Delightful December and Jazzy January

 This picture was taken when I was two in December of 1990. I (Amanda) am in the white sweater half hidden by my cousin. The other people in the picture are also my cousins on my dad's side. 

This picture was taken when Kairi and Kate were two in December. I'm trying to decide if my childhood me looks like the childhood them.... votes? (Hey we still play with those toys two years later.

This year for Christmas we visited reindeer. They made a guest appearance at the Verona Library, because our library is pretty cool like that.

 Here you see Kate, Kairi and Wesley. We are now planning on growing reindeer in our back yard.

 Got ya! 

 First thing on Christmas morning was to wake up Chris and then we got to open stockings! We have such beautiful stockings. 

 For your future reference, Kairi is in the purple pajamas. Kate is wearing the white dress. Wesley is the tall guy in white and Chris is...

 Okay no. This one is Wesley. I was just checking to see if you were paying attention. 

 Kairi got Elsa and and Elsa dress.

 Kate Anna and an Anna dress. So fancy!

 Allen and Michelle, Michelle and Allen stopped by so we had play Lego's with them. 

 Michelle read them a Dr. Suess Quizzler book. Oh and Kairi changed her clothes into the purple dress. 

(We are now going to skip over a few December things so I don't have to move the pictures that are out of order.)

Have you ever wanted to make your own peanut butter? Well Chris has. We made some and haven't eaten it yet. I think it would have been better if we had not roasted the peanuts first. It turned out a little nutty. But it was fun to make!

 If we zoom past Christmas the next holiday is Aunt Michelle's birthday! This is January folks. I didn't get a picture of her on that day sorry. Maybe she did and will put it on her blog? Zoom some more days (17th baby!) and we get Kairi and Kate's birthday.

 Kairi requested a vanilla frozen cake. We used some game pieces to help decorate. 

 Kate wanted a strawberry heart cake. Again we used the game pieces. Wesley added Batman because he and Anna are getting married on Kate's birthday cake.

And to make the cake's I successfully split an egg in half so each cake could be cooked with one and a half eggs. (I only used half of each cake box.)

 The girls had a little gym show week to mark the end of their learning unit. They were super excited to do the show until they actually had to do it. Bummer. They cried and clung to me and did about half of the things they were asked. But they were happy before it started! And were happy when it ended. :)

 Here they are getting medals. 

(Back to December)

 This picture was taken sometime around Christmas. We went on the free trolley ride around the capitol (was that the same day?) and saw some people dressed as elves doing a run. 

 My brother Allen has his birthday in December before Christmas. He got a pineapple upside down cake and I can't remember how old he is....30? Still young.

 We got him the Lego Star Wars AT-AT for his birthday. It took a while to put it together. 

In case you are confused Wesley is wearing a blue plastic headband.

 One night during Christmas vacation when we were not sick, we went to Glass Nickle pizza in Middleton. The kids keep asking to go back because they have this kid play spot to go to while waiting for the food. 

 Meet Bob. He is an alien snow man. Kairi has a pink hat. Kate in white. Wesley in black. A little trivia for you: Wesley actually lost that hat at school for two days and found it right when I had gone to the store and bought him a new one. 

 Meet Bob's baby. 

 Kate got a drawing book for Christmas. Here Kairi and here have done some of the steps from the book. Kairi did all of these except for the red sheep at the top above the Hello Kitty Sticker. 

 Kate did all of these except for the purple sheep. There's a "cow" above the ducks head and a donkey kicking. 

For the girls birthday we took them to the Milwaukee Betty Brinn Children's museum. They had fun playing post office and spent a long time sorting mail and taking it around the whole place to drop in mail boxes.

 Wesley (and the others) got to build models for their special train day event. Wesley made this train station. He is putting stickers on it that are all written in German. 

 The kids had fun being on TV. I tried to get a Tv shot of them but they were all blurry because the camera man kid kept moving the camera and would not hold still. Their favorite part was when they put on a green vest/shirt and their bodies became invisible on the screen.

If you want to watch almost eight minutes of our Christmas this year you can check out the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is_AMZfDpMc

Okay the link should work now. I marked it as unlisted. 


This one is included here on the blog of a Minecraft song we made underneath our cathedral. Michelle even said "cool" so that means it's got to be super awesome because she usually does not like Minecraft.

Dingle Bells Christmas Cheer

Here is a movie we made for all our fans! Hope you have a great Christmas! 

We also saw Santa! More holiday stuff is to come! (Kairi, Kate, Wesley)

Halloween

On Halloween this year, we had a drifting of snow that melted away before the festivities started. I must say that I was Halloween-ed out this year before the official start of trick-or-treating. We had gone to a school Halloween party for Wesley, a work candy getting at Epic, a preschool party for the girls,  a church trunk-or-treat and finally Halloween night. I was done with candy! Actually, I was tired of lugging around the kids costumes because although they were very creative, they were rather clunky.

Kate picked to be a firework right after she watched fireworks on the Fourth of July. It was fun that she remembered what she wanted to be. Kairi is being a choo choo train. (She picked to be a trash can already for next  year. We will see if she remembers and still wants to do that!)

Wesley is a train crossing. Chris came up with his costume design. The top is attached to a black hat, The lights are on an elastic band attached to a board and hung from Wesley's neck. The lights really work just like on the train. Wesley won second place at his school Halloween contest. We didn't even get noticed at our ward contest because the kids had taken their costumes off to eat pie right when the judging was going on. But Michelle and Allen won for creativity as a painter and The Girl with the Pearl Earring.

Intermission! Kairi got super static hair on this slide!

This is not the best picture of Chris's costume, but it was the only one I got because after we left the house, my hands were full of candy buckets, pie and everyone's costumes.He is a rain cloud and some mysterious person broke the costume before we left the church party. He had taken it off when we walked the kids around the car trunks.

Here's the only one we have of my costume. I was a Christmas tree with battery operated lights. I also had gloves that lit up.

All the kids in a row. 

Before it snowed there was this picture. Now there is snow.

Wesley had no school this Friday so we went to the kids museum.

You can't really tell what is going on so I will tell you. Minecraft three times over. Chris and the kids. 

This is really late in posting. It is part of the twins dance recital from last year. This recording came from Grandpa Heit who managed to get it and not accidentally delete all the movies off his camera. Chris did something spiffy with our camera and got our files even after they were deleted, but he still has not posted them on the blog. :) So enjoy. It's from June. Kate and Kairi both got shy and would not do most of the dance. Kairi got brave enough to do this little bit the second time around.