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: