January recap

Well, my resolution to post every week in 2012 has not started out so great.  I blame that on the fact that January has been a pretty uneventful month in our house, and we are ok with that!  We have spent lots of good family time together at home.  Here are a couple highlights we did have:

Grandpa Krings had a birthday on January 2nd.  We went to Fullerton to celebrate.  We recently discovered that Luke can write some letters, so here is the birthday card he wrote.  We're so proud!

 

We decided to start up our muffin tin meals again, so we have them on Fridays.  Here is the first one of the year, and Rachel's first ever!  We kicked off the year with a rainbow theme.  They have been singing the rainbow song they learned from Mickey Mouse a lot, so I thought they would like it.  It was a huge hit!  We had yogurt with red sprinkles, orange Cheetos, yellow cheese, green beans, blueberries, and purple jelly on a sandwich cut into a sun shape.

Another favorite muffin tin is the "make your own sandwich" with crackers, lunchmeat, and cheese. 

Playing on the ipad has been a popular activity.  It's amazing how fast they both picked up how to use it.

Another favorite activity has been eating popcorn and watching a movie. 

This weekend we get to celebrate my birthday!  I plan to enjoy this last year of my 20's! :)

Happy New Year!!

Well, today is the last day of my Christmas break.  Tomorrow is back to work. Luckily, Thursday and Friday are my normal days off, so we have a nice easy week!  We had a wonderful month of December, including a trip to Mexico and lots of fun time with family.

Of course, Christmas preparations have to begin with the picture for the Christmas card.  Here is how our photo session went:



Next was a much needed 3 days of relaxing in Mexico for Matt and me.  It was beautiful there!  We got a massage, laid by the pool, and enjoyed as much food as we could eat.



Luke participated in the Christmas program at church.  He didn't know the words to "Away In A Manger", but he looked really cute up there! :)

On December 18 we celebrated Christmas with the Holthe family.  Luke participated in BINGO for the first time, and had lots of fun!  We received a lot of nice prizes.  After that, we opened presents!  Rachel really got into ripping open the presents this year.



The next few days were filled with cookie baking and treat making.  Luke had a great time decorating cookies.  Rachel was not as interested.



This year we started a new tradition.  We had an Elf on the Shelf visit our house from the North Pole.  He watches over us everyday, then reports back to Santa while we are sleeping.  We woke up to find him in a different place every morning.  Our elf's name was Jake, and we had lots of fun finding him each morning.  His last day with us was Christmas Eve, so we planned a special day.  We had snowman pancakes for breakfast, decorated a gingerbread house, watched the Polar Express, opened presents, had a snowball fight, and went to church.  It was such a fun day starting new traditions for our family!  Christmas morning we woke up to find that Santa left us some presents under the tree!  Then we went to Omaha to spend the day with the Krings family. 



We had a big year of changes for our family, but feel very blessed!  What a great end to a great year!  We are excited to see what 2012 will bring.  I have several resolutions this year - to be more crafty is one of them.  I even started this in 2011 by making some decorations to ring in the new year.

Halloween

I realized once again that I am behind on posting.  So, here are our pictures from Halloween.  Luke was a pirate this year, and Rachel was a Cornhusker cheerleader.  They both looked so cute! We had a lot of fun trick-or-treating around our new neighborhood.