Remembering President Ford.....

Christmas pictures...

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Here are some pictures from our day...
Looks like Santa visited us! Tanner with his stocking.
The kids opening their Playstation 2.
Jaron and Brinlee 

Brenton's favorite past time these days, Pokemon cards. He was very excited to get lots of new packs for Christmas.
Brinlee with her Webkinz. Papa and Yaya got one for each of the kids. You adopt them online and have to feed them, decorate their room, play with them. You earn money to buy them things by playing games on the site. Brenton and I have had a ton of fun with it!
Landon and Brenton
Yaya, Landon, Auntie Great and Brenton 

Christmas Parties....

Tanner's preschool class had a birthday party for Jesus on Tuesday. Here is Tanner, Brinlee and some of the other kids enjoying the cake. Brenton's party was also on Tuesday. Brenton pulled some chairs up to his desk for Tanner and Brinlee and shared his food. So sweet!

Here is a picture of the boys exchanging their gifts.
Brenton giving Miss Snoap her Christmas gift.

I can't believe Christmas is only 4 days away!! I have so much to do yet, gotta keep busy!!! 

Tanner and Brenton's Christmas Programs.

Tanner's Sunday school class sang in church a couple of Sundays ago. This was the first time Tanner had done anything like this. He was very proud of himself!
Brenton's school Christmas Program was last Monday night. I'm not sure if the videos will work for you all or not. Brenton is in the front with his hands in his pockets.
Brenton was chosen to do a speaking part in the program. I meant to take his picture, but the camera was set to video! I actually got most of his line recorded, just missed his last word, so it worked out after all!

Our Christmas Tree!

I thought it might mean more to the kids if we went to a tree farm instead of just driving up the street to Home Depot's parking lot. Papa and Yaya suggested a tree farm in Ionia they had gone to before, so we thought we'd all go together to get our trees. Jim wasn't too keen on driving 40 minutes, but gave in for the sake of good memories. After driving almost an hour, we finally got to the farm, it was a little farther than we thought! The man in charge tells us his crop of Douglas Firs (which is what we both wanted) isn't very good and we might have to take the top of a big one. After 20 minutes of hiking through the trees we finally each found one we liked. Problem was, both the trees we picked were about 20 ft. tall and our ceilings at our houses are 8ft! Jim and Papa cut them down and still ended up trimming off another 2-3 feet. When we finally got home, the tree was still frozen, so we had to wait until the next night to decorate it! I think we succeeded in making some memories! Papa and Brinlee checking out the trees.
Yaya and Brenton sharing a laugh.

Brenton helping to chop the tree.
Tanner decided his job was to pile up all the cut off branches. He picked his favorite one and brought it home with him.
Jim cutting down our tree. He is standing up, not kneeling and he is 6'4". It was a big tree!
Tanner and I goofing around. 

Brenton trying his hardest to drag the tree to Papa's jeep.
This is when Papa and Yaya decided they needed to trim the tree a bit.

The finished product! 

Two posts in one day!

You can tell I am a little bored today! The kids have been playing really well on their own for awhile so I thought I would play with some of the pictures I took last week. I was planning to use one of these for our Christmas card, I ended up using a candid one from the fall of the kids playing outside. I think these are cute, but their smiles looked a little forced. I like the last one, but I wanted one that showed their cute faces! Anyhow, I just wanted to share these. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

 

Snow Day!!!!

Caledonia had a snow day today, along with almost every other school district here in West Michigan, so Brenton didn't have school. We went outside to shovel the drive-way. These pictures show about all the help the kids gave me. As soon as I put the camera down and started shoveling myself, they dropped theirs and went to building a snowman. Oh well, I needed the exercise more!


Here is the snowman they started. This about as far as it got, if you look next to Brenton you can see a small snowman head. They discovered that the neighbor girls were outside and ran to play with them!  

Thanksgiving pictures...

At Papa and Yaya Barry's:

At Papa and Yaya Van Vleck's:
The little boy in front is my cousin Cammie's son, Zachary. Brenton is hidden behind him.