Monday, December 29, 2014

Merry Christmas!

I just love this time of year! Celebrating the birth of our Savior, getting together with family and friends, giving of gifts to loved ones, and the food! We had a great week celebrating and it's a joy to see the excitement the kids have for the season. Here's a recap with lots of pictures.

Christmas Eve the kids opened a box with new pjs, a movie, and some snacks. We enjoyed a quiet night at home and now Blake's new favorite movie is Charlotte's Web.


Christmas jammies!
 Christmas morning before church the kids opened their stockings. We also Skyped with Grandpa and Grandma Pontier in Canada so the kids could open their gifts from them "live" on the computer.




All dressed and ready for church Christmas morning!
Later Christmas day we went to my sister Grace's house in Pella and celebrated with her family.
Lots of fun with the Barnes cousins.
Finally we made it back home in the evening to finish opening our presents for the kids and each other.


Rebecca and Blake love their new scooters and had to practice riding them in the house.
 This past Saturday we had Dan's family over to our house for the De Vries Christmas. We spent almost the whole day together and had lot of fun.
Brianna got pretty good at ripping open presents!
Opening gifts from Aunt Linda and Uncle Bill.

Trevor and Blake intent on a video game.
All the little grand kids!
We still have some celebrating to do when my brothers and their families come to visit for New Years!

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Birthday Celebrations

It's been a while since I've posted. We've had a pretty quiet November. Back at the beginning of the month, Dan and I celebrated our birthdays and we took advantage of a Groupon deal and stayed over night at the Ramada hotel water park in Des Moines. The kids had a great time swimming, I didn't have to cook supper, and it was some good family time after harvest was mostly over.

Here are a few photos of our fun day away.
Brianna loves bath time so it's not surprising she loves swimming too.
Rebecca was very brave and we had fun racing down the big water slides.


Birthday supper for me!
Everyone helped me eat my birthday brownies and ice cream. 
It took Blake a little while to get comfortable in the water, but he eventually was able to go around on his own.
He went down this slide a lot!
We also had a great time with friends and family for Thanksgiving, but I failed to take any pictures! Can't believe Christmas is in two weeks! Love the holidays and trying not to stress out :)