A Christmas Tree Snack

Today for our snack we made Christmas trees out of sugar cones, green frosting, smarties, chocolate chips, and M&Ms. The kids had a great time!!

Sweet Hope and that cheesy, silly smile!

Samuel ate all of his Christmas tree. The girls were more interested in decorating their trees than in eating them.

Aliyah carefully decorating her tree. (Notice her hair. Her first ponytail ever! It makes her look too old so I'm not doing it again for a very, very long time!)

What a fun we all had!!

This and That and all things Christmas

This is what you do with Christmas stockings, right? :)

Speaking of, my Mom helped me make stockings for the kids this year! I think they turned out awesome. They took all Sunday afternoon (Mary Veld even helped us out a little bit - I love that!) but it was worth it.

Samuel drew this and then told us it was a Church with a reindeer on top. Ha ha!

Aliyah's Words

Words (at least the ones that I can remember) that Aliyah can say:

Bear

Water

Waddle (this is what she calls penguins)

Mommy

Daddy

Gam (Grandma)

Bee (baby)

Ball

Bup (up)

More

That
Iss (This)

Peez (Please)

Cup

Man (snowman)

Hat

Clock

Wet

Potty (she will sometimes say this right after she wets her diaper!)

Socks (she calls her shoes this as well)

Me

Ears

Hair

Eyes

No

Rain

Run

.....And I'm sure I am missing some!! Her language/vocabulary has exploded over the past 6 weeks. It's crazy. I can't believe how quickly my baby is growing up!

Cute Kids

I may be biased, but I really think I have the cutest kids ever. They are 3, 2, and 1 right now and the things they come up with and the stuff they say is so precious and so funny! We are always laughing! Here are a couple examples. I wish I could remember everything!!

Samuel

- Samuel was so excited to see snow outside of our window this past week when he woke up. He enthusiastically said, "Yay God for sending snow for us!" When I told him that Aunt Anna didn't get any snow up in Grand Rapids where she lives, Samuel said, "Ohhhh, that's sadness!"

- When we were playing outside in the snow a couple of days ago, "Is that snow from your breath?"

- While I was cleaning up lunch the other day Samuel was playing in the living room when I realized that he had gotten very quiet. I asked him what he was doing and he replied, "I'm just standing here watching the clock!"

- We lit the "Hope" candle last night for advent. After the candle was lit, Samuel asked, "Which one is the Samuel candle?"

- We were leaving Bible Study on Tuesday morning when Samuel said "Vamanos! Let's Go!" Watch Dora much?

Hope

- When her hair was in an afro . . . "I like my big hair!!"

- Hope is our little cheerleader and encourager. We frequently hear, "You can do it, Daddy!" or "Cute hair, Mommy!" The other day she was cheering Daryl on while he was driving with "You can do it!" and "Go Daddy!"

- Aliyah fell and hit her head last night. She was crying pretty hard. I was sitting on the couch holding her trying to calm her down. Hope crawls up onto the couch next to me and starts singing, "Jesus, Jesus loves Aliyah, yes He does, yes He does! Jesus, Jesus loves Aliyah, yes He does, yes He does. And Jesus wants Aliyah to love Him too!" SO precious.

- I was singing "Santa Claus is coming to town" when Hope turned and looked at me with a worried look on her face and said, "But he's not coming to my house!!" My kids are petrified of Santa Claus. After this I asked them if they wanted to go and see Santa Claus and sit on his lap. Hope said, "Will Santa eat me?" Ha ha ha!!

- When I brought Hope downstairs one morning and she didn't see Samuel right away, she said, "Where's my handsome boy?"

Aliyah

- Aliyah is precious. She is such a sweet girl. Today Mary Veld was over at my parent's house for Sunday dinner. Aliyah was on the opposite end of the table as Mary and Mary was playing peek-a-boo with her. Aliyah loved it and was giggling and giggling. When we did devotions and prayed, Aliyah sat on her Grandma's lap. While we prayed Aliyah willingly let Mary hold her hand. At the end of the prayer, Mary had tears in her eyes and just expressed how happy it made her to be around little children again. We love Mary so much. She will be 89 years old on Christmas Eve.

- Aliyah's "teacher" on Tuesday mornings sent me this email the other day. Talk about making a Mommy's heart melt and be proud all at the same time!! I was thinking today how I believe Aliyah has the Spiritual gift of "helps". I always see her "helping" other kids (today it was picking up Cheerios that fell and handing them back to the the girl who dropped them). I regularly see her sharing her things with others and bringing things to help comfort another who is struggling. Somewhere in there is probably also the gift of "encouragement" and "compassion", I'm sure those will be seen clearly when she talks more. She does these things regularly and way more often than any other child the same age that I have watched in that nursery for the past 3 years. I love her precious heart! In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for little Aliyah! God bless her! I just thought I would share that with you.

