Polar Express 4th Birthday Party!

Alll Abboaaarrd!!!!

One of my all time favorite Christmas movies is The Polar Express and last year Linnea shared my love for it. We tried watching it the night after Thanksgiving this year and she loved it again soooo...as I was trying to decide what to do for her 4th birthday I thought maybe this would work. I did some researching for ideas on my fav website Pinterest and realized there plenty of great ideas so we went with it. It was.a.BLAST!

A little crazy since we had 12, yes 12, 3-4 year olds with a parent or two over in our living room with popcorn, hot cocoa and cookies but it was worth it! They were all so cute in their jammies with their fav blankets and pillows. They actually did watch most of it too!

 

hot cocoa and rudolph cookies!

snowflakes now hang from all our fans and will all winter :)

meatballs, lil smokies, veggie/meat/cheese tray that looked like Christmas tree at one point.

fruit, veggies, cheese and crackers...yum!

We gave the guests their Polar Express ticket upon arrival and some colored a train tree ornament to take home. (If we do it again, I'd like to mail the ticket to our guests, but we just didn't have time this year.)

The kids' goodie bags had hot cocoa, a candy cane and a jingle bell.

Linnea got a lot of wonderful gifts that she is excited to play with. Linnea decided to open them after her guests left, I think she was tired and overwhelmed by the end of the movie and catching a cold. 

Thank you so much to everyone who could come, we look forward to more movie/play/craft nights during this chilly winter! 

This was her friend bday party and we have her family one on Monday so stay tuned for the post about that :) This was her first year of having a separate party for her friends than her family since we just cant fit everyone in our house...there would literally be around 40 people I think if everyone came, so we thought it was time to split them up. At some point I am going to do half bday parties for her like my parents did. It gets pretty hard having so much going on in December and this way she will have a party for her in the summer along with the majority of her cousins.

a preview of Linnea's Tinkerbell party!

NPC Party and Baking Day!

The second Sat in Dec we had our annual New Parent Connection Book Exchange. 4 years later I finally got around to hosting the party. I was a little nervous to do it without Chris but we managed just fine! Harper slept for a while after I fed her which gave me time to get the French Toast bake in and  set out the other food. Linnea was very helpful with setting some stuff up and coloring and watching a few shows. She was very excited her friends were coming over :)

Here is the part of the group that could make it plus some siblings :) It is so fun that we are all still friends and that quite a few of us have had baby number two or have one on the way! Even though the kids only see each other once a month if that they play wonderfully!

The rest of the day was spent doing crafts and waiting for the snow and daddy. We watched some of How to Train Your Dragon when daddy got home since we managed to eat and do baths before he got home.

We got to bed somewhat early since I needed to get out the door for Sunday School at my parents church and then baking at my parents house!

That snow we were waiting for Saturday night definitely came! The roads were just fine getting to my parents on Sunday morning but by evening they were pretty awful so the girls and I had a sleepover. 

Dylan and Jake had slept over Saturday night so they were still there Sunday morning into the afternoon. We took some time to build a snowman and play in the snow before baking. But once we started baking we were very productive! 

I got all my andes mint cookies made for a cookie exchange and a few more Rudolph treats for Linnea's Polar Express Birthday Party on Wednesday. 

I also made a new kind of cookie...candy cane kiss blossoms I'm calling them. 

Thanks for all the help mom!

I may be done with my baking now besides making the Reindeer Chex Mix and helping with Chris' goodies.

I'm sorry the pictures are a little cloudy...I was missing my camera for these fun days so these are from my phone.

Sparkling up the House!

We headed to Home Depot to get our tree this year...not nearly as fun as going to a tree farm but with our lil newborn we just didn't have the time or energy to venture out and chop one down. Plus there wasn't snow when we could/wanted to go and it was quite cold, so a Home Depot tree will do :) It fits perfectly in our lil corner and Linnea really actually seemed to enjoy going through the ornaments and helping to decorate it. SO we may have more ornaments at the bottom of the tree than usual but its okay! Chris put up some lights in our porch and in the living room. It's so peaceful and cozy to just sit in the living room with the lights on and a Christmas special or movie on, working on crafts or reading. Love it!

   

 Speaking of crafts, we have been busy doing as many Christmas crafts as we have time for. 

Here are a few:

Nutter Butter Ruldophs

graham cracker santas

GG's Christmas

We finally got over to see GG again! The last time we tried was a few weeks ago when her whole floor has a very contagious sickness going around :( The nursing home put on a very nice Christmas party with some snacks, cheesecake and a band playing fun holiday music. 

Linnea and Harper both wore their fancy dresses for the event.

 Linnea enjoyed dancing and eating the cookies!

4 Generations of Love

2 Months!

Someone is 2 months old already now she is 3 since I have taken a month to post! geez)!!! Harper Marie is a healthy 2 month old besides her darn acid reflux. We have switched medicine and it really seems to be making a world of difference...still an awful lot of spit up and the occasional crying out in pain but nothing lasts as long as before. She is now on baby Prilosec which is disgusting so shooting it down her throat is not so fun but it does help her. She also got some shots which she of course screamed about but didn't have any side effects. Linnea wasn't at the appointment but saw her lil sis afterwards and thought it was pretty neat that Harper got the same shiny band aides she got after her poke.

She weighed 11 lbs and was 23 inches I think. So she has gained about 4 lbs and grew 2 inches! 

She is really smiling and trying really hard to coo and giggle more. It's very sweet and especially sweet when she smiles at big sis :)

Here she is at 3 months!

St. Anthony Park and Hollidazzle Parade

St. Anthony Park is a cute part of town not too far from where we live and it turns out they have a very fun little Christmas celebration so we checked that out with some of our neighbors. Santa and some of his reindeer were there and a store had some cookies to decorate. Linnea took a cute picture sitting on Santa's lap and told him she wanted a dollhouse...which sounds much easier for the elves to make than the thinga ma jigger she told a previous Santa she wanted. She also enjoyed the sleigh ride, decorating cookies and the hot cocoa bar :)

We had a quick lunch when we got home and the girls took naps so they could have energy for our night in downtown Mpls. My parents got to our house a little after Linnea woke up and we all headed to the Holidazzle Parade together. It is such a fun and bright parade! Linnea got to see it all from papa's shoulders. 

We met up with our good friends the Wallins too. 

 Everything was perfect except there was no snow and we parked in a ramp that took FOREVER to get out of. We even stalled in Target riding the escalators up and down. 

Oh well...we had a new Christmas cd to listen to in the car and some holiday m&m's.

 We helped my parents do some decorating after church and Sunday School the next day...seems I spend plenty of Sundays at my parents house since Chris has started working weekends and Linnea has been going to Sunday School with my mom. I feel very lucky to have that option!

Rice Park Tree Lighting and Holly Trolley!

Time to catch up...we have been having so much fun and been so busy since Thanksgiving I haven't blogged much as you can tell...so I will try to catch up!

I brought Linnea and the girls to a new thing this year...the tree lighting ceremony at Rice Park in downtown St. Paul. Apparently the tree there is as big as the tree in Rockefeller Center in NYC. Seems hard to believe but pretty cool if it is! We actually missed the lighting of it but we still enjoyed seeing it be lit, climbing in the big presents and writing a letter to Santa. We saw the fireworks from the car while looking for a parking spot and heard the music performers were pretty great...so hopefully we can be on time next year. It is hard to get out the door at times without Chris and with a nursing infant, but we manage! I decided we would also go to Candyland in downtown where Linnea picked out some yummy popcorn, chocolate caramels with a snowman wrapper and a lollipop! Fun night out with the girls!

The next day we found ourselves riding the Holley Trolley with Santa and carolers!