From Christmas into the New Year

Life has gotten a little busier now that we're settling into life in the Midwest. Here's a lot of pictures from our last 3 weeks!

The day after Christmas we went over to Nathan's boss' house to hang out with his family. It was a blessing to get to know he and his wife a little better. And the kids had a blast playing with their kids. Although their 2 youngest are older than our kids respectively, they had a great time!

Ashlyn and Sarah Beth painting

Micah and Zach had fun on the Wii

The kids have been entranced with the GPS, but it got even better when they realized that you could change the voice that talks to you. Here they are discovering Yoda. It proved to be quite funny and Micah continued to imitate him for the next several days.

We surprised the kids with passes to Legoland Discovery Center. With it being just a few miles from our house we decided it would probably be a great place to seek indoor entertainment during the winter.

I am always amazed at the things that can be created with Legos

On an adventure with Indiana Jones

Going for a ride

The Lego raceway track was a big hit. Both kids and Daddy built their own Lego car and then got to race them against each other and a few other kids.

The kids were told that Ft. Boxes, Illinois would be coming down on January 1st so they spent as much time as they could during their last week with the fort. They even got to sleep in it for 2 nights in a row. It was fun while it lasted!

Peeking out the front door

Either she isn't really sleeping, or that's a really funny dream

But this kiddo always falls asleep right away

We were thankful for the opportunity to meet up with some friends from California that moved out here a few years ago. The kids enjoyed another opportunity to play with other kids. Micah and Michael spent most of their time together playing Legos, but they eventually made it downstairs to play Lego video games. The girls played with their baby dolls and had a great time getting out energy on the slide.

 For New Year's Eve we had a service at church followed by dinner and bounce houses. The kids had a blast!

Ashlyn enjoying her cake

Ashlyn loves bounce houses, but in the past she has typically been too scared to go in one with other kids in there too. She wants to control the bounce herself. But on this night she finally got up the courage to go in the one where there were mostly younger kids, like herself. When she first went in she almost backed out, but I was able to encourage her to quickly get back to the stairs so she could go down the slide. Once she found the slide, she was sold! Nothing was going to keep her out of there then!

Micah had fun trying out all 4 of the bounce houses

The kids got to play for about 45 minutes. I wasn't really paying attention to the time, as I didn't even know what time it was supposed to end. All of a sudden Ashlyn came up to me crying. The event was over and it was time to take down the houses. She was so disappointed she proceeded to cry (loudly) for 15 minutes while the houses deflated. There was no consoling her. By the time they were all packed up she had finally calmed down and decided that climbing on the packed up house was enough to keep her happy.

We were planning to head home after that, but we ended up meeting a family with younger kids and they invited us over their house to ring in the New Year. So we spent the rest of the evening at their house. Ashlyn was thrilled to find they had their own bounce house in the basement!

After all that jumping it was time for a little refreshment

The girls had so much fun together. Here they are pretending to go to sleep with their baby dolls.

Happy New Year!!!

 
With Christmas behind us, it was finally time to eat the gingerbread house. The kids had a ball tearing it apart.

To celebrate a new year, we checked out Oberweis Ice Cream shop, just down the street from our house. We were excited to find board games there so we could play while we ate.

Although the weather here is nowhere near warm by California standards, it had been quite warm by Illinois standards. With 50 degrees temperatures, we decided it was finally time to go investigate the park across the street. Micah and Ashlyn have adjusted just fine to this new weather - they were hot wearing just sweatshirts. I, on the other hand, was bundled up in coat and gloves, and I was still freezing!

On the way back to our house we saw this beautiful sunset. We've had several of them and they are amazing to watch from our front window!

Ashlyn was eager to be my mail helper one day. I didn't realize quite how high the mailbox is until I saw her reach up high to get it open. She did a great job though and was so proud of herself for getting the mail and bringing it in.

With all the beautiful sunshine, Micah decided it was time to open a hot cocoa stand. We were shocked at how many people stopped by (some were even driving by and stopped) to support his new business venture. He is quite the salesman - he waved at every car that drove by, and called to all the people who were out walking, seeking to persuade them to purchase some nice hot cocoa! He had so much success the first day that he was right back at it again the next day and made over $10 between the two days. His plan was to do this every weekend until it snowed. Unfortunately for his business though, the snow came just a few days later. But he was eager to trade in his business plans for some fun in the snow.

The kids were thrilled with a new addition to our kitchen - a movable island that functions as a breakfast bar for them. And I LOVE the extra counter space it gives me!

 

Micah was THRILLED to finally have the computer hooked up again so he could play his computer game. 21/2 months without playing a single game! Wow, that's a long time. He savored every moment he got to play this day.

Finally, this last week we got lots more snow so we took full advantage of all that nice powdery snow and spent much time outside playing in it.

While the boys were outside working hard to shovel the driveway, the girls worked on a special treat with treat.

Ashlyn even baked some of it in her own little oven

Working hard!

4 inches and still snowing

 The next day we headed outside for some creative spelling opportunities. Writing spelling words in the snow is so much more fun than writing them on paper.

Finally, Saturday came and with it an opportunity to head outside with Daddy. First we worked on ice caves out front, then we trekked over to the park to have fun sledding, and this time I brought a camera...

Ashlyn's cave became more of a tunnel

Micah's cave is big enough for the two of them!

Ashlyn got in on shoveling snow too!

On our way to the sled hill

Ready to head home and get some hot cocoa

Nathan got quite a work out pulling the kids around

Looking a little cold

When it snows, they will come... come outside that is. The weather has been cooler since we've been here, so we hadn't seen many of our neighbors. But once the snow started falling, everyone was outside together working on their driveways and it provided an opportunity for us to meet several people. Micah was very excited to find a few friends to play with on his little sled hill out front. The boys spent about 3 hours out there sledding, shoveling, and having snowball fights. So fun! And a wonderful answer to prayer!