Christmas Day in Ellswoth, WI

After opening our gifts to each other it has become tradition to drive out to Ellsworth, WI to spend the day celebrating Christmas with Chris's immediate family.

As you can see below, Linnea was happy to go!

Here is her cousin Ella being cute!

After our ham lunch, they brought one of the barn cats in to pet and play with for a bit which Linnea loved!

And we did some wrestling/attacking.

And aunt Amy thought it would be fun to decorate some cookies after opening all of our wonderful gifts. Below is Peyton and her cookie! Good job Pey Pey!

Mommy and Linnea

And here is the happy couple after two busy days of celebrating. We ended the night with a game scrabble and some wine, which I hope becomes a tradition too!

We have two more Christmases this weekend provided the weather allows us to get to Woodbury Saturday and Bellechester Sunday! Then its back t0 work for me :(

Christmas Morning 2010

Merry Christmas!

We had a very nice Christmas morning together with gift opening, coffee, cinnamon rolls, strawberries and hot cocoa for squirt. We forgot to get a family picture in our jammies by the tree. And we also forgot to take a picture of the tree with the presents from Santa under it. oops! The blocks you see above were left by the man in red. They are wooden blocks similar to the ones we had growing up and Linnea can pull them around in their own lil wagon! So far she loves having us make a tower and then she is good at knocking it down and laughing!

After seeing what Santa left unopened under the tree we dug into our stockings.

Then we started opening gifts. We also put Toy Story 3 in so Linnea would stay in the room while mommy and daddy opened their presents.

Linnea (with Mommy's and Shutterfly's help) made this mug for Daddy. It has 3 pictures of her on it and it says I Love Dad all around. He said it was his favorite gift. Good job L!

I think we are all super happy with our gifts but were mostly so happy to spend time together! We are looking forward to next year when Chris has more time off around Christmas.

Christmas Eve 2010

Santa comes tonight and someone is excited!!!

This is Linnea in her pretty dress by our tree before heading over to Great Grandma's (GG's) for Christmas Eve Day. We did Christmas Eve a little different this year. We had a lunch instead of supper but it was just as fun. Christmas Chicken tastes good any time of day and it's always nice to see the family.

Chris had to work during the day so we held the camera out and took it ourselves!

Happy Birthday to Mommy!

Cheese!

We reserved the Conference Room at GG's for our celebration.

Here is the end of the main meal feast.

And the start of the cookie feast! YUM!

We needed my mom in there for a 4 generation picture...but this is still nice. I should have zoomed in, sorry!

We gave a Linnea a cookie (well, one of many, she just loves them and who doesn't really?) to help her stay in the room while the adults did their gift game/opening.

And then the kiddoes got to open their jammies! Grandma and Grandpa used to always give us jammies on Christmas Eve that we would always change into before leaving their house so we could crawl right into bed and wait for Santa. GG is continuing that tradition with her great grandkids and it's wonderful!

Linnea got a catnap in before 5:00 church. She went right up to the kids sermon with me and seemed interested.

With the help of pencils and paper,

and goldfish Linnea stayed at the church service for almost an hour! but then it was time to go to the nursery and play.

We went to my parents house for potato soup after church which was gobbled up by Megan, Brian, Chris, Linnea, myself and of course mom and dad.

Family pictures by the tree! It's not Christmas without them!

And now the jammies are on. And of course Elmo's Christmas Countdown is also on.

We had a wonderful Christmas Eve and it was a nice birthday for me too!

Don't pay attention to my worried voice on here! How embarrassing but the video is so cute I wanted to post it anyways!

Linnea's 2nd Birthday!

Happy 2nd Birthday Linnea!!! Here you are one year ago with your elephant:

And here you are now! 2 years old! What a big girl! You are full of energy, giggles and smiles!

You go to daycare now and have made many friends, Addie maybe being your best friend there. You are trying so hard to talk! You say new words every day. DeepyDee is not heard half as much now. We will probably never know what you were saying when you said deepydee but it sure was cute. You are a very smart lil girl. You know many animal sounds and can recognize animals when we ask you to find them on a page in one of your many books. You love books! You also love the tv...Elmo and Toy Story in particular. You know where the snacks are in our house. You know when someone puts their jacket on you say bye-bye. You know where your jacket is. You have many different faces, your surprised face being a favorite. You have been to about 8 weddings, two major road trips, cheered mommy on in many races, you have gone sledding, you like riding in the jogger, you love animals, you have stayed overnight at all your grandparents houses and you are just an amazing and fun and sweet little girl! I could go on and on! All our adventures would not be the same without you.

We love you Linnea!

We had an Elmo themed Birthday Pizza Party on your actual 2nd bday, December 21st, 2010.

Grandma and Grandpa came and were lucky enough to get a picture with you!

