Christmas Season from Start to Finish

The month of December started with Bob's Christmas party at the St. Clair Country Club. It's always a nice time AND open bar! :-) That night the entertainment was singer/songwriter Erin Bode. Bob and I all dressed up. The Queener's and The Walter's took our little girls to see the Journey through Bethlehem at the First Baptist Church in Dupo. It was a really neat visual of the birth of Jesus. But - it was COLD!!!! A group of us took the girls to see the Wild Lights at the Zoo. The kids and adults had a great time and as we were leaving it started to snow! Such a great evening.

Family Photo Opp!

We celebrated with my mom's side of the family. Here are the grandchildren from the McGeehan side. Syd, Drew, Maddie and Cami. Doesn't my Aunt Brenda's Christmas tree look like one out of a magazine?!?!? Gorgeous!

Cami and Syd had their 2nd piano recital. They've been playing for 2 years, but this is their first year with teacher, Ms. Kate. They're doing AWESOME! After the piano recital we headed to the extended Walter Family Christmas gathering where Santa Claus made an appearance! Sydney was shocked that Santa knew they were just at her piano recital!!!!Cami
This is at the Ganz Family Christmas where Doug represented the Walter Family in a snowman poop eating contest!

Here are all the Ganz Great-Grandchildren. Our family on Christmas Eve at Zion.

And here is what we left for Santa..... I tried saying that Santa needed to lose a few pounds so we were feeding him healthy foods, but the reality of it is I forgot to make cookies that day for him. :-( Bob said we should leave Santa a Coors Light and some Spinach Dip. . .

Christmas morning!!!!! YAY! They got their DSi's they've been asking for all year!!!!

After opening our presents at home we headed to Grandma and Grandpa Walter's house for lunch. Here is the Walter grandchildren. What a cute bunch!

Sydney and Camryn

Cami and Aunt Maggie

After leaving the Walter's we headed home to get ready for Christmas dinner at our house with the Weier's. But before coming in the girls had to get some snow play time!!!! And - it worked out perfectly because Grandma Walter got them snow suits and jackets!

After feasting on a wonderful Christmas dinner, it was time to rip into the presents!!! A Christmas wouldn't be complete without getting UNDIES!!!! That was a Christmas tradition even when I was a little girl. Syd's face is great...

Aunt Nicole and Bob going head to head at Just Dance! Bob USED to be the Champion.... not anymore....

Sam the Elf left Cam and Syd a present Christmas night.

Monday my cousin Amy and I took the kids to lunch and the movies so they could all spend time together (us too) before leaving for Kentucky.

Monday night we celebrated Christmas with the extended Weier's - Cam and Syd got a Karaoke machine which they busted out as soon as we got home! I need to get that on video!

Here is Syd, Kylie and Cami - Kylie's 13th birthday is Thursday so we also celebrated her birthday Monday night!

And that is the very quick overview of our festivies this month! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season!

One Fabulous Fall!

Here we are at Zion's Fall Festival. We were in charge of the caramel apple stand! YUM! Cami and Syd help run the stand every year because it is their favorite stand, so this year we decided we would man the stand too! I can't believe fall's almost over already and Christmas is soon approaching.

Bob helped the girls peel and slice the apples and then I put on the caramel!

There was also a yummy nacho stand.... and Bob sat right in them! 'Someone' set their nachos down in his chair..... Nicole in the background looks real sorry for him.
My two little sweeties.

Pumpkin Carving Time!

Sydney

Cami

Halloween 2010!!!! Ellie the horse.

Kylie with the girls

The girls with Gideon and Jami

Cami the cowgirl and Syd the Indian

Beautiful B's!

The first of the 2 Beautiful B's are my 2 beautiful little Ballerina's! They started dance class and loved every minute of it!!! They are taking ballet and tap, their choice over jazz and poms. The adorable Tutu's are courtesy of Kara Simon. She now sells them for little girls and matching ones for their dolls! :-)

Sydney in pink and Cami in blue

Cami
Syd

Cami striking a pose.

Sydney

My little cutie pies.

The second set of Beautiful B's were the Blue Angels. I took the girls to see them on Saturday, went early and parked in an awesome spot on a back road, waited almost 2 hours, decided to leave because they never came and we had to be in Trenton for a parade. I went to start the van and nothing....van wouldn't start. Bob was playing in a golf tournament, luckily my dad was almost home and was able to come get us. The cars were parked too close together, so we went back later to jump it and yay that's all that it needed!!!! We did finally see the Blue Angels though after finding out the show delay was from a flat tire one of the planes had! It was worth the wait!

Here is the only picture I was able to get up close of all 6 of them. TOO FAST!!!!

One of my favorite pictures from the show! The Cancer Awareness Ribbon. Not sure if that is what they planned it to be, but cool nonetheless.

before and AFTER....

Ahh our kitchen/lower level project is FINALLY finished!!!! Bob and I feel like we are now living in a totally different house! WE LOVE IT! Lots of long nights spent on this project and many weekends. But - WE DID IT and even better - SURVIVED! 8 weeks of not having a kitchen was definitely a challenge, but totally worth it! All of us were totally sick of eating out. We took down 2 walls, replaced all the flooring with new carpet and laminate, got new kitchen cabinets, added an extention to our kitchen, got new backsplash, and all new appliances.. it's a dream!

BEFORE and AFTER

BEFORE and AFTER

BEFORE and AFTER

BEFORE and AFTER

It's so beautiful! I love it so much and am so proud of my hubby for doing a lot of this transformation himself. I had the vision, he had the elbow grease! He's become quite the handy man!!!! Our new kitchen is amazing.

Mom - many thanks goes out to you guys too for feeding us after work before we had to come home and work OR dropping food off to us while we worked. :-) Cam and Syd were totally sick of Mickey D's!