Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was perfect! Mark's parents and grandparents came up and we went to the 4:00 service at church which is a kid's service. We came home and Mark and I made a nice dinner and we were able to enjoy some family time.

Grace had to have a photo shoot with her dolly who had a matching Christmas dress!

GG and G2Pa

Having appetizers with dolly

Prime rib, roasted asparagus, and twice baked baby red potatoes--yum!

The tree is ready for Christmas morning!

Pre-Christmas Fun!

With Christmas falling on a Saturday, Mark ended up getting the two days before off of work. We had planned to go to Indy on Thursday for a day at the Children's Museum with Grace. The Gall's invited us to come down Wednesday evening to go to a place called Bounce U. We decided to make a two day fun fest for Grace. Bounce U was amazing. It's two large rooms full of bouncy castles/slides. She loved it!

Collision at the bottom of the slide with Jill and Noah!

We stayed the night at Mark's parents house and then headed to the Children's Museum around lunch time. We had the best time! The past month had been really crazy for us and we hadn't had a ton of time together so it was nice to have a day set aside for the three of us to just be us!

Lunch in the cafeteria. They have a toddler bar where you can choose four toddler favorites--Grace's choice was cottage cheese, mandarin oranges, apple sauce and macaroni and cheese. She LOVED it!

One of the exhibits was polar bears and penguins. Here's our little penguin...

Headed down the "ice" slide

Mommy as a polar bear (wonder who was having more fun?!?)

Climbing through the castle

and on the castle!

Brushing a reindeer

Having a "snowball" fight on the "ice" rink

Grace in the kitchen

Vroom vroom!

Daddy and Grace at the water table

Hone Christmas

The weekend before Christmas we headed to Michigan for the annual Hone Christmas. As has become tradition, Grace and I stole away for a bit to visit my friend Meredith and her family. She has a son, Sam, who is just a few months older than Grace and just welcomed another little boy, Finn, into their family. It was such a treat to see the Baker family!

Grace and Sam opening their presents to each other

Finn

Kisses for Finn

Playing with Sam

Sam showed Grace how to climb on the ottoman...

and then leap onto the loveseat! They had so much fun doing this!

After we left the Bakers we were able to meet the women of the Hone family for lunch in downtown Rockford. What a treat to have us all together!

Nana was quite happy with her two girls on her lap!

Of course part of the festivities always includes trying to get a picture of GG and G2Pa with their greats. There are two more added to the picture this year--Anna and Brennan, who was just 2 weeks old at the party!

Grace has gotten really good at opening gifts!

The entire crew!

Grace and Gabe had a great time running to the front door and then running into the dining room and throwing themselves onto the floor! I don't know how many times they did this :-)

It was a great get together with lots of food, laughter, and fun times!

Pizza

Grace has developed a love for pizza (and it makes her father proud!). Here are a few shots from our dinner at Bruno's, a local pizzeria, a few weeks ago.

Variety

Grace loves variety and lately has been insisting on having multiple bowls of different types of cereals. This is a typical morning after we've eaten our yogurt.

Move over Martha Stewart!

I saw these cupcakes in a magazine and hoped that I'd have an occasion to try it out. Luckily, Grace had a Christmas party at school so Mark and I set about recreating the cupcakes.

Surprise cupcakes with chocolate frosting, tootsie roll ears, pretzel antlers, mini Nilla wafer snouts, and M&M eyes and noses.

The cupcakes were a huge hit at school :-)

A weekend at home!

With the amount of traveling we have been doing, having a weekend at home is a treat. After Grace got home from Chicago, we had just that. That Saturday, Mark went to a Purdue basketball game and Grace and I made Christmas cookies and had a slumber party. She didn't make it very long on our slumber party...


The next day we had a snow storm and Grace and Mark made it out to play in the snow.





Then Grace and I worked on more Christmas cookies. It is so much fun baking with her--the problem is she wants to cook all the time now!

Our finished product!

Once we had all our cookies done, we bundled Grace up in her snow suit, put her on her sled, and delivered cookies to all of our neighbors. It was way too much fun!