Lots of photos

Here are a few photos from this week. We have LOTS of snow. About a foot and a half on the ground and we are expecting more this week. We have been shoveling non-stop! Today was unbelievable. It was coming down so fast and thick. This is our back yard as of about 1/2 hour ago.

This is the snow bank on the side of our driveway by our garage door. It's higher now that Mark just shoveled off 2 more inches about 10 minutes ago.

This is the woods behind our house. We have cut a path through to the meadow and there is a bird feeder on the right side.

Here is a shot of our patio table on our deck. 

On Sunday we went sledding in our front yard with the boys. David has mastered the snow board sled pretty good!

Luke can snowboard as well, but loves the tube sled too.

Hannah comes out to sled too, but she was napping during this sledding session. Here she is sporting her pig tails. She only allows them to stay in for a few minutes before she rips them out. 

Back into the swing of things

December always seems to fly by so fast. Those 2 weeks vacation were wonderful, but over too fast. We had lots of activity this year in our house. We had good friends from Chicago, David and Tekla Moller, come stay with us the weekend before Christmas. We had a great time sledding, playing with the kids and catching up. We hadn't spent significant time with them in years and we had never met their 3 year old daughter. We are planning a get together with them in Chicago the end of this month.

Mark's sister Julie and her family also came for a visit from Iowa and stayed at our house for a few days, just after the Moller's left. They have 3 daughters and a infant son. It was so good to host them and to meet Isaac for the first time. He is the spitting image of his father Pat. It was uncanny. He is a happy, alert, and delightful 5 month old baby. 

For Christmas day we had Mark's parents and grandmother over for the day. We had a quiet morning (after the wrapping paper melee of course) with the kids to enjoy their presents and then we had a relaxed afternoon visiting with our guests. I cooked a 20 lb. turkey that day for dinner and to prepare for the 27 people I needed to feed on Saturday. It turned out perfect thanks to my mom who suggested that we cut off the dark meat when the breast was done to perfection. We popped the dark meat back in the oven to cook some more while the white meat rested in on the counter. Thanks mom or doing all that carving.

The entire family came over on Saturday to do our group Christmas get together and present sharing. We usually do a name draw and each cousin gets one present. Now there are 14 cousins so that event is quite chaotic. At first we went from youngest to oldest for the present opening order and by the time we got to David all order had gone out the window. We shared 2 meals together, played with toys, ran around the house (it was raining that day, unfortunately), and the Paffs brought their Wii to play on our large theater screen. My boys are in love and have been begging for a Wii ever since. I just tell them that they can play it with the Paffs, but we are not a video game family so we can't get one. "Awe Mom! Why can't we be a video game family???"

School has started up again and the boys are back into a routine. David started Upwards basketball last night as well. 

I cast on for a new sweater yesterday made with Cascade 220 heathers wool (excited about it :), I've stepped down from my design team position with Coordinates Collections (ending 3 years with this wonderful company), I'm fighting a sinus infection (blah), and I can't wait to see what 2009 will bring!