Christmas Catch-Up

First, hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We had a great Christmas here. Before I update on our Christmas, I need to back up and cover last weekend!

I was hoping to get home to MN on Friday, the 17th. Unfortunately, it was for a funeral on Saturday, but I also had plans to see family while there, too. Steven had signed up to work overtime, so Addy and I thought it'd be an easy and quick weekend trip. A childhood friend of mine lost her sister to down syndrome. She was the heart of their family and left us all with such sweet memories.

Well, my plans didn't work out. Not because we didn't try. Addy and I went to the airport and waited and hoped for just one seat to be available on the two flights left for the day. It just wasn't meant to be. Duh, it was the week before Christmas, but still, I thought just one seat would be available!

Our evening wasn't a complete waste at the airport, though. While we waited, we got our picture with Santa! Windows 7 and Southwest Airlines were doing a promotion and offered free pictures with Santa, so we took them up on their offer! This would be Addy's first time seeing Santa this close this season, and she wasn't such a fan. She wanted to see him, but when we got close, she held on to me for dear life! So mommy got to be in the picture, too!


Then we found a play area, which was a big hit! All these times we've been to the airport, we had no idea this play area was just 4 gates away from where we usually fly out. Addy and I just went for a walk and stumbled upon it!



We also found a toy store on a different concourse. Again, a really big hit! She found all sorts of things she loves, stuffed animals, Sesame Street characters, crayons, kid-size table and chairs, all the good stuff!




You'll notice she likes to line up her toys. I'm not sure why, but she does that with everything!

Then we kept the fun rolling on Saturday by having Mackenzie and Katie over. Chris and Jen went to her Christmas party for work, and we played all day! The girls made cookies and decorated them for us.


I put Addy on dish duty. She kept wanting to eat the cookies as she decorated them. :) She liked dish duty, so all was well.


Next we hurried off to the mall for pictures with Santa! Mackenzie and Katie went first and did a great job. Addy must have noticed that they survived it, so when it came time for her turn, she actually sat on his lap and did quite well!


Then, to end the night we joined our friends at their church for a Christmas festival. It was great! We saw another Santa, took a little train ride, saw a model train exhibit, and got a horse drawn carriage ride! It was cold, but fun!





It was a great weekend, even though our plans didn't go as we originally thought!

One milestone I need to mention is that on Wednesday last week, Mackenzie got to babysit! She and Katie were out of school for Christmas break, so they came over and spent the day at our house babysitting Addy. Steven was home, but he slept all day because he worked the night before, and Mackenzie really took care of Addy on her own all day! Yes, she is only 10, but she is extremely mature and takes great care of Addy! What a great bonus to them living so close to us now!!!

He's Still Got It

We got to see Garth Brooks last night! He is doing 9 shows to help raise money for victims of the flood that happened back in May. This was the first concert! Friends of ours got a bunch of tickets and we were lucky enough to get 2 of them! The concert was awesome, classic Garth Brooks. Just like the good ole days! I saw him when he was in Minneapolis in the mid 90s, but Steven had never seen him in concert. We had so much fun!

Here are some pictures of him waving to us, tipping his hat to us, and just singing to us!!! :)




His wife, Trisha Yearwood, joined him on stage for a few songs, too. That was a fun treat!



Thanks, Ben and Jess for the tickets!

While we were at the concert, Addy got to have a sleepover with Mackenzie and Katie. I'm pretty sure she had as much fun as we did! Completely undivided attention and popsicles, who could ask for more? Thanks for taking such great care of her!

Mmmm, Cookies!

I've been wanting to make cookies with Addy for a while now, and we finally had time to do that over the weekend. She loves cookies, and every other dessert for that matter, so I thought she'd enjoy it. I totally took the easy way out of this and bought the cookie dough and frosting. I knew making the cookies from scratch just wasn't going to be a realistic option this year, mainly because of time.

