The girls road on the sleds and Max was taken on his first official family walk.

If I have time after the girls go to bed I'll upload some photos, otherwise tomorrow....Hope everyone had a great day like we did! :0)

Max's Bed

This is the sight that greeted me when I came in to go to bed tonight - how cute is our puppy?!

London Bridge

Here is the video - after they started singing it correctly...

Building the Train Track

We built a train this afternoon which was a lot of fun and the girls loved watching the trains.

Lovin' the Socks!

I found a pair of socks of Elie's that were too small for her but have Dora on them - Rachel loved them! She pulled them on and started showing off.

Hair Cut!

Of all 3 of my children, Eliya would be the one I never would've guessed to cut her own hair. First of all she is almost 5 which in my humble opinion is a bit old for those antics. Second of all she is OBSESSED with having long hair. She is constantly talking about wanting her hair long, begging us to never make her cut it and begging me to grow mine back out. But when I came home for lunch on Wednesday she casually told me about her morning ending with "....and then I cut my hair." Mark and I both looked at her surprised thinking that she was joking or pretending, but as I looked I noticed she had some bangs that weren't there before....needless to say she now has a whole face-full of bangs as I had to fix it, plus it looks like she had her hair dyed since the shorter hair is much darker naturally, so she has a whole new look. some of the locks that were lost due to Elie's cutting....

the whole new look - although the bangs are much nicer then they look in this picture (straight across) another hat-hair day rears it's ugly head!

Making Pancakes

Another round of pictures from a Wednesday morning tradition - daddy time! They make pancakes and have a grand ol' time together, we're so glad we started this tradition of them having this special time together.

This is getting ridiculous

Yup - that's a picnic table under all the snow sticking out the top!

Snow, snow, snow and then cold, cold, cold. We have feet of snow that is taller then our mailbox in places. We have cold that is, according to the weather channel 'dangerous in wind chills'. Yuck, yuck, yuck! I don't remember this much snow since I was in high school (and sadly that's been awhile!). Hope you are all staying warm out there - I'll try to get some pictures up tomorrow of our winterwonderland. On the positive side, all the ear drops and medicine really seem to have kicked in and rachel is doing much better! :0)

Good-night

The girls are showing off after getting ready for bed. They have a great routine down and bedtime is getting better (mostly referring to Rachel here....) and we're getting more and more full nights of sleep - yay! Let's hope tonight is another one :0) Her ears are still draining like crazy, but that's a good thing - hopefully all that yucky infection is coming out, she's been much more herself today.

Curly Cuteness!

Rachel got an adorable outfit sent from great grandma and Pat ~ she thought she was pretty cute in it and was showing off for the camera :0). I also wanted to show just how curly her hair really is. Most of the pictures of her are when her hair has been 'hatted' all day due to the cold so I got some pics of her curls right after her bath so you could see just how curly it is!

Princess

Eliya just looked so beautiful to me today before church, so grown up - I can't believe how big she is getting! It seems like only yesterday......

Baptism!

Our newest little godson. The whole gang - Curt and Rachel at the top; Sheila and Mark with baby Bobby; Chad and Melissa (holding their daughter Maddy) with Diego standing in front of them and Mark and I with Pepe. Today three of Rachel and Curt's sons were baptized. Andrew, the oldest was already baptized as an infant, so today the other three became members of God's precious family. We were thrilled to be a part of their special day. They asked us to be godparents for Pepe (Philip Dean), who is the same age as our little Rachie - they are the best of friends.

Although you can't tell from the pictures, Rachel has been pretty miserable trying to get some teeth in. One of her tubes got clogged so she had blood and gunk coming out of her ear. Both were draining but one got really bad and she's been running a fever so she is now on an antibiotic and some decongestant to hopefully clear all this gunk out of there. For anyone out there that doesn't think that teething causes illnesses - this mom would have to disagree!!!! Say some extra prayers that this clears up quickly - you know she's not feeling well when she's good in church (ha!) and takes 3 naps in one day!