The Annual Christmas Tree Hunt

Today we headed out to get our Christmas tree!! Our plan was to go to the same place we went to last year, just because they were cheap! Nobody thought of calling to see if they were open this year so we got out there . . . and no trees. So we decided to head out to Wahmhoff Farms in Gobles. We were squishing our Christmas tree hunt in between a early morning 5K that I ran and Christmas shopping in the afternoon (with my parents watching the kids). We didn't have much time but we didn't really have any other options! So out to Gobles we went . . . without a diaper bag which turned out to be a big mistake. Shortly after we got out there I realized that Aliyah had a dirty diaper. Poor girl! Not much I could do about it and she didn't seem to mind so we still tried our best to enjoy the Christmas tree hunt. And we did enjoy it!! We found a beautiful tree and the kids had fun running around. It was pretty windy, but as you can see from the pictures below, not a flake of snow. By the time we left to head home, Aliyah was wet through as well as poopy. Never ever leave the house without a diaper bag. Ever!

Samuel and Grandpa running and playing

My sweet little (poopy) Aliyah. She's such a good sport!

Hope did a much better job tree hunting this year. Last year she pretty much refused to walk around in her boots and was ticked that she had to wear mittens and a hat. I dare say that my little Haitian is getting used to Michigan winters!

In front of our tree. It's a great one!

Love this picture. Love my family!

Watching Daddy cut down the tree. They were pretty fascinated!

Mom and Dad (and Samuel) in front of their tree. Samuel wanted to be in the picture too!

Grandpa's turn to cut down a tree!

Walking back to the vans with our trees. It was a little bit of a hike but the kids did a great job. It helped that we bribed them with the free popcorn that was back at the gift shop!

In front of our beautifully decorated tree!

Happy 31st Birthday, Daryl!

Today is Daryl's 31st Birthday! I am so blessed to have such a wonderful husband and the kids are so blessed to have such an amazing, attentive, and loving Daddy! We are so thankful for you, Daryl, and we pray that God blesses you with many many more years!!

We celebrate Daryl's birthday last night because he is gone all. day. long. today. He left early this morning for Bible study at Church and then went from there to work. He did come home for lunch so the kids (and their Mommy!) could have a chance to give him Happy Birthday hugs and kisses. On Thursdays he goes straight from work to his internship at Borgess until 2am. So . . . he had a busy birthday!! Last night we had his special birthday supper (he chose hasbrown casserole and sweet/sour chicken) and birthday cake (angel food cake with strawberries and cool whip). The kids loved singing happy birthday to him and helping him blow out the candles. Samuel also found out that he loves strawberry shortcake just as much as his Dad does!

Our (very) temporary pet

This cat showed up on our doorstep one evening. We have a lot of stray cats in the neighborhood but they are all annoying and skittish. This cat was a super friendly cat that loved to be around people. I made the mistake of giving it some food . . . but I felt bad for the poor thing! It just sat there crying and crying. We called a few people and posted in on facebook but all our cat-lover friends all said the same thing: they have enough cats already and don't need another one. I really didn't mind it hanging around our house . . . except for one thing, my kids were petrified of the thing. Like scream and run if they were outside and it came anywhere near them. Last Saturday was a beautiful day and we were outside doing yard work and playing with Samuel while the girls napped. All the cat wanted to do was be by us and rub up against our legs. Samuel wasn't having anything to do with that. I ended up carrying the cat across the street, into our friends' backyard, and dropping it over their fence into the backyard of the people that lived behind them. It took about . . . 30 minutes before the cat found her way back to our house. She would follow us around the house (her on the outside, us on the inside) all day long meowing/crying for attention. If we were in the sunroom, she was on the back step. If we were in Samuel's room, she was on the deck right outside his window. If we were in the living room, she was at the front door. Not kidding! About the time I had a plan in place (or at least a couple of options of what to do with the cat), it disappeared. The weather turned cold, it snowed, and the cat went on to search for a house where the people would actually let her inside. It wanted inside our house so badly that it would sneak inside if you so much as opened the door a crack. One night when I was unloading my kids from the van, I had to remove the cat from our house 4 times. Imagine the shrieks and screams coming from my kids that night!! It would even climb into our van when we were loading the kids up to go somewhere. Samuel asked for days after she left, "where did my poor friend cat go?" We don't know - but we hope she found a nice warm house and a nice new family to go with it!