Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays to you as 2006 comes to a close. It has been a busy year for us.

Our first full year of parenthood and we have survived!! From Alyse’s department getting shut down with CitiMortgage and her starting a new job with The Principal Financial Group working in health insurance. What a change from mortgages, and of course sending Ella to daycare for the first time. Alyse also got some quality time by herself taking a quilting class this fall through a community education program.

Charles continues to work at John Deere Credit and likes his job for the most part. He really enjoys the people he works with and the company itself. He’s on daycare duty most days – dropping off and picking up Ella. This extra time paid off when she said her first word, Da. Or was it Dao? Which in baby language is dog – for her ever-faithful companion, Duste.

For our 5 year anniversary in November, Charles and I headed to Colorado for a few days of snow skiing and our first Denver Broncos football game. Charles is quite the fan, you know! And Charles got to experience skiing in Colorado for the first time. It was Alyse’s third at Winter Park. It was our first experience away from Ella and we all managed well. Ella had some quality bonding time with her grandparents.

We wish a wonderful 2007 for each of you and may God richly bless you.

Love, The Anliker’s – Charles, Alyse, Ella & Duste

PS: Keep checking the blog for updates throughout the year.

Helping

Here is Ella helping helping Charles put together her Christmas present -- a John Deere pedal tractor w/ a loader. She loves it!

My little helper

Here's Ella helping me wrap Christmas gifts. What a good little helper --

All ready...

Here are Charles and I -- all ready for the Broncos game.

Broncos Game

Here are Charles and I at the Broncos game. As you can tell, this is the start of the game, since Charles is still smiling and I'm not shivering.

Casa Bonita

There is a pretty well-known restaurant in Denver called Casa Bonita. It's a rather large Mexican restaurant that has lots of entertain. Not a dull moment. From a mariachi band to all kinds of shows and cliff divers, it is truly a great place to take a family. This is only 1 section of the restaurant.

Coors Brewery

While in Colorado, we took a tour of the Coors Brewery. Here is Charles posing by one of their etched windows.

Happy Holidays to you as 2006 comes to a close. It has been a busy year for us. Our first full year of parenthood and we have survived!!

From Alyse’s department getting shut down with CitiMortgage and her starting a new job with The Principal Financial Group working in health insurance. What a change from mortgages, and of course sending Ella to daycare for the first time. Alyse also got some quality time by herself taking a quilting class this fall through a community education program.

Charles continues to work at John Deere Credit and likes his job for the most part. He really enjoys the people he works with and the company itself. He’s on daycare duty most days – dropping off and picking up Ella. This extra time paid off when she said her first word, Da. Or was it Dao? Which in baby language is dog – for her ever-faithful companion, Duste

For our 5 year anniversary in November, Charles and I headed to Colorado for a few days of snow skiing and our first Denver Broncos football game. Charles is quite the fan, you know! And Charles got to experience skiing in Colorado for the first time. It was Alyse’s third at Winter Park. It was our first experience away from Ella and we all managed well. Ella had some quality bonding time with her grandparents.

We wish a wonderful 2007 for each of you and may God richly bless you.

Love,
The Anliker’s – Charles, Alyse, Ella & Duste
PS: For more up to date information about our household, visit our blog at http://anlikerfamily.blogspot.com/

Skiing in Colorado

Charles & I recently took a short vacation to Colorado to go skiing in Winter Park for a few days and also to see a Denver Broncos game. Here we are in front of our condo.

Birthday books

Ella has really gotten into listening to books in the past few months. She will bring a book over to me and turn around and sit on my lap. So silly she is!

After Ella got a book for her birthday, she was more interested in that than the rest of her presents, so here she is with her Great Aunt Renae and her cousins, Patrick and Allison.

Ella eating her cake

Here is Ella eating her birthday cake with Charles. She also decided that she really likes playing w/ tissue paper. Christmas should be fun this year with the wrapping paper, ribbons, tissue paper and boxes....oh and those things called toys!

Ella's Birthday Party

Here is Ella at her first birthday party. We had it at the Pizza Ranch in Pocahontas on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. Ella really liked the chicken. This is her when everyone is singing, "Happy Birthday" to her.

Pecan Pie

Here is Ella guarding the pecan pie at Christmas. The table and chairs were just her size.

Happy Thanksgiving

From the snow bunny. Here is Ella at the Anliker Thanksgiving. She really likes this rocking chair and has requested one for Christmas. We'll just have to see if she gets one.

Putting up the tree

We spent Thanksgiving at our home and so we decided to put up the Christmas tree. Ella thought she would help, so she got the ornaments out of the big box and handed them to us to put on the tree. Here she is with a lid from the ornament box. She just thought this was the funniest thing to do and has since been doing with clear Rubbermaid containers.

Birthday Cheesecake

For Ella's first birthday, she had a Cookies and Cream cheesecake. She didn't make a mess with it or really eat it. Just played around. Since her birthday was on a Monday, Charles & I just sang Happy Birthday to her.