A Monstrously Long Post

Okay, I haven't gotten around to posting for a while and around the holidays there is always a lot to post.  Here goes:

The week before Thanksgiving we headed up to good old Idaho to visit grandma and grandpa Sperry.  We had a good visit.  We all got to ride grandpa's ATV which the kids loved.  We also got to take home some caramels and licorice caramels that grandma made.  They were fabulous!  The kids even did great in the car the whole time (with the help of the DVD player).  It was great!

We were at my parents house for Thanksgiving this year.  Jan, Jen and I of course spent several hours the night before making too many desserts and being teased by Daniel for always making way too much.  Then we had fun the next day eating them all and making ourselves sick.  We decided to set up mither's Christmas tree that night so that we would have time to get hers, Jan's and mine all set up that weekend.  It was fun.

Thanksgiving night while Emma was brushing her teeth, her loose tooth that we had been hearing about for a full week finally popped out.  If you can't tell, it is the bottom left front tooth.  She was so excited about the tooth fairy coming.  She told us that her friend got a dollar and a candy bar.  The "tooth fairy" didn't realize that inflation had gone so high, but fortunately had a dollar and was able to find a sucker as well.  She was so excited to find them when she woke up the next morning.  She is getting so old!

Friday morning after the tooth fairy came, we went over to Jan and Jen's house to decorate their tree.  I didn't get any good pics of this, but the one of Emma above is in front of Jan's tree.  We then came back home to decorate our tree.  Matthew found the infamous "Christmas horn" given to Daniel as a joke by Jen last year.  When played the sound is not the most glorious to say the least as it is just meant to be a decoration.  However, Matthew sure had fun playing it.  They both had fun putting the ornaments on.   Emma is getting good at spreading them around on the tree.  Matthew on the other hand took every one to the same spot and kept saying, "What a lucky tree!"  The picture of his "lucky branch" below has about 8 ornaments on it while the rest of the branches around it are quite loaded as well.  I still don't have a picture of the completed project, but it looks exactly the same as it did last year.

That night was the boys sleepover at Jan and Jen's house.  Emma had informed me the week before that she was so excited about the boys sleepover because that meant we would go on a girls night out.  I hadn't exactly planned on it until then, but decided it would be a good idea.  We went to the movie, "Legend of the Guardians."  I thought it was a little scary for a 5 year old, but she liked it and didn't have any bad dreams afterwards, so I guess it's all good.  AFter the movie we went to Pizza Hut to redeem her free personal pizza from her month of reading in October.  We had fun together.  This is a picture in the theater after the movie.  No, not the most flattering for me, but at least it is photographic evidence that we did fun things when she was young.

When we went to pick Matthew up from the boys sleepover, we discovered that he was very upset that he didn't have pj's so Jan and Jen had put one of Daniel's shirts they had borrowed on him.  He didn't seem to think it fair that he had to leave and so we let him stay.  Fortunately he slept pretty well for his first sleepover and was not too much trouble.  He had a great time, but was definitely a bit of a handful the next day after going to bed late.

November 29th was a snowy day.  Emma and Matthew waited patiently all day while I kept trying to get Bella to sleep longer than 10 minutes so we could go out and play.  She finally slept for a little while and we went out.  It was too dry to make a snowman, but we had fun anyway.  As you an see in the finished picture below, Bugsy didn't exactly get the whole snow angel thing, but he sure looked cute doing it

Friday, December 3rd Emma and I went with Jan, Jen, Melis, Annika and Mieka up to the Festival of Trees.  They always have such creative ideas for decorating there and i love looking at the ginger bread houses as well.

Sunday, the 5th we had our annual Sinterklaas party.  Sinterklaas is the name for Santa Clause in the Netherlands where Melis served her mission.  It was fun!  Dave and Melis made a delicious dinner, along with some fabulous spudnuts that I ate too many of.  The kids had fun listening to the Sinterklaas story and getting pressies, and the adults had fun exchanging funny gifts as we do each year.  Thanks to Dave and Melis for always making this tradition so wonderful!

Thursday, the 9th, was Emma's Kindergarten Christmas Devotional.  It was so darling.  She was supposed to dress in a costume from another country.  Melissa's sister was nice enough to let us borrow her little costume from Mexico and Emma looked so cute!  She was quite distracted the whole program though and forgot to sing much of the time.  However, when I asked the music teacher about it, she assured me that Emma knows the songs and does great in class.  She did great on her line and seemed to have a really good time.  In the top right picture, you can see that she was sitting next to Zachary, one of the boys in the running for marriage!  :)

Later that day, my cute little sister had her baby girl.  I don't have any pictures as we have not actually seen her yet because she was in the NICU.  Fortunately she is fine and will come home soon.

The next day, Friday, we got together at our house and made ginger bread houses.  I think more candy went into Matthew's mouth than went on his house, but we all had fun.

The next day, Emma and Matthew had a fun time arm wrestling with daddy.  They each tried to beat daddy individually and then both at the same time.  It still didn't work, so they tried it with each other but that ended in rolling on the floor laughing.

If you've made it this far, congratulations.  You get the award for perseverance!  You are finally done!

The End