Before heading up to Idaho, we spent a few days in Salt Lake City with Rafe and Tennille.  We got to have lunch with Nate’s brother Deveren and his wife Kiara and their kids while Tennille and Rafe were at work.  We also got to go see the lights at Temple Square, which is something I haven’t done in forever.  It was beautiful and FREEZING.

I made the cousins matching pajamas and Nate helped me make the freezer paper stencil shirts.  The kids looked super cute!

And Tennille made all of us matching Christmas pillow cases…you can see them in this picture:

Christmas Day was fun and included church, presents, family, and food…and more food!  Our vacation was filled with parties, staying up too late, and playing with our family!

Traditionally, we start our Christmas season by attending some sort of concert.  Unfortunately, here in Small Town, WI our options were limited and a major event was no less than 2 hours away.  Lucky us, Magei’s violin studio had a Christmas recital…unlucky us, the flu hit Sam hard on the day of the recital and Nate was the only one who got to go.  But I watched the video and she rocked!

 We spent Christmas in Idaho this year, and since I didn’t want to drag too many gifts with us, we had a mini Christmas at our house the night before we left.   Christmas had a little theme going on: getting through long car/plane rides.

I made Magei and Sam car organizers that attach to the back seats.  These things weren’t too difficult to sew, but they took FOREVER to put together.  Cutting out 2 of each little piece, plus cutting interfacing, plus ironing on the interfacing, plus batting, plus sewing binding on each piece…and then times that by 2…yeah, it was a lot of man hours for something that doesn’t look too complicated!  But they turned out cute and the kids were happy with them.

We used them in lieu of stockings and filled them with all sorts of travel snacks and road trip activities.

I made them their own luggage tags using a tutorial from skiptomylou.org (along with my own modifications because her technique for sewing on vinyl was 2 thumbs down.)

And their luggage tags went nicely with their new luggage!  The kids were super excited to unwrap these because they were in huge boxes.

 I also made the kids crayon rolls, which was something that had been on my to do list for about a million years.  The tutorial also came from skiptomylou.  They used these things nonstop during our travels.

 Talulah did her best to unwrap, but of course had no idea what was going on.  Magei pretty much asked for one thing: a robe.  She hasn’t stopped wearing it!

St. Nikolaus came to visit the kids on December 6.  Apparently they have been good, because they got presents and not sticks.  Talulah didn’t have a clue what was going on, but she did think it was pretty fun eating her shoes.

Can you see that tiny blue spec in the picture below?  That is Sam stalking our backyard neighbor.  He is not allowed to leave our yard when all the other neighborhood kids are at school, so he sat right at the very edge and watched the neighbor dad dig post holes in his backyard.  Eventually the nice guy took pity on Sam and invited him over to help.  I’m sure it took him twice as long ,but Sam had a blast digging those post holes.

In September we got to go to Janesville and visit the Gurneys!   What fun!

 We spent Thanksgiving with some friends from church and the missionaries.  We had intended on going out for dinner before we got the invite, and so my mind was already pretty set on not cooking.  I bought pies, rolls, and cut up vegetables…the perfect amount of work for me!

We had several little Halloween parties this year.  Thankfully, the Raggedy Ann and Andy costumes from last year still fit because I didn’t have much time to prepare anything.  Magei and Sam weren’t super thrilled about wearing exactly what they wore last year, and by the time trick-or-treating came around, they both just dug stuff out of the dress up box.

Nate’s work hosted a Halloween party and the kids had a super fun time.  Talulah was the cutest little skeleton ever!

I think the kids enjoyed handing out candy more than they enjoyed getting it themselves.  They planted themselves in front of the door and stayed put until we convinced them it was time for us to go out.

In September we took a weekend trip over to Milwaukee.  The kids were dying to visit a zoo (there isn’t one in La Crosse) and we were anxious to see the Brewers play a game.  We got to the zoo early and spent a good part of our day there…despite this:

It rained for several hours, and quite a bit of that time was torrential downpour.   We made the best of it and hung out under an awning for lunch and ran from indoor exhibit to indoor exhibit.

It finally did clear up, and we had a great time seeing the animals and riding the train.

Miller Park was pretty dang sweet.  The game was super fun, we ate tons of stadium food, and our team won…a perfect night!

Sam has been loving 4 year old kindergarten!  It is the best thing and I’m so glad Wisconsin has it as part of the public school system.  Sam plays so hard, many afternoons end up like this:

The best thing is that even after a nap, he is still ready to go to bed at his usual 7:00 bedtime each night.

4K usually has some kind of optional field trip on Fridays.  Most of the time we don’t get to go because of Talulaha’s nap schedule, but on this day we made sure to make it to the fire station.

Across the river in Minnesota there is an Apple Fest every year.  We were told it was pretty awesome and should definitely go.  We went.  We saw.  We could only find 2 apple dishes at the entire fair.  Not so impressive to Nate, who was hoping to eat himself silly on all things apple.

There was a classic car show that we thought was fun.  The kids found this little gem and got to sit inside.

Both Magei and Sam have had little programs at school this year.  Sam’s was first, right around Halloween.  He sang Five Little Pumpkins with his kindergarten class.  He’s still singing it, actually.

Magei’s program involved all of 2nd and 3rd grade.  Second grade did about 3 dance numbers.  The partnering was random, but she happened to end up with a little boy (green shirt) who was just as enthusiastic as she was.  They were tearing up the dance floor!

Sam and I were enjoying a quiet afternoon together while Magei was still at school and Talulah was sleeping.  All of the sudden I heard what sounded like a fire cracker outside the french doors that lead to our backyard!  Just as I turned, I saw a gray lump fall to the ground and feathers floating in the air.  A bird had flown right into the glass door!  (And obviously it wasn’t because it was too clean to know it was there!)  I was so worried I was going to walk over and find a half-dead bird lying on the ground needing to be put out of its misery.  Luckily it shook it off and flew away…and if it died later from blunt-force trauma, at least I don’t have to know about it!