Christmas at the Drexlers

We went up to visit the Drexler side of the family after dinner on the 29th. We stayed up and visited with dad for about an hour before putting the kids to bed. The next morning, the Spichers joined us. :-)



My kids adore their cousin Kendalyn. She's so little and so fun. Noah loves being a big cousin to her. He was trying to help her write her letters.

Dad isn't much of a shopper, so his idea this year was to let the kids pick out their own presents. They loved that idea too! But, before we did that, we let Dad open his presents from us first. The grandkids got him a Cubs toaster that toasts the Cubs ensignia onto the toast. It was really cool!

We also got him a box of candy from the 50s and a Cubs banner.

Em and Jeff had his name for the gift exchange and got him a 10 DVD set of John Wayne westerns. Very cool.

He was really excited about that one!

After we had him open his presents, we headed over to Target for the shopping. Trying to keep 5 kids in check (well, 4, since Avery was in her carseat) while buying presents isn't easy!

But, they all managed to get some great stuff and Papa bought it all for them. :-) He did the same thing for the Drexler kids when they were out at Thanksgiving.

After that we headed up to Olive Garden where he took us all out to dinner. Sadly, my taste buds are still not working due to this foul, filth, and foul cold I have, but I imagined it was delicious!!!!! Today, we headed over to see Mom. She was very excited to see us all and, even though our time there was brief, it was really good for all of us to see her. Pete and Jeff refilled her birdfeeder, Madie drew her a picture, the kids signed her "guest book", and showed her some of their presents. We went out for breakfast together before doing a little more shopping and heading home. It was a great week with both sides of the family and Tater had a great time while he was there too. Now, we have a couple days left before we get back to the grind of our regular lives. Looking forward to, what I hope will be, a wonderful new year ahead!

Olivia's 6th Birthday

Olivia turned 6 on Wednesday and she had decided to have a Christmas-themed birthday. Pretty appropriate, if you ask me!



Even though we weren't at our own house, we carried on the tradition of decorating the dining room the night before. You'll see the trees the kids decorated on the tables. :-)

I was still feeling pretty lousy, so I stopped by Martin's Supermarket and bought a cake for her that morning. Since it didn't have any writing on it, I bought her some food pens and let her decorate it herself!

You'll see it says "H6BO". That stands for "Happy 6th Birthday, Olivia". She also drew a dinosaur, a christmas tree, and all that blue stuff is snow.

We all got some Subway (again, not wanting to cook anything and give everyone else my germs in the process) and got ready for some cake!

She was too excited about the cake (or, should I say, ICING) to eat much of anything on her plate.

We all sang "Happy Birthday" as Pete lit the candles.

Then, she blew them out!

Then, it was on to present time! Her favorite part!

We got her a LaLa Loopsy treehouse. She was, oh, a little bit happy about that. ;-)

But, not as excited as she was about the little Yeti statue we gave her!

She had a lot of presents to get through. She, as all my kids always are, was spoiled rotten by her family. :-)

I do believe one of her favorite presents came from her Aunt Jill and Uncle Adam. It was a Yeti hat and BFF Yeti shirt. She wore it the next day too. :-)

She got Zhu Zhu puppies and another LaLa Loopsy - all really great stuff and she was thrilled with it all!

I mean, look at that smile! That's one happy girl! She had a really great birthday! Just can't believe my baby is 6!

Christmas with the Trolingers

We fit a lot into our time down in Warsaw this week! We drove to IN on Tuesday. I was hit with a nasty cold on Christmas Day here and by Tuesday I felt like death. I drugged up and hit the road with my family and made it there, though!



Our sister-in-law Francy is due in Feb with a baby boy, so we had to get her a gift! I mean, who doesn't love to shop for babies?! :-) We got her a little pair of blue jeans, a shirt that says "New Man of the House", sock monkey booties (see above picture), a sock monkey zip-up hoodie, and a monkey blanket. They'll never have to question who got them the sock monkey stuff. ;-) Jill and Sue got her some really cute things too. It was a fun little mini-shower.

Since we got there on the 27th, we needed to put all the grandkids to work making decorations for Livie's 6th birthday party the next day. They all had to decorate mini-christmas trees, since Livie decided on having a Christmas-themed party this year. They did a GREAT job!

As we waited for everyone to arrive, the kids sat around and played together.

I shouldn't necessarily say "sat down together and played". This was one of the rare moments when they were sitting down and playing. They mostly ran around and laughed and put on shows for us.

Finally the time came for opening presents. You can imagine how excited everyone was! Here, Livie is opening a present from her cousins, Trevor and Ty.

It's a Yeti pillow!!!!!!! Nope. Not excited at all. ;-)

Here a picture of Noah opening presents. We all were able to take turns and open this year instead of the normal free-for-all, which was nice. Easier for me to keep track of who got what from whom. Which, of course, comes in handy when it's THANK YOU NOTE-writing time.

