Visits and crazy kids

Towards the end of January my parents decided to head out  again to visit their grand kids.  They first stopped at our house for a few days before going to visit with other kids.  It was having them for a few days.

Uncle Billy had 2 business trips to take to Minneapolis and visited with us the first time and crashed at our house the second.  It's always great when family has to come see us, lol.

Oh and we took him to Costco for a Usinger Brat.  They sell them in the food court and are the best Brat around.

Masie found a purple marker and apparently has watched her older sister putting on makeup a little too much.  She was upset when I first discovered her. so I tried to lighten up her mood with some selfies.

 

 Kaders is notorious for falling asleep on the way home from church.  It doesn't matter what we do to try and keep him awake. We yell at him, startle him, sing really loud.  His internal nap clock goes off right at 12:15 on Sunday's.  I mean, not even a lollipop will keep this lil dude awake. 

Micah's 11!

This kid is 1 year away from 12 and I'm not ok with that.  Our lil man is not so lil anymore.  He is such a kind soul that wants to help everyone and he loves to give hugs.

 We let him open one of his gifts in the morning since it was something that would help with these cold Minnesota winters.

 This boy is always cold! Hope this helps.

 Last year kind of got away from us with his birthday and it never right to throw him a friend party. So we pushed it to his 11th birthday.  I'm glad we did! Back in Indy he didn't have a lot of friends and there really wasn't any boys his age at church so it was hard to decide who to invite.  Moving to here has helped.  

 We had a fun movie/game party.  They boys had a blast.

 Turning 11 also meant that Micah would be graduating cub scouts and be moving up to boy scouts.  We had a ceremony for his crossover.

 My handsome little boy!

Love you Micah!  Happy Birthday, thanks for being you!

Happy Birthday Randy!

Well it happened.  Randy is his last year of his 30's  We celebrated in style by going to Culver's (of course).  

 This guy does so much for our family.  He works loooong hours and puts up with lots of crap to provide for our family.  I hope he knows how much we love him. Thanks toots for all you do.  Hope your birthday was awesome!!!

Christmas 2015

The last 3 Christmas's have been in 3 different states and each one has brought on a little something different.  Utah was with lots of extended family, Indy was small and intimate with just us and this year was a little bit of both.  G&G Tucker along with Kristi decided to make the journey out to celebrate Christmas with us.  They stayed for a week and it was great having them be in our home and to be with us during the Holiday!  We like to get fresh trees because of the smell, and well because that's all I ever had growing up.  We found out Costco sold them for an awesome price so we went over and grabbed one hoping that it wouldn't die on us.  I looked it over thoroughly and it looked decent enough and low and behold this is was it looked like after taking off the ropes.  Not too shabby!

 We decorated it and this is where we found Masie a lot of the time.  Isn't Christmas magical.  I love thes moments.

 Malia's gotta be part of these moments too, lol.

 Once G&G got here it was on big party.  We tried to take them to as many places as we could, even though it was freezing.  We wrapped lots of presents and just enjoyed our time together.  Can you guess what this present is? lol.

 Christmas eve we acted out the Christmas story with little puppets.

 And then opened our Christmas Jammies

 Then the kids nestled into their beds and Santa visited

 And bright and early Christmas morning the crew was up and antsy to open their gifts.

 Randy's love of Star Wars has rubbed off on Kaders.  We were able to go and watch the new Star Wars with G&G and Randy was constantly watching trailers of the movie leading up to the release.  That's probably when Kay Kay really started noticing it.  He got some pretty fun "Star Star" gear.

 We found Grandma a fun Minnesota ornament to remember us by.

 Our little bunch in the Christmas Jammies

The day after G&G, Krsti and Lilly had to pack up and start back home on their long journey.  

 We are so grateful they came. We really enjoyed having them here.  Moving is always hard and to have familiar faces during the Holiday's is always a memorable time.  

 We love you Tucker's!!! Thanks for being so awesome!!!

Ears Pierced

Malia has been waiting for this day since McKenzie got her ears pierced.  Now that she is 8 she is finally able to get hers done too.  She has watched and waited for her turn for a long time and we told her that if she waited till we moved to Minnesota, we could get her ears pierced in the Mall of America (really we just wanted her to wait until we moved so we didn't have to worry about taking care of her ears in the middle of chaos).  So she waited even longer than she wanted, till November even (things were really nuts till after Halloween) and we finally went to the Mall and had them done.  She was a trooper.

 She didn't cry at all, although I do remember her getting a little light headed and need to sit down for a bit.  We gave her a lollipop to help perk her up.  Such an excited girl!!!

Fall 2015

 Moving into a new home right before the holiday's started proved to be difficult.  Not having a whole lot of help unpacking since kids were in school and a husband at work, left me with no time to decorate or even really do anything fun for Halloween.  We were lucky to find costumes for everyone.  Our ward had a trunk or treat a few days before Halloween and then we ventured out into our new neighborhood.

 Here's right before we left for a candy haul.

 We did carve pumpkins...

But only 2.  It was too much to handle.

We also were informed about this nursery that has a huge corn pit.  It was girnormous!  The hay stacks went up to about my waist and it had to have been about10-15 feet across and 20-30 feet long.  It was like a swimming pool of corn.  The kids loved it.

 Can you tell?

We also had a couple concerts in the fall.

Hopefully I'll get my act together soon and remember everything that happens.