A Quick Chidister Family Christmas - 2012

We were planning to go to Ames to celebrate Christmas with Peter's family last Friday evening but given the weather we had, we decided to wait until Saturday morning.  We are glad we waited to drive in the daylight but it made our time together even shorter than it was already going to be in the first place.  It was short but SO sweet. 

Almost immediately after we arrived in Ames, the girls were playing outside in the snow with Grandma Peggy.  She even drug them in the sled all the way to the playground.  They loved it! 

Olivia getting measured on Grandma's growth wall.  I wish this picture showed it better but there are probably hundreds of marks on this wall - it's so fun to look at!

Enjoying her hot chocolate!

Abbie with Uncle Ian

Olivia chatting with Grandma Peggy.

Abbie and Ian playing with Grandpa's ipad.

Getting ready to open gifts.

The girls both got personalized scrabble letter necklaces from Uncle James' girlfriend Katie.  She always has such fun stuff for them.

LOTS of Playmobil stuff!!!  (In the box was a ton of new playmobil people, the horse stable, and a fold-up princess castle thing.

Love them!  Peter trying out Olivia's new hat and scarf.

Had to take a picture of this cool monster pot thing.  Peter's youngest brother James made this in his ceramics class this past semester at UNI.

SO happy to have Peter's sister Lucy home from France to celebrate Christmas with us.  She had quite the ordeal in getting home but we are thankful she made it safe and mostly in time =).

Ian and Laura

James & Katie

More ipad

I can hardly get Olivia's crazy hair in a pony tail and Aunt Lucy can do this...AMAZING!  So cute!  (I have since tried to do this to Olivia's hair and failed miserably.  I successfully did it on Abbie though so maybe I just need to keep practicing on long hair for a while.)

I SO missed having Lucy at our family Christmas last year and even though our time was short with her this year, it just felt to complete to have her with us.

Being goofey.

Lucy practicing her mad hair skills on Laura.

Savannah got to meet her Aunt Lucy for the first time (unless you count Skyping.)

                           

We only had about 24 hours with everyone but it was so fun.  I wish we could have had  a whole week.  I am so thankful for Peter's family.  His parents are so hospitable and I am so blessed to be able to say that I LOVE my in-laws.  They are wonderful grandparents and are a great source of encouragement and support for us.  And Peter's siblings are all gems - gosh I love them.  So thankful!

Well that was Christmas #2...on to #3 (which will actually be posted above when I get around to it.)

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Our little family Christmas 2012

We celebrated Christmas with the girls last Friday night.  Abbie's school was closed due to weather both Thursday and Friday and we decided not to leave for Ames until Saturday morning, hoping that the roads would clear up a little more.  It was nice to have the extra time together as a family and not rush so quickly to get out of town.  The girls were really excited when we surprised them with the news since we had originally planned not to do it until we came back from visiting family in Ames and Clear Lake.  We told them to get all ready for bed and that we had a surprise for them when they were finished.  (Unfortunately Savannah sort of missed out since she goes to bed between 6 and 6:30.)  We also told them to bring down their Jesus Storybook Bible (if you have never head of this, I HIGHLY recommend it.) when they were all ready. 

The first thing we did was to read the Christmas story from their Bible and have them act it out with all their Nativity pieces.  

Then we talked about the REAL reason we give and receive gifts at Christmas before we let the girls open theirs.

The girls decided that The Grinch should sit in for Savannah since she was in bed.

First they opened their gifts from each other.

Without knowing it, they had picked out the same gifts for each other which I thought was really sweet.

Olivia is our dress girl.  She has since worn this dress at least 3 of the last 6 days.  Abbie on the other hand told me that opening clothes at Christmas was boring =).

Each of the girls got some more Playmobil stuff to add to their collection.

and some Tinkerbell stuff.

They had to save the bigger stuff until last.  We got them new matching sleeping bags for camping!

And they were SO excited to open their new dollhouse.  We have been planning this for a long time and it was so fun to watch them open it.

It was a little hard to get them to go to bed that night but we all had a nice evening together.  Savannah's stuff got opened when we got back home yesterday - too quickly for me to get any pictures of it.  I made her 2 new flannel crib sheets and a taggie blanket - both I had never attempted before but I was happy with how they turned out (and the sheets even fit the crib mattress - whew!)

 She also got a sippee cup (which she won't need for a couple more months,) some little teething rings (hopefully she won't need these for a couple of months either), the book God Gave us You, some new jammies and a ridiculously cute outfit that I scored on a big sale at the Baby Gap.

We are thankful that the weather carved out a little bit more time than we were expecting together before Christmas.  We are so thankful for God's provision for our family - giving us so much more than we need and even want.  Most importantly we are thankful that He sent Jesus to be born as a baby, to be our Savior and our King.  We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!    

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Costumes???

I feel a little odd posting this now, but I recently had a friend ask me why I never posted about Halloween and in all honesty, I thought I had.  I am pretty good about posting on facebook but I forget that there are a few of you who either don't check it very often or who aren't on it at all.  My apologies.  The other part of it is that I really don't care much for Halloween.  It's more like a celebration and continuation of Autumn that I feel like we're celebrating.  I do love to watch the girls dress up but that is about it - we even gave away most of our candy.  So anyway, here are some pictures from the end of October.  They are pretty cute if I do say so myself =).  

The girls are big into Tinkerbell right now so when I gave them a few choices for carving, this is what they chose of course.  I had high hopes of the three of us carving the pumpkin together but you can imagine who did 99.9% of the work (which I was happy to do.)  They were quite pleased with the final result!

Abbie took her costume to school that day and the littler ones dressed up at home and when we went to our weekly playgroup.

My little pony

A pony and her cowgirl

After our playgroup we went to Abbie's school to watch their costume parade - that  is her in the red hat - our other cowgirl.

Silly as usual.

Abbie and Olivia went trick-or-treating just in our neighborhood, which was probably enough since it was COLD.  Savannah stayed home with me to help pass out candy - we had a lot of kids in the beginning but I think we had less than last year.  So it was really too bad that I bought the Costco size bag of candy - many thanks to Peter's coworkers who were the recipients of our leftovers!!!
There you have it - our pony's first Halloween and her cute little cowgirl sisters!

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