Tater went back with us and got a present too! Since he's the first granddog on that side of the family, nana and papa got him a duck toy. He LOVED it and played with it a lot. Tater did SUCH a good job while was there and everyone really seemed to love having him there. :-) We had a great Christmas with everyone!!!!

Christmas Day!

We have a rule that no one is allowed to get up before 6am. That means that promptly at 6:00:01am my kids are up and running into the living room and cheering, then by 6:00:04 are in our room waking us up. Of course, I fully support this and am excited to get up with them! Because I'm sick with a cold, I wasn't QUITE as enthusiastic as I usually am, but I was up and out there by 6:15 - which is like 20 hours to a 6, 8, and 10 yr old. ;-)



First thing they opened was the stuff in their stockings. They discovered billion dollar Santa bucks in the form of chocolate and there was much rejoicing... yay.

Then they opened another present from Santa...

... it was a K-Nex MarioKart set. And, there was much rejoicing... yay.

Then we gave Tater a chew toy shaped like sausage links. I'm sure he was rejoicing as well, but his rejoicing included tearing the crap out of the thing within 3 hours of getting it, leaving nothing behind by sausage bindings and fluff. ... yay?

We got Pete a set of real agate coasters. The kids thought they were cool and thought he'd really like them. Looks like he did! YAY!

The one thing I wanted for Christmas was a new electric blanket, since mine has disappeared into a black hole that exists somewhere in our house. It also contains socks and binkies from years past. The new blanket is a big and has settings to make it a little warm or super-warm. I rejoiced! Yahoo... er, I mean, yay.

Tater kept at the sausage link toy until he was presented with a giant bone. All time stopped and nothing could tear his eyes away from that bone. Inwardly, he was rejoicing.... yay.

Excited about LaLaLoopsy? You bet!

Is Noah a diabetic ninja? He sure, the heck, is!

Did Madie get so much cool stuff she had to bring her sister into the picture to help hold it all? Yep!

Yes, everyone walked away from Christmas today with smiles on their faces. I mean, how could you not when you're 35 yrs old and get a "How to Talk like a Wookie" book?

The aftermath.

The kids quickly got to work on the MarioKart K-Nex set. Olive was particularly excited to watch the karts run around the track. :-) They are still busy at playing with all their new stuff, so I decided to come in here and do a little blogging while they're happy and occupied. It's been a fun morning, despite Livie and I being sick. And, if you are thinking I've lost my mind with all that "rejoicing", you have to watch "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" to understand it. :-)

Let us all remember that today is more than toys. It's more than wookie books and candy bars. It's about God fulfilling His promise to save us and he did that by sending His Son to earth as a baby. Born to a teenage girl in a small barn in the middle of Bethlehem, He came to seek and to save all that were lost. I am so thankful He did, because of his life here on Earth, I will one day know Him in Heaven. There is no greater gift than that! Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Eve

Yesterday we spent the day honoring our traditions as we prepared for Christmas morning.



Instead of making Santa some cookies, the kids decided to make something with fruit. We still had to give him cookies though, so we decided to make a fruit pizza. That way there are still sugar cookies involved. :-) As you can see, whenever there is food around, Tater is VERY interested in participating!

Once the cookie crust was done, they added the whipped cream "sauce" and added the fruit toppings. We had pieces ourselves for dessert at lunch and, boy!, was it good!

We had to hang our Santa Key on the door, so he could get in last night. Would hate for him to show up and not be able to deliver the presents!

They all wrote down what they wanted for Christmas and stuck them in their stockings for him.

It was all fun stuff that day, but the thing that Livie asked about, easily, 4,509 times was when they got to open their present!! They each get a special gift on Christmas Eve. I always get them books, but they still weren't sure that's what they were getting. You can tell they are just a little bit excited here. ;-)

Amazingly, they did a quick change from the last picture to this one. That's because shortly after opening their presents, we had to get ready for the Christmas Eve Service. But, they wanted to show off what they got. Madie got a "Sugar"American Girl dog and postcard set. Livie got a "Honey" dog with a puzzle book, and Noah got the latest "Big Nate" book, which are his favorites, and a joke book by Phineus and Ferb.

Isn't our church beautiful on Christmas Eve??! Here the choir is singing.

After some singing and a great message, we lit our candles and sang a couple more songs. This was the first year the kids got to hold one themselves. It made Noah a little nervous to be around all that fire, but he did a good job. Pete helped Livie hold hers.

Madie held hers all by herself.

We gave out a bunch of hugs and "Merry Christmas" greetings before heading home and finishing up the last of our traditions. We put out milk and water and the pizza for Santa. We read "The Night Before Christmas" and said goodnight. We usually read the rest of the Advent book, but it was getting late, so we thought about reading the whole thing today.

Here was the tree after Santa dropped off his presents. I took it in the middle of the night and I thought the lights looked so cool like this.

They woke up to quite a nice stash of gifts! Thanks, Santa!!!