A visit from Santa

Due to the storm that is hunkering down on our area, Santa came to our house last night, so of course we needed to prepare for his visit.


1st we sprinkled magic reindeer food (oatmeal & glitter) in the front yard to make sure that Rudolph would find our house:

Then we needed to write a note to Santa:

The note & cookies were left on the table.....
So did Santa and his crew find us? Of course!
After we opened all the presents for us under the tree, we found a note from Santa that told the kids there was one more gift for them, but it was in the basement. So downstairs we went...

Singing

Miss Jenna has been singing a lot lately....here is her rendition of Jingle Bells:

An Ihrke visit

After making a lot of attempts we were finally able to get together with Chad, Christy, Alex & Becca. It had been long time (months!) and this past weekend was the 1st time we could meet up due to crazy schedules. I know it's only going to get worse as all the kids get older.

The weekend started out with the arrival of Sir Thor. He'll be staying with us for the week while Lynn & Tom are in Florida. We love having him here, and Jenna has been enjoying have an extra dog to throw things for. I'm not sure what he thinks of Jenna, but she sure enjoys him. He does very well with all the hugs and kisses she gives him.

Saturday the Ihrke's arrived and the kids enjoyed playing with each other. Bruce and I spent the day answering 'no' to "are they here yet?" about a million times. Andrew and Jenna were very excited to see Alex & Becca. After making homemade pizzas the kids turned their attention to the Christmas presents they knew they would eventually get to open. You can only hold off 4 kids for so long ;) Prior to presents we made an attempt at a picture in front of the tree:Then we let the kids rip into the gifts! 30 seconds later we were busy opening, assembling, etc.

Sunday morning Bruce & Chad took the kids sledding, it sounded like they all had a blast. Andrew was sad to see Alex & Becca leave on Sunday, but we're going to try to head down there in January....someone (Chad) has a birthday we need to celebrate. Plus Christy mentioned some great sledding hills that need to be checked out!

Andrew's Christmas Program

Andrew had his Christmas program at school yesterday (Tuesday) in the midst of a snow strom none the less. Due to the snow my parents couldn't make it up so this video's for them:

(when watching the video don't concentrate too hard in the beginning - Jenna was climbing on Bruce so it's a little shaky

The theme of the program was Christmas around the world, so the kids are singing Austrailian Jingle Bells (if you'd like to know what the song is supposed to sound like click here). The kids did a great job, and it was really cute to watch. They walked in holding hands (which was adorable), and were all super funny as they were looking for their families in the crowd and waving. It was also cute to see who sang, and who didn't sing a word due to stage fright.

Below are a few pictures from the evening.
Andrew walking in with Eva:

On Stage:

Since we had to get Andrew there early, we had some extra time before the program. Sometimes that can be a bad thing with Jenna, but she did great. First she entertained herself by kicking off her shoes and putting them back on:

Then she moved on to using Grandpa as a jungle gym:

She followed that up with searching the crowd for babies, and jumping like a bunny. She did fairly well during the program (other than wanting to be up on stage w/ Andrew), here she is sitting with Grandma looking for Andrew:
Here's the star of the evening, doing his cheesy camera smile:

Reindeer hats

I intended to have the kids do a reindeer project, but it turned into making reindeer hats (not what I had in mind, but I just went with it) - for an impromptu project I thought they turned out pretty cute:

There's a....

Mouse in the Tahoe & an elf on the shelf! A mouse decided to take up residence in the Tahoe. We're not sure how he got in there, but we spent Friday afternoon taking everything out of the Tahoe, vacuuming up his mess, and then setting traps in it. We got him! Now we've set more traps just to make sure he was the only one (we're pretty sure he was).

We also adopted an elf (see pic below). He's one of Santa's helpers and will be reporting back to the north pole every night on how the kids behaved, and what they would like for Christmas. It's our 1st year doing "Elf on the Shelf", but so far the kids like it.

Introducing Sparkle Berry (the kids named him):

We put the Christmas tree up today.....

The kids loved helping, and did a great job. Once the tree was up, and Bruce got the lights on, it was time to put the ornaments on.

Here's Andrew w/ his ornament for this year:

Here's Jenna w/ her ornament (she's admiring that she picked one with a puppy & a baby):

Here are a couple of other pics from today:

Preschool Thanksgiving

On Monday, Andrew had a Thanksgiving 'feast' at school. He had lots of special guests since all the grandparents came to enjoy the 'feast' with him. He loved being able to show all the Grandpa's and Grandma's his school, and I think they enjoyed seeing where he is now spending 3 days a week, and meeting his teacher.

In his costume:

Showing off his Pilgrim hat (it had candy inside - very exciting!):

The class:

Andrew's fan club:

After the program at school, we took the grandparents out for lunch. Jenna soaked up all the attention of being the only grandchild present (Andrew was finishing out his day at school). It also happened to be my Dad's birthday, so here's Jenna w/ the birthday boy:

School Conferences

We had our 1st school conferences for Andrew yesterday....he's doing great (but we already knew that)! It was nice to have his teacher confirm what we already suspected.....we've got a very smart little boy. She said that she loves how consistent he is (attitude wise), and enjoys seeing his big smile every day. He does awesome at following directions, and listening even when there are several steps he needs to follow. She shared some of the artwork that they've been doing in class, and it was neat to see his coloring change as the weeks progressed (from a little outside the lines, to in the lines, and from everything 1 color to using different colors). He's showing interest in reading so she's helping him develop those skills, and is doing great with math.
Bruce and I are so proud of him!

Boys day

Bruce and Andrew went down to the Winona area yesterday while Jenna and I went to daycare and work. The boys sound like they had a really good time walking around the woods and hanging Bruce's deer stand. Andrew is pretty funny when he talks about how big the hill was that he had to climb up, and at first described it as a mountain (it was a bluff). He even talked Bruce into taking him out for lunch at Godfathers (my favorite pizza place). Here are some pictures from yesterday:

Andrew decided he needed to bring a 'stick' home from the woods.....
They stopped at the apple orchard on the way home too. Here's Andrew enjoying his carmel apple:

All in all I think both of them had a fun day.

Sadie's 7!

Yep, our slightly neurotic, but awesome little white dog turn 7 last week. We celebrated by making her cupcakes:

After bath time, it was cupcake time. We even gave Sadie her very own cupcake:
Here's a picture of the birthday dog (she doesn't look 7 does she?):
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SADIE! We love you - even when you drive us slightly crazy with your barking and licking :) Thanks for being such a great dog.

tackle frisbee?

The kids were throwing a frisbee for Sadie yesterday afternoon, when they decided it was more fun to chase after it themselves. Jenna happened to reach the frisbee 1st, so she picked it up and started running.....only to be tackled by Andrew! When we asked Andrew why he did that his response was "She was running". Maybe he's been watching and playing football too much :)

Happy Halloween

We had fun in our neighborhood Halloween trick-or-treating parade again this year. You couldn't really tell what anyone was dressed up as due to having to be bundles up, but I think everyone still had fun, despite of the cold. After warming up, the kids dumped out their bags so they could check everything out:

Since Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, we decided to make some special trick-or-treating stops....here's the 1st one:

I think that Grandma was surprised to see us, but enjoyed having the kids visit, and the kids enjoyed seeing Grandma Dee.
Next we headed down to Owatonna:

The kids enjoyed their special trick-or-treat bags that Grandma & Grandpa gave them, and Andrew really liked helping hand out candy. Jenna enjoyed the special Halloween cupcakes that they gave us for dessert.

For the last stop we headed back to Faribo:

I don't know who Jenna was more excited to see, Grandma or Tigger. The kids helped Grandma hand out candy too. Andrew did a great job counting out the number of pieces to hand out. Jenna wasn't too sure of anyone that came to the door in a scarier costume, so she let Andrew pass the candy out to them. After all that fun, we headed home. Andrew fell asleep with in 10 minutes, but Jenna held out for at least a 1/2 hour. We hope that everyone had a great Halloween - we did!

Pre-Halloween festivities

We went to a couple of pre-halloween festivites this past weekend. The kids really enjoyed dressing up in their costumes.

On Saturday night we went to the state park in town with some friends. They had some games, face painting and then a story telling trail. The kids had fun, and it was nice to start out the Halloween fun w/ something that wasn't all about the candy. Here's the kids all lined up ready to go:

Here are Issac and Jenna feeding the baby bear puppet their glow sticks:

The next day after Andrew went to his friend Elijah's birthday party we went to the Y to meet up with Brady and Aiden for the Y Halloween party. The kids loved the bounce house, and the various gymanastics mats that they could climb on. Both of them were sporting red checks from all the running and bouncing shortly after we got there.

Sunday evening we carved our pumpkins....Andrew loved helping take the insides out, while Jenna just wanted to draw all over the pumpkins w/ her marker.

Today (Tuesday) they had their Halloween party at daycare. They were able to wear their costumes to daycare, and were the only ones that didn't take them off after their morning party....Jenna took hers off at nap time (becuase she had too), and Andrew didn't take his off until the end of the day.

One last picture (sorry there are a lot of them)....here's a picture of Jenna that I snapped from inside on Friday. After waiting all afternoon to go out in the snow to play, the 1st thing she did was go up on the deck and throw snow at the patio door....little stinker :)