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Archive for December, 2007

It has taken us a few days to recover from all our holiday celebrations with my family up in Ringsted, but I think we are finally getting back into our routine. We had a great time celebrating with both sets of my grandparents and with my mom, dad and brother’s family too. We even had our own little Christmas when we got back home Christmas night. Anya loved the excitement of all the Christmas celebrations and had a pretty grand ole’ time opening gifts! She has definitely come along way in the present opening category from last Christmas….I think she would now officially be considered an expert!

Here are some pictures of our Christmas celebrations! Enjoy….

We hope everyone has a blessed and safe Christmas.

This weekend we had alot of family time which was great. Papa Jim & G’ma Barb came to Des Moines on Thursday to stay with us and spend a few days Christmas shopping. We had a great time while they were here. Thursday night we went to Jolly Holiday Lights (which were amazing as usual) and on Friday Anya & I met them for lunch while out and about doing some shopping of our own. Friday night the grandparents babysat while Jason & I headed over to Freedom for Youth where we volunteered with our church group to make a free walk-in supper. It was a lot of fun and the food was delicious.

On Saturday, Anya woke up cranky and with a fever, which usually means only one thing…..an ear infection. So, Jason & I whisked her over to the urgent care clinic and sure enough she had gunky ears. But, after a few doses of antibiotic, she is back to her normal (ornery) self! After we got that taken care of, we headed north to Forest City to celebrate Zachary’s 8th birthday! We stayed there Saturday night and had the birthday party on Sunday. It was fun and Zachary got a lot of cool presents.

Today Anya & I just hung out around the house, did ALOT of laundry and wrapped a few presents. The rest of the week will be gone in a flash with Christmas right around the corner.

Here are a few pictures of us at the Miller’s.

We had another very quiet weekend at home….will probably be the last one for awhile with all the holiday celebrations we have coming up. On Saturday we took Anya to decorate a gingerbread house at an event put on by a local realtor team here in Pleasant Hill (Pennie Carroll & Lowell Bauer) whom Jason does the marketing material for. Anyways, we all had a great time decorating the house and Anya had a blast having free reign of eating all the candy they had available for the decorating!

Today we went to church and then headed out to do alittle more Christmas shopping. We are slowly but surely getting our list whittled down, but we still have a few more gifts to buy. Then I have to do the dreaded job of wrapping…..ugh!

Here are a few pictures of our gingerbread house fun!

Well, we are in week 5 of Aqua Tot swimming lessons and Anya has really taken to the water. The first few lessons she was pretty tentative and always made sure she was hanging on to one of us somehow. Then, she started getting a little braver and would let go briefly to swim and splash on her own. Then, one night she decided she had more fun being off on her own and didn’t need us around slowing her down. So, her teacher suggested that we let her get in the water by herself tonight and have one of us waiting on the sidelines to jump in if she got spooked in the water. So, that is what we did and she did absolutely fabulous. She swam the whole 30 minutes all by herself (with the aid of her float belt of course) and had fun waving and splashing at us on the edge of the pool. She even jumped in off the side of the pool several times and came up all giggles.

Here is a link of a few minutes of her swimming lessons from tonight. The quality isn’t the greatest, but you get the idea: