Go Pack, Go!!

For 1 day, Jeremy conceded to being a Packer fan. Him and our good friend Rich went to Green Bay last weekend to take in a Packer game. The stayed with Rich's family who don't live very far from the stadium. From the way it sounds, they had an awesome time!!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow....

We finally got a big dumping of snow last week and the kids have had a blast playing outside.

Catching snowflakes!

Santa visited the Mantorville Opera House last weekend for Mantorville's Old Fasioned Christmas. Lizzy is our only child who was still willing to go sit on Santa's lap! :)

Thanksgiving-Family Time!!

We spent Thanksgiving Day at my mom and dad's with Christopher and Kelli. It was a great day of relaxing and spending time together. Somehow the oven got turned off half way through cooking the turkey and wasn't noticed for almost an hour, so dinner took a little longer to cook than planned, but it worked out great becasue we were able to get through an entire game of Mexican Train!

Taylor and grandpa.
Jeremy and Christopher looked a lot a like in their flannel shirts and faces full of hair!
Grandpa and Lizzy.

Christopher and Kelli.

Greg, Malee and Mason's first Christmas photo. Although they weren't here with us for Thanksgiving, they just bought their tickets to come home in January so we will see them shortly after Christmas.

Tim, Sam and Liam drove over from Wisconsin to spend the weekend after Thanksgiving with us. We had a great time visiting with them and playing with Liam.

The boys in their Vikings attire (except Tim, we'll have to work on that the next time he is in MN!)

The girls and Liam!

Uncle Jeremy and Liam.

Lizzy and Liam-wrapped up in Packer love!

Luke and Liam.

Great grandma Margaret and a handful of great grandchildren.Group shot!

We played lots of Outdoor Challenge on the Wii when Tim and Sam were here. Lizzy is taking Tim on with one hand!!

Taylor teaching Liam a few tunes on the piano.

Skyping with Grammy, Hapa, Becca, Alicia and Dominic in California. Almost like being together for Thanksgiving. :)

Putting up the tree

We usually put our Christmas tree up right after Thanksgiving, but Elizabeth was adament about putting the tree up last weekend. We don't have much room in our living room for a tree, but just have a small artificial tree, so it works. The kids have so much fun looking through all of their old ornaments and hanging them on the tree.

The second day the tree was up, our cat had already knocked it over and the stand broke. I was going to buy a new one, but Jeremy rigged up quite the tree stand out of 2x4's. It's pretty funny and looks very redneckish, but I covered with a tree skirt and I think it will be able to withstand our devil cat!

Taylor's year to put the angel on top!
Getting ready for the Christmas season!!

Time for the hard cast!

Lizzy went in on Tuesday to have a hard cast put on her elbow. The check-up went fine which we were thankful for. I had tried to change the appointment last week and they said that it needed to be on a day that the doctor was in surgery in case they needed to bring her back in for surgery if anything had moved, but thankfully that was not the case.

Last night with the soft cast-now mom and dad won't have to worry so much about Lizzy bumping her arm.
You can see the two little green capped pins in this picture. You can also see the doctors initials a number of times on her arm from when she had the surgery-want to make sure they are working on the right arm!!

Lizzy had planned on a green cast all along and when I suggested that she should get a red stripe for Christmas, her eyes got real big and she said "can I really get two colors?? I know what colors I'm going to get!" And here she is with her Packer colored cast. Jeremy tried to write "Go Vikings!" on it, but she confiscated the marker.

Lizzy's trip to the ER

Lizzy is recovering quite well after breaking her elbow and having surgery to have pins put in last weekend. She was doing some cheers in her bedroom with a friend and somehow knocked over a folding chair which folded up on her arm. She has been in great spirits and is managing quite well with one arm. She doesn't have much patience and is struggling with having to wait for help with the things she can't do with one arm, but overall is doing great.

She goes in for her hard cast on Tuesday. I'll feel a little more comfortable when she has the hard cast on so I won't have to worry about those pins getting bumped too hard through the soft cast. I'll post more pics when she gets her cast.

MOA and Macaronni Grill

A few Saturdays ago, we took the kids and Lizzy's friend Abigail up to the MOA to do a few rides at Nickalodeon Universe. Jeremy had won some points for rides at his work Christmas party last year and we had to get them used up. The last few times we had been at the mall, it had been pretty dead, but this time it was packed, so we didn't stay real long. The kids still had a blast doing some of the rides.

Abigail and Lizzy riding the small roller coaster. I had the camera with me and the little girls, so Jeremy wasn't able to get any pics of Luke and Taylor doing their rides.

Best Friends!!

Since the mall was so busy and we weren't there very long, we wanted to make the most of our drive up to the cities and decided to take the kids to Macaronni Grill. They had never gone there when we had one in Rochetser and Jeremy and I loved to eat there, so we thought we'd share that with them. Our kids love bread and the bread at Macaronni Grill is delicious, so they really enjoyed eating there
The girls!

My favorite little guy in the world!

Even with the beard, Jeremy and Luke look so much alike!

Happy Halloween!!

It was such a nice night for Trick-or-Treating. I took Luke and Liz to the DelBianco's to trick-or-treat around their neighborhood in Byron as there just really isn't many houses by us. It's fun for the kids to have friends to go with and nice for the adults to have some company as well!

Luke went as some Star Wars charachter. For the life of me, I can never remember what it is called.

Liz went as a zombie princess.
Luke and Liz ready for trick-or-treating.

Taylor and her girlfriends waiting for a ride to town to trick-or-treat. Not really sure what they all were dressed up as. :) I think they did more running around town than trick-or-treating.

Pumpkins!!

So I am a little behind on blogging and have been meaning to get some pumpkin/Halloween pics up for a while. Here are some pics of the kids carving pumpkins on Halloween. I was so thankful for such a nice afternoon that we were able to carve the pumpkins outside. Such a messy activity, but so much fun. The kids each picked a fun design to carve on their pumpkins. Luke picked a really complicated mummy and although you could tell what it was when it was lit up, it was a challenging one.

Luke, Taylor and Liz working hard on their pumpkins!

Scraping out the guts!
Luke working hard on his mummy design.
Pumpkin seeds! The best part of carving pumpkins!

All done-Trick or Treat!

Luke's mummy-hard to tell what it is in this pic.

Lizzy's skeleton face.

All the hard work paid off-they turned out great!

The girls' room makeover

We finally got around to painting the girls' room last week. It turned out pretty cute and although they have to share a room, it is a good blend of both their personalities. We tried to create a little of their "own" space for each of them.

Taylor's side of the room. I found these cool hanging lanterns online.
Lizzy's side of the room.

Jeremy put together these nice "work stations" for each of them and I love the way they turned out. I had fun buying them each a few drawers and organizers. Now if they can just keep their stuff in all the cute organizers...:)

Baby Liam and a new ride

We went to Wisconsin last weekend and spent the night at Jeremy's cousin Rockie's house. Tim, Sam and baby Liam met us there as well as some of the other cousins. It has been so fun getting to know some of Jeremy's cousins over the last few years and the kids have a blast playing with Sage and Parker. Thank you for having us, Keith and Rockie!

We hadn't seen Liam since July and it was so fun to see how much he had grown and changed in the last few months. He is still such a happy little boy and the kids just love to see him.

Jeremy and Liam-he seemed scared of Jeremy in his beard at first but by the end of the day had lot of smiles and giggles for him.
Uncle Tim and Lizzy
Liam wearing Jeremy's hat.
Luke and Liam
Taylor and Liam
Another reason we made a trip to Wisconsin was to pick up the van we bought from Keith and Rockie. My old van died about 2 months ago and ended up going to the salvage yard. I have been driving my mom's car for the last few months and although I was thankful that she had an extra vehicle I could borrow, I was very happy to have a van again. A car just isn't big enough with 3 kids! We're loving the new van and are working to try and figure out what all the buttons do!
Lizzy and the new van.