Christmas with the Cousins

Last Monday night we had Christmas with Abby, Tim, Mason and Emily. We spent the day making ornaments to give the grandparents as gifts and eating lots of food. It was a great time.

Christmas Parties

Riley and Carter both had their Christmas parties at school today. Riley really loves to give gifts. She is very thoughtful when deciding what to give. She decided several weeks ago what to give her teacher. When she got home today she was most excited to tell me how much her teacher liked her gift and she loved that Riley even made her dog some dog treats. I LOVED that she was more excited to tell me about the gifts she gave than the ones she got. She truly enjoyed today for the right reasons.
Carter was very excited about having a Christmas party at school. He was asked to bring a book for another boy and they would be doing a book exchange, He did not understand the concept and was positive that he was giving his book to his friend Joshua. he wanted to write Joshua on the tag when he wrapped it and everything! I was concerned that he would be upset when he had to give his book to someone else but I heard it went fine(Aunt Abby was at the party so I got the scoop). When we were leaving his school, I received the best gift of all! One of Santa's Elves was going into the school and Carter was so in awe. He was convinced that Santa had sent the elf to check on boys and girls at school to see if they were being good! He was so good today!!!!! He kept saying "I cannot believe I saw a real Elf!" It was so cute and to me it was priceless. For those who have not heard my stories about Carter and being "good for Santa", let me fill you in. Whenever he has been misbehaving in the last few weeks I have reminded him that Santa is watching. He usually continues doing whatever it is he is doing and pays no attention. I have gotten to the point where I will yell to the sky (not sure why because the north pole is not in heaven!) "Santa, Carter is not listening!" To which he has replied more than once to me, "It's ok mom, I like coal and I want coal for Christmas." So as you can tell, he has been acting like he does not care! Hence, the excitement I experienced today when he acted like he was nervous about Santa really knowing if he was bod or good!

After school we exchanged our gifts with the girls that I get to spend my days with. So I do have one picture to share from our busy day.

Decorating for Christmas

We started working on the decorations a week ago and finally finished them last night. We started with the outside lights which usually takes the longest and spent three evenings working on them.


Friday night we went and picked out our tree. We are lucky there is a place 2 minutes from our house with cheap and nice trees. We also added a train this year around the tree from Grandma and Papa Hughes. SO far the dog and Carter have played nicely with it. :)

Chicago

Matt was given an extra discount at some hotels so we decided to take advantage of that and go to Chicago for a short family getaway We took the train into the city and Carter absolutely loved that part. We spent Sunday shopping, eating and relaxing. We had some really good pizza for dinner after we took the kids to the SkyDeck at the top of the Sears Tower (Willis Tower). It was dark but it was still beautiful. The kids walked right onto the glass lookout. I was not sure enough to just walk out but I eventually put one foot on it. :) You are 103 floors in the air and standing in a glass enclosure. Not my idea of a smart idea but you know.
Monday we took the kids to the Museum of Science and Industry. I think that all of us really enjoyed it. I had not been there since I was in elementary school and the rest of the family had never been. We could have spent at least another hour there but had a train to catch. We got home in time for Abby and Tim to feed us dinner and pick Reagan up from their house. Not sure how it worked out that they fed us after they watched our dog but we really appreciated it!
Reagan did great staying at their house. We missed her but knew she was in good hands. We did come home with a sick kid and colds for the rest of us. We are hoping to get Carter feeling better by tomorrow so we can still go to Missouri for the holiday. Reagan will be going back to Hotel Wierenga while we are gone.

In the woods

I realized yesterday as I was sitting in the woods waiting for a deer to walk by that I never posted the pictures from last weekend. Last Sunday we went up north to work on the blinds for deer season. We spent the day with Papa Ron and we had a blast. Reagan was so tired she slept ALL DAY Monday! She had a blast as did the kids.

Working on the blind that I sit in.

Carter's new hat from Papa and it lights up!

Climbing around

Reagan resting

Papa's blind and the kids were up there

Halloween 2009

This year Riley wanted to be a hippie and Carter, with a suggestion from Dad, wanted to be a sailboat. More specifically the Red Baron.He looked just like Dad's boat. Reagan wore a costume that Abby bought for her dog. She was the inmate.

Applesauce

Last week, Abby and I decided to make applesauce so we picked a couple bags of apples. My mom offered to come over and give us a lesson one morning. When we were finished we were very disappointed with how much sauce we got. So, we started looking for places to get more apples but we didn't want to pay as much as we had for the first apples. We searched on Craigslist and found a place a little over an hour away with apples for only 15 cents a pound. We decided to take a road trip and check it out. Well, we met Chuck and Earl at the orchard and picked up 225 pounds of apples for only $25!!!! We were so excited! However, the next day was a lot of work with that many apples. Abby and I started cooking apples at 9am. We cooked the apples until almost 2 I believe when mom came over to help. THANK GOODNESS! We canned until 6pm when I finally turned the stove off. I am still trying to get the stove clean but we did get 75 quarts of applesauce from our hard work. Of course I had to tale pictures of this venture. I sure wish I had the camera to take pics when we went to pick up the apples.