Family Time at the Garden

My sisters, our kids, and Grandma headed to the Meijer Garden today. It was fun to see the trains and the trees decorated with ornaments from different countries.
Here's Grandma with her 6 Michigan grandkids.
Grandma liked the warm places in the Garden!
Anna insisted we go outside to "Letter Man", but then wouldn't go near him. She's not sleeping in the above picture. I think she had her eyes closed because it was so windy out. It was cold, but we sure loved seeing the sun today!

Part of the gang by the giant horse. What a fun day!

This One's for You, Dan

Chihuly at the Meijer Garden!

Christmas Day

After church, we spent a little family time together. Matt, Anna and I exchanged gifts. We were in a bit of a hurry, so Anna didn't get to play much with her presents, but we had a nice time!


My sisters and their families came over for the afternoon and evening. Matt grilled up some tri-tip for dinner. (Mmmm... California memories...)
The kids exchanged names this year. They had a lot of fun shopping, wrapping, giving and receiving presents from each other.
Grandma got some new Christmas socks!

We played some games after our meal. Pictionary Man was the big hit of the evening! We had such a fun time together!
I think we're all caught up now. We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

A Round of Away in a Manger

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve with Matt's mom, sister, and brother-in-law. We had a really nice evening starting with the traditional fondue. Matt's dad passed along the know-how to Matt, so he's the chef of the evening. We opened gifts after that. Anna and Uncle David are loving their presents--a vacuum cleaner and fudge). Then we indulged in some sweet goodies before heading home before the really bad weather hit for the night. It was a wonderful evening together. (Oops! I just noticed my pictures are in reverse order!)

Shopping and Snow

On Monday, we headed to Frankenmuth with my sister, her girls, and my mom. They have a huge, awesome Christmas store there. Anna was overwhelmed by all the displays because they were EVERYWHERE--at eye level, up above, all over the place! It's a trip we'll remember--Grandma bought us all an ornament!

All the while it's still snowing (unless it's raining). We've gotten over 50 inches so far--and this is the beginning of winter! Matt's been shoveling...and snow blowing...and is now scraping snow and ice off the roof! My mom arrived in Michigan on the 18th. It's snowed or rained everyday of her visit so far. Wonder if she'll ever come here at Christmas again--did I mention she's from Mesa, Arizona?

Baking Success!

Here are baking successes! Matt made some delicious banket. It was so good. He's been sharing it with family!
After our cookies come out of the oven and had cooled (and after Anna's nap) we set to work frosting them. Anna really likes to help with everything lately, so she was right in there. First we had to mix color into the frosting.

Then Grandma and I frosted while she put on the sprinkles. She had such a blast with that!

Funny that while she had so much fun with the cookies, she really doesn't eat them!

Snowed In

We've been having a lot of snow the last couple of days. Since that makes us house-bound, we have been busy at home. Anna's been painting!
And playing outside with Papi.

Matt's been very busy snowplowing. Friday he helped out several of the neighbors and yesterday morning he was out again making the rounds. Yesterday afternoon was nice enough to get out, so we did a ton of shopping. That was crazy (but fun)!
This morning, our church service was canceled. We decided after a late breakfast to do some cooking and baking. We've got squash soup, sugar cookies, bran muffins, and a gingerbread house in the makings right now! Sure is nice that my mom is here and willing to do the dishes as we make our messes!
And it's still snowing!

Christmas Parties

We attended two Christmas parties tonight. The first was a Christmas Around the World party at the seminary. We enjoyed food and wonderful music from several different countries. It was very fun!
As soon as our first party was finished, we headed to our friends' house for the second one. Matt's FFM (formation for ministry) group and a few other friends got together for more good food, some good talks and lots of laughs!
This is Anna with Matt's FFM group. She wandered into the picture, which is fine. She's at the seminary so much and knows these guys pretty well, so it seemed kind of natural. We had an incredibly fun night with lots of friends!

What a Face!

You can't see very well in this picture, but Anna decided she needed to try some of my makeup this morning. She, rather heavily, applied blush to her cheeks! I just had to take a picture of this cute face.
Later, when we were making a brownie, chocolate pudding dessert she was tasting for me. Another cutie pie face!

What We've Been Up To

Our week has had its ups and downs. I was sick for a couple of days, so Matt and Anna got to spend a lot of time together. Thankfully, it was a short-lived illness.
Matt has been playing guitar in church lately, so he's had his guitars out at home more often. Anna has shown interest in them and often asks if she can play with Papi.

Our Christmas tree is up. We took some family photos this morning. (I'll post more of them later.)

Time to go out and shovel the driveway. We got lots of snow the last few days. Here are my bundled up honeys ready to head outdoors!
Matt's winter quarter started Monday. He's taking Jonah (now he gets to use Hebrew!), Ethics, a Greek NT class (the name of which escapes me at the moment), and Intro to Preaching. It looks like it'll be a lot of work, but as usual, stuff Matt's very interested in and excited about. We'll have a busy week ahead of us now--lots of Christmas parties! Matt will have to work hard to carve out some good study time!

Stats

At a little over 2 years and 8 months, Anna is 37 3/4 " tall and weighs 30.2 lbs. Our little cutie sure is growing up!