Holidays with Family

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! We did. On Christmas Eve, we went to Jeff City to visit Grandma and Grandpa Sonny. We spent the afternoon there, had fondue for dinner, and then went to church. The kids did very well and we got to stay for the whole service. Grandma and Grandpa were singing with the choir, so it was extra nice to be there.

On Christmas morning, Lainey got us up around 7:30, but we had to go in and wake up Hayden! Hayden enjoyed opening his presents, but Lainey had no interest (other than maybe eating paper.) We played with new toys, had breakfast and just lazed about until that afternoon. We stopped by Great Grandma Campbell's to visit.
Then, Rick, Leslie and Jackson had invited us (along with Grandma and Grandpa Winn and several others) over for dinner. Steak and crab legs!! Yum! The kids had fun opening presents.

Doug's brother, sister-in-law and nephew came in from Indiana right before the New Year. It's always great to see them. I hope that soon we'll be able to go visit them in Indiana! Hayden and Nolan may be 1 1/2 years apart in age, but they play very well together.
Martin, Paige, Doug and I got to go to the Outlet Mall at the Lake one morning (Lainey went with us too.) It was a lot of fun and I hope we're able to do it again sometime!
Nolan and Hayden stayed in JC with Grandma and Grandpa. I think everyone had a lot of fun (although, I'm sure Grandma and Grandpa slept VERY well that night!)

Uncle Darrel, Aunt Meg and Micah were also in town. We all had a very nice dinner at Heisinger in the activity room. Jan and Gary brought BBQ from a little place in the parking lot of Lowe's. It was wonderful!

Love, Jenn

Christmas Eve Eve

We went to JC on the eve of Christmas Eve to visit our friends Greg and Kristin and our goddaughter, Kate. (They're also Hayden's godparents.) As usual, we had a great time! We don't get to see them as often as we'd like. I'm hoping that we get to spend more time with them in 2007.

I haven't really shown any knitting here since I started the blog. Here are a couple of pictures of Kate in the sweater that I knit for her birthday. I didn't get a picture of it before (since I was working on it up until the minute Doug and Hayden headed to the party.)
Here's a picture of Kate and Lainey. I hope they have fun playing as Lainey gets older.
Love, Jenn

Ready for Christmas

We ventured out to the mall a couple of weeks ago to see Santa! He immediately told Hayden how much he'd grown since last year! Hayden was beaming!! Lainey didn't seem to mind sitting on Santa's lap, but she kept looking at him with a funny expression.We also decided to walk down and see if Sears had any openings. They got us right in. The pictures turned out so well! We're still working on juggling two for pictures, so I was pleasantly surprised.We also were able to decorate the tree a few nights later. Hayden seemed to enjoy it (maybe it was just the eating of broken candy canes that got him excited about it.) We decided we were better off waiting until Lainey was in bed. At this point EVERYTHING goes into her mouth.

The presents are wrapped and under the tree... the stockings are hung... cookies baked... Now to just clean up a bit, head to Jeff City for some visiting with Doug's folks and grandparents and church tomorrow and we'll be back home tucking our little ones in bed. I think Hayden will really enjoy the presents this year.

We've also been invited to my grandma's house for snacks and to have dinner with Rick, Leslie and Jack at their house on Christmas afternoon.

I hope all of you that are reading this will get to be with those you love over the holidays. I hope that everyone takes a moment to do for those who are less fortunate (no matter how small that moment is) and know that we are all lucky to have shelter, food and love! All the rest is just extra!


Love, Jenn

We got HOW MUCH snow?

Wow! Did we get some snow! We got somewhere between 14 and 18 inches! I was up with Lainey several times and kept peeking outside. At one point I could barely see the houses across the street. Hayden was quite excited to wake and see all the white stuff. Here are some pictures of the wonderful igloo that Doug built. Lainey and I were content to watch from the warm indoors.

I think Doug wanted to build this even more than Hayden wanted him to!

My sweet boys in their igloo! How they both fit, I'll never know! Our neighbors, Mike and Hope came over to play as well as Luke, Camille, Dennie and Mark. Hayden kept falling down and had a lot of trouble standing back up!

Jenn