December happenings

December is always a busy month. We were preparing for Christmas, we had additional Advent meals and services on Wednesday nights, and we were also preparing for vacation!

We started decorating for Christmas on the weekend after Thanksgiving. Since we were leaving for vacation on Christmas Day, we wanted to have the decorations up for as long as possible so we could enjoy them!

Our tree (before Hobbes and Little Miss got ahold of the ornaments on the lower branches)

We had to “redecorate” the tree every evening to replace ornaments that had been knocked off by Hobbes or taken down by Ashleigh. Towards Christmas, our tree started looking a bit bare at the bottom!

Each night, we let Ashleigh choose a present that I had wrapped to open. Then we read the story before bed.

We went caroling with the youth group at a local retirement/assisted living facility. It was nice caroling inside since it was so cold outside!

We woke up to a couple inches of snow on December 21 and very strong winds. Even Ashleigh was done playing outside after about 10 minutes!

Here’s a very tired girl after church!

And here is her newest trick…climbing into the bathroom sink! She likes to brush her teeth sitting in the sink so she can look in the mirror.

She enjoys wearing her boots right now, too!

We’re excited about Christmas!!

Mason Lights Parade

We took Ashleigh to Mason’s Electric Lights Parade at the beginning of December. It was even lightly snowing! What a perfect way to get in the Christmas spirit!

(Matt also had fun testing out the phone on his new camera… all these pics were taken with his phone and without a flash. Pretty impressive!)

One of the first trucks to drive through was a firetruck, and the firemen had huge bags of stuffed animals that they were passing out to children. Since we weren’t right up front, Ashleigh didn’t get a toy (no big deal), but one older girl in front of us noticed that Ashleigh didn’t get one, so she gave Ashleigh the toy she had received. My heart about melted!! A high schooler near us had also noticed that Ashleigh hadn’t gotten a toy, so she ran after a fireman to get one for her. After thanking her, we gave the second toy to the first child who had given away her toy. What sweet people!!

Our favorite floats were the two that had the hot-air balloon baskets on them because they would shoot the flames into the air and the heat from the flame felt SO GOOD!!

We were also able to meet Santa Claus afterwards. Ashleigh refused to sit on his lap, but she didn’t mind sitting with me. It was a very quick visit!

What a fun start to the Christmas season!

Fun around town

Ashleigh’s three favorite places in town are:

-the library (“the libry")

-Meijer (“the Meijer store”)

-the trains (“trains”- train playsets at two local stores)

 

Playing with Legos at Portrait Innovations

Train set at Schuler Books

Playing games at City Limits

The Mason Library

She seems to have fun wherever she goes.

Thanksgiving 2012

(Yes, I know it’s January, but I need to catch up on the blog! I’m going to blame pregnancy!)

On Thanksgiving morning, Matt and I helped with a large community Thanksgiving meal. I prepared food to serve, and Matt went later in the day and actually served the food. The dinner was held at the local Methodist church.

Even though it was just the three of us, we had a lovely Thanksgiving complete with a huge Thanksgiving meal. Just because we weren’t at a large gathering didn’t mean we couldn’t have lots of food!

While the food was cooking, Ashleigh made an Indian headdress. She loved wearing it, although she called it “my crown.”

I (successfully) cooked my very first turkey! It went very smoothly (with the help of my mom over the phone)!

We had several side dishes, including creamed corn, green beans, sweet potato casserole, dressing, and giblet gravy. We had so much food, but it was SOOOO good!

We also had two desserts: cherry pie and pumpkin pie. We ate like royalty for a full week!

We are thankful for so many things!

And we are especially thankful for the new life that will be added to our family!

Gigantic Spoon

Now that Ashleigh is two, she has decided to have quite an opinion on EVERYTHING, including choosing which spoon to use when eating yogurt, as you will see in this video. Now, normally she doesn't get to eat yogurt while sitting on the floor in her pajamas, but we had already survived (ahem, won!) other battles today, so we gave in to her wanting to eating yogurt with a big spoon while she played with her princess castle. Oh you silly girl!