She LOVED it. When I showed her how to roll the dough, she took that as an opportunity to eat the dough! She did really well with rolling it out and cutting out the shapes though.



It's hard to tell in the pictures, but we had flour EVERYWHERE! Addy's shirt was absolutely covered in flour. Oh, but she had so much fun!

We made the cookies on Saturday and then frosted them on Sunday. Saturday night we went to Mackenzie and Katie's Christmas program at their church (which was awesome, they did great) and then to our neighbor's house for cookies.

The frosting pretty much covered Addy's shirt like the flour did when it was all said and done, but she loved frosting and decorating the cookies just as much as she did making them. She did really well, too. She was very gentle with the cookies to frost them and she didn't pile the sprinkles on too thick! The hardest part was trying to keep her fingers out of her mouth and trying to keep her from eating each cookie after she decorated it!



So, Addy, how did you like baking cookies?

Funny (Sort Of) Update

So, I got out of a speeding ticket coming home from our Thanksgiving break in MN thanks to my hubby, but guess who wasn't so lucky? The hubby himself! We were surprised, to say the least, when we opened the mail last week to find a speeding ticket that was automatically generated (like a red-light camera) on the way to MN while he was driving through Iowa! It was a letter stating the facts with 3 pictures of my car and license plate. Pretty crazy. We both laughed about it, but I must say I was glad I wasn't the one driving! Especially since the ticket was for going 68 in a 55!!! Now, if you know Steven, he probably didn't realized the speed limit dropped from 65 to 55 because he really doesn't have a lead foot...usually. :) We consider ourselves lucky it only cost $75 and won't affect our insurance!

Another post with pictures to come...we did some baking over the weekend!

Sweet Girl

A few days ago I came home and found this:


Steven said that Addy was laying on the floor so he got down and laid next to her and put his head on her and said, "Can I use you as a pillow?" She got up and went over to the couch and brought pillows to him and then laid her head on him! So sweet!

Addy's latest passion is basketball! She plays every day now, and her Daddy is loving it! She alternates between wanting us to put all the balls on the floor so she can put them back, and wanting to stand on the step stool so she can reach the balls herself. Either way, she likes the timer to run like it was a real game!





She seriously will spend 20 minutes at a time playing! I decorated our Christmas tree while she played one night!

Elmo is certainly one of Addy's favorite things these days, if not her absolute favorite thing. So when I found these little juice boxes, I knew she'd love them! And boy did she ever. They're 4 oz, and she will sit and drink the whole thing all at one time. She was so excited about them!



And yes, her hair is long enough now to get messy! She can get a serious case of bed-head! We love it.

Thanksgiving Weekend Part 2

Saturday night we took Addy to the Mall of America. I'm not sure Steven or I had been there since we moved almost 4 years ago! Even when we lived there, just 15 minutes away, we rarely went there. This time we were going for one purpose: to take Addy to what used to be "Camp Snoopy". Now it's all decked out in Nickelodeon stuff, Sponge Bob, Blues Clues, Dora, the whole works. We had so much fun! Addy doesn't really know any of the Nickelodeon characters yet, though she does have a Dora cup. She didn't care, she LOVED the rides...most of them!

The first ride was on Blues Clues and she really liked this one. There were buttons to push to make the ride go up and down and she liked that. Getting off the ride, not so much. I had to convince her she could go on the "trucks" if she got off. That worked!


The trucks were also a bit hit and she didn't want to get off when the ride was over. She loved the steering wheel!



We took a little break for a delicious Italian dinner, and Addy loved that too. We had baked spaghetti, so so yummy!



Then it was back to the rides. We rode the roller coaster and the school bus, neither of which she liked as well as the first two rides. She hung on more on these rides!



The carousel was a big hit, too.


The last ride of the night was probably her absolute favorite. The hot air balloon ride! She liked it so much we actually rode it twice!




It was so much fun, we're so glad we got to do that with Addy! I'm so glad she enjoys rides. I loved them now and I loved them as a kid, too!