December 2010 and January 2011 Pictures

Greetings! Much has happened since last I blogged. Right now I'm going to create two separate posts for the sake of organization and simplicity. This one includes events from December 2010 and January 2011. Then the following one I will post will include more recent events; (mostly, if not all, from March.) I'll probably not finish the next post today; that will hopefully ensure that this one won't be missed :)

Wendell's Second Birthday

Thursday, December 20

We were going to have two of his favorite friends over (Zeke and Abbey), but it didn't work out, so we just enjoyed time as a family. He opened presents. We watched Toy Story 3 together and ate his birthday cake. We also went out to dinner as a family (a different night.) Wendell is very two :)

Enjoying sprinkles.

Wendell still shows signs of a dairy allergy, so he can't have ice cream :( But he had a cookie or brownie or something. His favorite part, as you can see, was the sprinkles.

Christmas

Our cute little Christmas tree. And our cute little daddy + kids.

Yes, we still have the tradition of little sugar cereal boxes Christmas morning. I don't think any of my siblings continue this. I heard one sister explain that it's not uncommon for their family to get sugar cereals on a normal basis, so it's no big deal anymore. We seldom get them, so it's still a perk of Christmas and trips. :) (Or when we do get them we mix the treat cereal with another healthy one, like coco crispies with rice crispies. Is that just wierd?)

Isabelle and Wendell have new matching monkey PJs. It is so cute that they love to match. Richard's PJs were made by his sister, Kimmy for a Christmas present a few years ago.

Playing with new toys.

Isabelle's wearing the present from Wendell and he's holding the present from Isabelle.

A different day. They're in the other set of monkey pajamas and holding their awesome matching sock animals from our hometeacher and his fam, the Tesene's.

Playdate with Cade and Rylee Ratcliffe. I can't resist photographing them when they play in dress-ups.

Isabelle's Fourth Birthday

January 16

Isabelle wanted a birthday party again this year. This time instead of at the institute building, we did it at our house. It worked out really well. Even though our apartment is small, we did it open house style and people ended up flowing in and out with it always being busy, but never crowded. Isabelle liked playing with her friends. She was really excited about the cake flavor she picked too- lemon cake with strawberry frosting.

Here's Isabelle's little best friend, Emry.

Cade, Jenna and baby Rylee Ratcliffe, Bonnie Barrett, Laynee Hancock, Andy and Katie Wiscombe (couch), Zeke Wiscombe, Emry Schlegle and Abbey Barrett (front).

I wish I would have been more proactive on getting a group shot of all the kids. There were other families that came that I unfortunately didn't get pictures of.

I think I get a little better at hosting every time we do an event. I wasn't as stressed and was even able to enjoy myself. It was actually nice not having to transport everything to a different place also. My goal is to become a fabulous host one day.

Rylee; Wendell; Emry, Myla, and Alaine Schlegle; Isabelle

Here's Wendell's best buddy, Zeke with Emry.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures and blurbs :)

Love ya! More to come soon. There's small news in the next blog.