Winter break

I've been lucky to have both Olivia & Aaron home the past two weeks! We've had lots of fun and been very busy...

This picture is WAY out of order and blogger isn't being cooperative in moving it to the correct place in this post and so we'll deal...

On New Year's Day we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's. Carter hadn't been since he was a baby and Olivia since her 3rd birthday. (That was a bad experience and the reason we hadn't returned until now.) They both had a lot of fun! Olivia bought cotton candy (apparently she's never had it before) with her tickets and we found out after getting home and she tryed some, that she doesn't even like it. Score!

Oh! Back to Christmas...

I took the kids to our city's community center to see Santa and have little story time with Mrs. Claus. The kids had rehearsed before hand what they would ask Santa for and didn't miss a thing when they got their turn.

Carter even got a Santa hug.

Wait! Carter did forget to tell Santa that he wanted a "Stinger." (a type of power wheels car) I reminded Carter that he had written it in his letter to Santa and should be okay.

The first real snow of the season. Olivia was overjoyed to make snow angels.

I promise to put more pictures of Haylee on here soon!!!
(Yes, her skirt is flipped up...very lady like)

One of Aaron's home improvement tasks during his winter vacation was to rewire our basement light switches (his idea...not mine...but I am glad he did it). A head lamp comes in very handy for jobs like that. Apparently Carter thinks he needs that head lamp to play Pac Man too.

Did any of that yogurt make it into your mouth?

Christmas Eve
We had no need for new pajama's and so the kids got new games (again, we had no need, but it's so much more fun) which we played immediately!

It was funny that Carter had never mentioned wanting Candyland Castle. In fact, he's never even played it before. But when he unwrapped it on Christmas Eve, he loudly exclaimed, "This is just what I always wanted!"

Mary, Joseph & baby Jesus (Haylee was in bed already).

Santa came!

(See Mom...this picture is for you...it DOES look like there are a lot of presents!)

Poor Olivia didn't wake to excitement. She had to run to the toilet and spew before she felt like hearing how Santa had visited our house.

Carter was overjoyed that Santa had brought them a Stinger Powerwheels. He was happy to sit in it while unwrapping his other gifts.

Bless Aaron for being such a hard worker! Aaron took on the BIG task of painting our wood panelled basement this week. Not only did he make sure everything was nailed down good, but he drove in each nail head, spackled over it and then sanded it down. That was two days worth of work before washing the walls & the two coats of primer could even start. Carter and Olivia were so excited to wak up on Monday morning to help Daddy paint the basemen though!

Aaron took on this big project because we had already purchased the paint to do this when we first moved in to our house (back in May 2007). After seeing the white primer on the walls, though, we decided that the nearly white paint we had originally purchased wasn't going to look good and so ended up purchasing a darker brown color to mix in with our white colors. (We are so cheap and couldn't bare to just not use the paint we already had.) What fun to concoct our own color ;)

So here is a before.

After!

(Call me boring, but I really like neutral colors.)

Again, before.

After!

I am so glad that Aaron spent all that extra time prepping the walls! They look so smooth and nice. Thank you Aaron for my new basement! Maybe I'll take up sewing again ;)

Aaron and I splurged on these storage cube shelves for all the toys.

Merry Christmas to us! hehe

Oh, Aaron and I also got a new generator for Christmas!

(I know, we are so exciting ;)