Busy Weekend

On Friday the kids and I (Mandy) found some good deals and Target and then started cleaning up the house.

On Saturday Ellie and I went to a welcome home shower for Drew and Paul and Nate went on an excursion to car dealerships and Lowe’s. In the afternoon we had Nate’s picture taken. He was all about business and was a great subject. The photographer tried to chit chat with him and he wanted to just get his picture taken. After pictures we went to Red Robin for dinner.

On Sunday we went to church in a round about way because of the marathon and then to Steenstra’s to watch the football game. Most of the girls didn’t actually watch the game instead we enjoyed the weather outside with the kids. It was close to 80 degrees!

On Monday we went to the zoo with Rebekah, Avery, Lisa, and Drew. Of course everyone else had the same idea. The parking lot was completely full by the time we left. Luckily the zoo didn’t feel crowded. Later in the afternoon we took a bike ride to feed the ducks and go to the park. Nate rode his bike. He was very proud of himself that he rode all the way to the park. He is not quite comfortable enough to ride up and down hills so he walked his bike on those parts.

The “spiders” navigating the web and Ellie in the tube.

Drew and Lisa enjoying the nice weather.

6th Picture

I was tagged by Jason Addink to do this 6th picture thing.  I don’t usually do these type of things but what the heck, it sounded fun!  The following are the rules:

1. Go to your sixth picture file.

2. Go to the sixth picture in that file

3. Post it and blog about it.

4. Tag six people

Well below is the 6th picture file in the 6th folder within the folder where I store my picture files: (sounds confusing but it’s not)

This is a picture that was taken 11/30/2008 @ 4:24PM inside of the Phoenix Convention Center.  I was there with Andy Keizer attending the Arizona Auto Show.  The perspective of the picture is looking down and SE from the escalator landing on the 300 level of the West building. 

View the spot I took the picture in Google Earth by copying and pasting these coordinates 33° 26.959'N, 112° 4.220W

OR

Click to view in Google Maps

People we are tagging – Andy & Rebekah, Lynola, Wendi & Jason, Tyler and Jessica – sorry, we could only come up with four

Future Plumber?

Nate was telling Opa what to do to fix the leak in the pipe. His favorite part was being able to talk through the wall.

More Snow

 

Making a snow cake for Oma and Opa.

 

Pretending we are in a snow globe by throwing snow up in the air.

 

Our first snow fort. We built it from the hard shell of snow that was covering the front yard.

Building a new snow fort using buckets full of snow.

Our finished snow fort.

Rosy Cheeks

Nate is modeling his rosy cheeks from playing in the snow.

 

Making Pancakes

Ellie stirred up the pancakes for breakfast one morning. Stormy even wanted to help

 

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Snow Play!

Playing in the snow at Oma and Opa's house in Flagstaff

(left) The snow hill has gotten even larger since this picture was taken
(right) Mom and the kids

(left) Toilet seats make great sleds!
(right) Our attempt at an ice fort

Sunday-A Visit from Aunt Dawn, Gabe, Lucy, and Jordan

Aunt Dawn and Gabe and their two dogs, Lucy and Jordan, came to visit from California. The kids loved hanging out with Lucy and Jordan again.

Ellie hanging out with Dawn.

Christmas at Doug and Elaine's House

Jumping on the trampoline. Notice puppy is also flying in the air in the second picture.


Ellie was so worn out by all of the festivities and jumping on the trampoline that she fell asleep snuggled up on the floor with her cousin (once removed), Daniel.

Saturday Morning at Our House

Ellie decided she wanted to snuggle with Uncle Nick.


Stormy also snuggled with Uncle Nick.

Friday at Our House

Hanging out with Uncle Nick watching a movie.


We got a package!


We did some baking for Saturday. Nate was a great apple peeler.

Christmas Afternoon at Grammy and Grampy's House

Christmas Morning at Our House

We had a nice breakfast of wake-up casserole and cinnamon rolls while we were opening presents. The kids got lots of presents but we only posted a couple pictures of the two of them.

Bikes. Too bad it rained most of the day so they didn't get to ride them until Friday.


Eating breakfast. Ellie refused to take off her princess dress. It took a lot of convincing to get her out of it.

Oma made them aprons to go with their new kitchen.

Christmas Eve

Zoo for Mommy's birthday

We didn't know Ellie could do the splits.




Hanging out in and by the treehouse.



Yakulla Caverns. Nate enjoyed making clogs in the slide with all the other kids stacked up behind him. Once we got Ellie to go in the cave we couldn't get her to leave.


Some pictures of the animals. Most of the animals were in the sun since it was a pretty cool day. (Deer, Jaguar, Zebras, Giraffes, and Tiger)