Bowling

One of our favorite actitivies when we're back with my parents - Bowling! Ella absolutely loves it. So Lexi had to get inaugurated too - Aunt Heather took her bowling!

We got beer - so the girls got... You guessed it - Root Beer!

One-offs

In January, we said goodbye to Uncle Jim Bargman. Lexi and Charles were wiped out, as was Mickey (Clark and Cindy's dog). Ella really enjoys playing with Mickey at Grandma and Grandpa Anliker's.

Uncle Clark and little Miss Lexi.

Lexi fell asleep one day like this. She's laying on the floor. As you can imagine, we were shocked - Ella was nothing like this.

Ella just had to help Dad take the Christmas tree back down to the basement - yes, the tree is in the box.

Miss Ella ready for the hot tub at Aunt Brenda's.

Hanging out - watching a movie w/ popcorn and M & Ms - her favorite treat.

Raspberries on the tummy for Miss Lexi.

Getting ready to build the 5' tall snowman in the park!

Sisters - Ella just loves to hold Lexi.

Big smiles while laying on her changing table - her favorite place!

This picture makes me laugh because her cheeks look so chubby.

Pre-Christmas preparation

Christmas preparations around our home consisted of us putting up the Christmas tree in mid December, due to Charles' travel schedule after we had Lexi's baptism and Ella's birthday. Then we make some holiday cookies. This year, I really enjoyed decorating them. And finally, leaving the cookies and milk and apology letter for Santa. Boy, was Ella ever surprised when she came down on Christmas morning to find that Santa HAD stopped at our house!

Lexi - Baptimsal gown

The day of the baptism was a little hectic, so I took the opportunity a few days later to take some pics of Lexi in the baptismal gown we borrowed from Josh and Heather. Paige wore it as did Ella and now Lexi. Here's some pics from our photo op.

Oops - back up one

Before we left to make the trek to the parents/grandparents over Christmas, we had our very own Christmas here. Christmas Eve was a very bad day around our home - so bad that Miss Ella wrote a letter to Santa begging him to stop at our home, but understanding if he just thought she was on the naughty list and skipped over us this year. Well, lucky for Ella - Santa changed his mind and made a very nice stop for us!

Christmas morning was a wonderful morning with Santa's good graces being seen and our ability to make it to church - although the roads were terrible. Many did make it to Mass, but some unfortunately could not. The Bishop even came out saying, It's ok to miss Mass due to the weather.... geesh!

Ella's favorite gifts - her 'Nintendo DS' (aka VSmile learning portal), her new golf bag and her new sunglasses. And Alexis - well I'm sure she'll like most of her gifts later, but for now, she really likes this light up Seahorse that plays music for 5 minutes straight. Talk about a God send for car trips for a kid who hates her car seat and just cries. Needless to say, traveling is getting better with her.

West Bend/Pocahontas Weekend

Well for any of you readers who were not in Iowa over Christmas, you didn't get to experience our very, very white Christmas. I think parts of the state got over 15" of snow and travel was very treacherous all over the state. Thankfully we didn't have plans under Saturday, the 26th, so we didn't leave until that morning to head north. We spent Saturday day with Charles' family and had a wonderful time as always. Ella was her happy go lucky self and so very happy with all of her beautiful things and Miss Alexis was just herself - beautiful and just content being held or staring at a ceiling fan!

Sunday noon was spent at Holy Name Hall in Poky with Alyse's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Again, a fun time had by all eating, visiting and playing BINGO. Unfortunately we had to head out relatively early as we wanted to get back home before dark because once again, it was snowing. My goodness.