Our own little family Christmas.

Before we left for home to celebrate Christmas with grandparents and other family, I wanted for us to have our little family Christmas here. We stuffed the stockings, let the kids open one present each, and enjoyed a delicious breakfast of strawberry cream cheese butter braid. So we did our little Christmas on Tuesday morning on Kevin's day off.

Under the Christmas tree...

I love filling stockings! For Hannah I found a lil' purse notebook, a small box of crayons, stickers, Hello Kitty playing cards, a set of mini Christmas books, and a $1 pink apron. Most of her things were thanks to Target's dollar bins! Love that place!
For Eli I found a Thomas the Train magazine activity book, stickers, mini tape measure, I Spy Christmas book, and a blue and red kitchen apron.Uh yeah, imagine Hannah's face at end of Eli's tape measure there. I was standing too close to get her in the picture. She was a good sport about this whole scene though.

Hello Kitty playing cards. Aren't they cute?

Some train track pieces for Eli. We're always missing some special connector pieces when building his track, so this small set contains mostly those. A Doodle for Hannah.

After all this we then had a morning-long debate about whether to drive back home or not. With freezing rain coming followed by heavy snow and knowing Kevin had to come back in the middle of it to work Christmas Day we just didn't know...

Bible time.

The kids both love to just sit and look through the Bible. Either their storybook Bible or just one of Mommy's Bibles (without pictures or anything). I'd love to know what's going through their little minds. Here they are from the other morning. I think it was Eli who got the big blanket down and put it over the both of them (I don't remember doing it anyway). Aren't they cute?

May they always have such fascination with God's Word!

Kids' Christmas pics

It only took 84 tries to get these 10 pictures, but I think they turned out pretty cute!

Merry Christmas!!

Growing up!

Just look at this face. She's really turning into a big girl! What a sweetie!

Well, good morning to YOU!

Love it.

Kansas City Weekend Getaway

Because I'm at the end of pregnancy (6.5 weeks left, can you believe it?!,) we were pretty limited in how adventurous we could get with our activities. No ice skating, no hot tubs, no water slides. So we spent most of our weekend doing some shopping, walking A LOT through shops that are way too expensive but just fun to see, driving all over the city trying to find whatever we were trying to find, taking pics of the city, eating out, and going to movies. But it was so so wonderful!! A fabulous break from the strains of parenthood and a great opportunity to relax and just enjoy each other! Here's the breakdown of our activities and of course with lots of pictures!

Friday afternoon - stopped in the city of St. Joseph on our way to KC to shop at a Once Upon a Child for some winter clothes for the new baby. Ate at Red Lobster and continued on to KC and checked into hotel

Saturday - went to a Jeep dealer and just for fun test-drove a Grand Cherokee (they didn't have any 4-door Wranglers (manual transmission) on their lot, spent a looong time trying to find a shopping area with bigger stores like Target, ate at Chipotle for lunch, ran into classmate from college, did more shopping, then went to Union Station and Crown Center to walk around the shops, ate "food court" pizza for dinner, saw all the beautiful night lights of that downtown area, then went back to hotel to park, walked to Country Club Plaza, walked around all their little shops, went to New Moon movie

Union Station

inside Union Station they had a huge display of electric trains. very cool! didn't make me think of anyone specific at all, nope. =) And to think we only went inside to get change to pay for our parking! so glad we did!view walking through sky walk aka "The Link" from the Union Station to Crown Center

Inside Crown Center
old man brass quartet

huge suspended Christmas tree

a chocolate store

whole big display of a gingerbread village

pretty outside lights

the ice skating rink

they call this the Mayor Christmas tree

Country Club Plaza (our hotel was about 6 blocks from here so we walked here a couple times)

Sunday - breakfast out at nearby restaurant, fabric store and a little more shopping, parked at hotel, pictures in the park, afternoon movie, walked around plaza, Japanese Steakhouse for dinner, Cheesecake Factory cheesecake to go, bummed at the hotel

our couples pics we took in the park with our tripod

Monday - packed up, IHOP for breakfast, back home!