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| Saint Nicholas made his annual visit and filled our shoes on December 6th. |
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| Santa Adam... with homemade beard and mustache! Love it with the skeleton shirt. ;) |
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| We were busy little elves... making our traditional cookie packages for Jon's family and others. Ray really enjoyed helping this year. We must pass on that secret family recipe. |
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| We had lots of help with the decorating! |
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| At our Friday class (Catecheis of the Good Shepherd and Montessori) we had a sweet little Christmas program. Here's the boys' class singing "Away in a Manger." |
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| We attended our monthly zoo class, which was called "Super Sleuths." Daddy took the afternoon off and went with us! We stayed after class and visited lots of exhibits, ate dinner, and... |
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| ....enjoye the amazing light displays! It was a perfect clear not-too-cold night! |
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| We even got our picture taken INSIDE a giant snowglobe! |
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| The cats were mostly undisturbed by the holiday hoopla. Fortunately, they didn't mess with the tree too much, although they do enjoy laying under it. In this picture they are laying in our bassinet... which I brought up to lend to a friend. She ended up not needing it and now it's a favorite spot for the kitties... back in the basement. |
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| This year the boys were definitely ready for a winter break from school... but I did manage to squeeze in some fun Christmas-themed lessons. We had fun building these 3D shapes with Christmas gumdrops. |
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| I apologize for the blurriness of this picture... but can you believe the size of this ball? It now lives on our back porch. The boys won this at Jon's firm's Christmas party. Once again, we were treated to a super fun evening of bowling, dinner, gifts, and arcade games. |
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| We had a super fun gingerbread day with some friends! We read "Gingerbread Friends" by Jan Brett, completed some gingerbread crafts, and decorated gingerbread men and (graham cracker) houses.  |
And our last big pre-Christmas adventure was our trip to Michigan to celebrate Christmas with Jon's family. We went the weekend before Christmas and had a wonderful time. We were disappointed not to get snow to play in, but we found other ways to have fun!
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| We went to the bowling alley and played indoor mini-golf and rode these crazy spinning go-carts! (With cousin Addie) |
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| We visited Midland's amazing Santa House... and I basically tricked Adam into sitting on Santa's lap. |
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| Jon tried to do a good deed by setting up these "carolers" that had been toppled by the wind. He remembers these same decorations from when he was a kid. |
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| I think the boys swam at least six times in the 3 1/2 days we were at the hotel! Fortunately, their big kid cousins - Emmett and Addie - are good sports. They swam with the boys and their other cousins a few times. |
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| Grandma and her grandkids! |
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| We had a fun family Christmas party and the lovely home of one of Jon's sisters. Our Mario-obsessed boy was greatly indulged! As usual, we came home with a van full of presents from our very generous family. |
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| We also celebrated lots of birthdays! It seems that half of our family has birthdays in Nov, Dec, and Jan. |
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| The winter birthday people! |
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| Look at my awesome gift from my Mother-in-law! I can't wait to sit in this baby during all the rainy spring soccer games! |
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