Many other friends and family members also came to celebrate you.

What a lucky and loved little girl you are!

Mommy made you and your guests Elmo cupcakes which were devoured quite quickly...well the frosting was and the chocolate chips I used for eyes were eaten off of many of them, not just your own.

You got some very cute Cookie Monster slippers which you didn't want to take off. You just wanted to dance all night in them.

Mommy and daddy gave you some books, Toy Story 3 and...

it's a pillow, it's a pet, it's a pillow pet!!!

You were wiped out by the end of your special day and just wanted to snuggle with your lady bug.

You also received so many other fantastic toys and clothes!!!

It has been great playing with all of them with you.

Thank you to everyone who could make it!

We had a wonderful time and hope you did too!

Macy's

There have been ups and downs to being a working mom and one of those ups is when I have weeks/days off and get to spend them doing something extra special with my little girl.

Since I am an aide in the schools that means I have the same schedule as the students. Which means two weeks off for Christmas!

We still have to pay for Linnea to go to daycare so she has been going most of the days this past week. That gave me the chance to get out and ski, do some more Christmas shopping and other holiday preparations. But I did choose to keep her on Wednesday and we headed to downtown Minneapolis to check out the Macy's 8th Floor display. I realize its the same one as it has been for 3 years but I still love it! We didnt make it to the parade this year but hopefully we will next year.

We went with my friend Lisa and her twins! I worked with Lisa in one way or another for almost 4 years and we have become great friends!

We loved looking at the Day in the Life of an Elf display...

but we especially seeing Santa and getting some cookie treats from Mrs. Claus's Bakery! Yummy! this was Linnea's 5th time seeing Santa and after watching her friends sit so calmly on Santa'a lap she did the same! SO I bought the professional picture which I will try to take a picture of and put it on here.

As you can on L's lips, she really loved the frosting.

We decided to do a little shopping at holiday lane in Macy's and stay downtown and eat on the 12th floor of Macy's where we also had a blast. I hope to make this going to the 8th floor a tradition. I remember many fun trips with my grandparents and cousins to this special display.

December Playgroup

My "New" Parent group got together once again this December for our childrens book exchange playdate. It is so much fun to see all these either 2 year olds or almost 2 year olds together. It is very cool that we all met in a free new parent connection class at Woodwinds Hospital and have been hanging out almost once a month ever since. Those of us that keep this up can say our kids have been friends their whole life and mean it! Most of us started that class when our babes were just a few weeks old if that. All of our kiddoes are growing into wonderful little people with their own personalities!

The attempted group photo is below...almost all the kids are in it! They may all be looking in different directions but at least we got them sitting on the couch together!

Somehow Sophia and Linnea always end up on the steps together with their sippy cups or a toy. Sophia and Linnea's parents are also very good friends. Sophia's Daddy Carl and Linnea's daddy grew up together in Red Wing together and then I went to college with Carl. Chris and I met at Carl and Lori's wedding! So fun to have kids the same age!

Two cute girls! Maryn and Linnea!

And Linnea doing one of her fav things. Sitting at a table just her size and snacking.

Henjum Christmas!

We had our first Christmas gathering of the year December 18th with my dads side! Julie and Bob hosted and it was very fun!

It was full of appetizers, good conversations and some Christmas movies/specials. Linnea even fit into one of my old dresses! My mom thinks I wore this when I was about 2 as well! She looked pretty cute and loved this little rocking chair.

A special visitor also came by with a big red sack full of toys! Linnea got to see two Santa's in one day! And her fourth one this year.

But she didn't enjoy sitting on his lap any more than the first three tries...

Dylan didn't mind a bit though!

And Ian thought he was pretty cool too!

Thanks Santa! Cant wait to see what you bring us Christmas Day! Ho hO Ho!

Winter Wonderland

Last Saturday morning we headed to Oakdale Nature Center with Megan, Brian and their boys for a Winter Wonderland! It was a wonderful way to start my Christmas break! As you can see they offered us breakfast...Linnea decided to double fist it with doughnuts! Coffee, cocoa and tea was also offered! yum!

There were crafts to be done and a Santa to be seen. We ran into this bear on the way to the Santa line. Linnea had a stare down with it. She also saw the tongue and then touched her own tongue. The realization that she had the same thing as that bear was really something.

She found some books to read while waiting for her turn with Santa.

Something was quite shocking in the book below I guess!

We finally made it to Santa (it really wasnt that long of a line actually) I sat with her at first and she wasnt crazy about it but...

we thought we would try leaving her with him alone anyways and here is what we got...

A pretty whiny little girl. Not screaming, just not really wanting to sit with him.

She did however enjoy the sleigh ride! We all did!

And we liked the bonfire and smores before we left too!

Cant wait to do it again next year!