Sunday brought a visit to Gram and Pa to celebrate Christmas Marchik style. Paul kicked off the visit with some viola tunes - it has been so much fun to see him learn this new skill. He won't let me video him playing....he catches me when I try to hide the phone to record him! So just a still shot for now.
My sweet babies dressed for Christmas Eve Mass.
Sad that only the littles consistently do the sillies now after we finish the serious shots.
We can call this Paul's very own silly I suppose....goofing off with a set of Gram's coasters.
The Batman socks *totally* go with this outfit. Yep, they do.
And then the opening began! Paul helped play Santa to pass out gifts.
Someone was pretty excited for his new Lego kit.
If you give Paul a book (which Gram and Pa did), be ready for him to start reading it right away. In the middle of the chaos he was nose deep in his new book.
She added a little flair to her hair. Looks great Lillie!
Awe - my sweet boys, big and little. Paul loved his new Under Armour ski hat.
We had a lovely lunch and then headed to Christmas Eve Mass at Gram and Pa's church. We even ran into some friends and got to wish them a Merry Christmas. It was a fun day and so nice to drive home in 20 minutes rather than 2-1/2 hours!
Our Christmas celebrations started on Saturday with my side of the family. This is our first holiday in this house and it has been fun determining where all of our decorations (new and old) will go! The weekend was met with great anticipation by three children who were really ready for the holiday to commence. Peter enjoyed playing with the Polar Express - typically would have been under a tree but this year it was just on the rug on the floor instead.
This is the only "group shot" that I took this year - I was a little lax on the camera and instead just enjoyed the moments. I am glad I caught this moment of divide and conquer....each kid paired with an adult to do something they enjoy. Lillie read to GranJo , Peter played picture dominoes with Auntie Jen and Paul played Battleship with Uncle Chris.
GranJo commented on how impressed she was with Lillie's continued improvement in her reading. I couldn't believe that Lillie read all 116 pages of the books in one sitting.
My oldest elf! Such a handsome young man.
After we had lunch, the present opening began. Big smiles for anything car, truck, helicopter, etc. Thanks Uncle Chris for the police car to match the helicopter you gave him for his birthday!
Lillie was super excited to open a mood ring from GranJo.
Three of the ladies during the present opening.
No big surprise that she was grinning ear to ear to receive these new books from Auntie Jen!
And the most unique present of the day.....a headlamp from GranJo. It's a light and also it's red like Rudolph's nose. We were all blind by the end but his smile didn't fade.
A new outfit for Layla her American Girl doll....yes please!
We had a lovely day with lots of laughter and plenty of food. I am so happy to be able to host again - the kids have plenty of place to play and all of their things to entertain them and others. It was a blessed start to our Christmas fun.
Still getting caught up - this is from mid August when we took a family bike ride. This was Lillie's first big ride on a path and for a distance. We ended up riding about 6 miles and she did great. We chose a path we hadn't ridden before where the first section was really nice and then the second section had been flooded so it was a little less nice. There were some cool tunnels and at one point a large snake. Quite an exciting day. She was SO excited - here she is on the first part of the path.
Here she is in action - I was a little nervous she was going to run too far to the right and land in the canal.
We got to a point on the yuckier part of the path where we couldn't go any further. Right after we made the turn Lillie took a fall and skinned her knee pretty badly. But Lillie being Lillie got right back on her bike and got back at it. She took off on me and zoomed right up to catch the leaders of the pack.
This is how we biked the remainder of the ride - fun to be all together.
We packed lunch and ate after our ride.
The littles had special Poli Korean drinks.
We ran over to check out a park that had recently been completely renovated. It got two thumbs up from all three!
And then why not stop at DQ for some surprise treats?!?!
Home for more outside time - neighbors had a lemonade stand and someone was pumped to snag a glass.
She tried her hand at a little basketball.
Paul had been playing at a friend's house and came zipping home on a teeny tiny bike. This made me laugh so hard.
Super fun day with lots of outside time and family time together.
In a funny twist of fate, Paul is good friends with the son of someone I knew back in high school. His sister and I were good friends and he was always "little brother". So funny how worlds collide. I knew their parents well so when I heard of a 50th wedding anniversary open house, we had to go. The kids loved the cake and nuts. I loved getting to see people I haven't seen in forever! No pictures of Paul because he was busy messing around with his buddy during the party.
We left the party and headed out to the club for dinner. Lots of smiles.
Lillie abstained from the children's menu and instead got very excited when the waitress said the soup of the day was chili. She ordered a bowl of chili and a side salad. Love this girl.
We took Peter home to get him to bed and I took the bigs out for a fancy dessert at one of our favorite places. Elements Tea and Wine has excellent tea, wine, food and dessert choices. They thought this was pretty cool.
For the last couple of years, Jason and I had been talking about an outside fire pit of some sort at the Ankeny house. We knew we needed a new deck and had been thinking we would just do one big outside project. We never got it done and then we were moving. We decided not to wait that long to follow through on the interest in good outdoor space where real wood can be burned. We initially thought we would do a small patio and a fire pit ring in the middle. And then we talked some more and decided we wanted to proceed with an outdoor fireplace instead with a patio large enough to have a real seating area. And so began our planning, design and installation process. We had a great partner in John Miletich. The project took longer than we had anticipated but in the end we were thrilled with the results. Patio and fireplace completed, sod installed around the pathway and planting done. This was right after we returned from vacation!
Three Rose of Sharon shrubs. One for each of our Korean born children as this is the national flower of Korea.
We opted for a custom built fireplace rather than a pre-fabricated model. I really wanted a piece of reclaimed wood as a mantle to make it unique. John found us a stone mantle that looks like reclaimed wood. Win/win!
We were anxious to break in the new fireplace so even though all of the furniture wasn't in yet we headed out for an evening with FIRE! Here's Lillie hanging out on one of the corner pillars.
The kids love the seating walls and pillars - probably more than sitting on actual furniture.
Paul was pumped to throw pine cones in the fire.
We didn't have full s'mores fixings but we did have some marshmallows. So we roasted.
We brought back a cool piece of driftwood from Michigan that makes an excellent piece for the chunky mantle.
A week or so later we had furniture delivered! Super exciting to be able to hang out on comfy furniture with our friends and family.
Broke out the full s'mores fixing so we could test out the new furniture.
Maya has been enjoying our time outside as well.
And then she photobombed us!
The many crazy faces of Paul.
And then Mr. Me Too had to get in on the face making action.
We had splurged on the monster big marshmallows. Bigger than his mouth!
These two warm my heart. So much.
Get to work kids! Roasting.....
Everyone loves s'mores!
We can't wait to continue to enjoy this new outdoor space long into the fall. It always feels nice to invest in projects that bring the family closer together.
