Christmas 2012

It is hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone already this year.  The girls were definitely into the Holiday spirit this year and we had a great time with all of our family and friends over the past couple of weeks.  On Christmas Eve we hosted the McNamara family Christmas where Santa made an appearance.

 All of the cousins with Santa, minus Maggie and Tommy who were in Missouri for Christmas.

 The girls and I by the tree.  Dad and the rest of the guys were busy playing a game of Mexican dominoes so Dad is missing from the family picture.

 The girls tearing into their presents Christmas morning.

 Grace hard at work with her young Architect kit.  She really likes it and I said if it helps her do better in her drafting classes in college than I did, more power to her!

 Lucy showing off one of her presents.

 Grace opening her present from Grandma and Grandpa.

Lucy opening her Polly Pockets from Maggie and Tommy.  She was pretty excited about them.

Thanks to everyone we got to see and spend time with over the Holidays, it is a great time to really be thankful for all the wonderful people we have in our lives.

Sunday School Program

Even with the snow today the girls had their Sunday school program.  They each had speaking parts, Lucy as an angel and Grace as a reader.  They did a great job!

Lucy and Grace before the program, Grace didn't want a picture with her sister at this moment.

 Lucy and the rest of the angels during their part.

Lucy had her school Christmas program this week.  She did great and was excited to wear her new sparkly silver Christmas dress.  

Basketball

Grace is playing basketball this year and she had her first tournament last weekend.  The girls did good and it was fun to see them in a game scenario.  They were a little timid at first but got the hang of it pretty quickly.  We played Amery and New Richmond last weekend and yesterday were in Colfax and played Colfax, Prescott and Elk Mound.  We have one more tournament next Saturday and we get a break for the Holidays.

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend this year with get togethers on both sides of the family.  We had the Krumm side over to our house on Thanksgiving Day which is always a good time.  Then on Friday we headed to Freemont, Nebraska to visit with Dave's Mom and sister Amy and her family.  The 7 hour car ride went amazingly well considering we haven't done a road trip in quite awhile with the kids and we had great weather.  It was wonderful to catch up with them and get a chance to visit with Grandma Mansell now that she is in Nebraska.

Here is our attempt at a family photo on Thanksgiving, yes it was a self-timer picture!

 The clan hanging out on Thanksgiving looking at ads and planning out the Black Friday strategy.

 Aunt Amy is a clown and made these great balloon animals for the kids Friday night.

 Saturday morning that same amazing Aunt Amy wowed us all with her pancake creations!

 Lucy's butterfly pancake, they were almost too pretty to eat!

 We headed to the zoo Saturday in Omaha.  It was a really nice zoo, here is Lucy and Alyvia hanging out in the jungle.

 The  penguins.

 Our family by the aquarium.

 A jellyfish.

 Grace and Lucy by the Gorillas.

 Grace and Grandma Mansell at breakfast.

Lucy and Grandma Mansell.

We had a great time with all of our family this Thanksgiving weekend and were reminded how lucky we are to have such great people in our lives.  Thank you for all of the wonderful hospitality this weekend Amy, Mike, Ryan, Sarah, Megan, Kyle, Alyvia, Adrian, and Tenley!  You HAVE to come see us now!

Halloween Group shots.....

So I promised a group shot and found a couple others also......

Grace with Ella the lion!

 I think next year we will be too big for the bench!  Tommy was sleeping during the photo and the hard concrete made his mommies nervous =)

Here is Lucy holding Breck!  He was woken up by his crazy cousins coming over to trick or treat!

Halloween Continued.....

We had a great time on Wednesday trick or treating.  The girls had a parade at their school in the afternoon and after that we headed to New Richmond to meet up with our cousins and do some trick or treating.

 Lucy as Supergirl in the parade.

 Grace with her classmates.

 The kids heading down main street in New Richmond.

 This was one of the kids favorite houses once they got over being scared.  Once they got brave enough to tell the man trick or treat, he really loaded up their buckets!

 Grace standing by the man in the coffin.

 Lauren, Ella and Lucy standing in front of some of the scary decorations.

Grace holding Tommy.  That cow costume has seen a lot of Halloweens, Lucy was the first to wear it!

We had a great time with everyone.  There are some group photos too but not on my camera so we will have to post one of those once we get our hands on a copy.  Happy Halloween!

Halloween Take 1

Tonight was the start of Halloween parties and it was the 4-H party.  Below is Grace in her gypsy costume and Lucy as Super Girl.

 Lucy in the costume contest, she didn't win but she still had fun up there.

 Grace won best original costume for her age group, below she is with the other winners in her age group.

 Here is Lucy giving the pinata a good hit.

It was a fun night and just the beginning of more fun, candy filled days ahead. Tomorrow is trunk or treat at church in the morning and then Girl Scout trick or treating in the afternoon, hope those costumes hold up until Halloween on Wednesday, we will share more picture of the fun then!

DisneyWorld.........happiest place on earth!

In the middle of September we headed to DisneyWorld with our cousins.  To say we were excited would be an understatement, remember those countdown chains we made.....They were worth it because we had a great time on the trip and covered all of the Disney parks thoroughly as well as SeaWorld.     There are way more pictures than Mom has time to post on here but here is a peak at our week.

 Our family at the Magic Kindgom.

 The counsins on Shamu.

 Our resort was the Art of Animation so there were themed areas such as cars with the characters like Mater.

 Mom and Grace getting ready for the fireworks at Magic Kindgom.

 Our breakfast with the princesses was great, we got all of the critical autographs that morning for our books, SnowWhite, Belle, Princess Auroa, Ariel, and Cinderella.

 We got Mickey ears on this trip......we think Mom was more excited about these than us =).

 The part of the resort that we stayed in was the Little Mermaid area and they had a really big Ariel, King Triton and Ursala sulptures.

 Grace on the teacups.

 Lucy on the teacups.

 The whole clan with Donald Duck, we had a great time!

One of the highlights for the kids was the bus transportation from the resort to the parks and back again.  Towards the end of the week they would usually rush onto the bus and try to find an area for them all to sit with no concern for where the adults were =).

It was a great family trip, can't wait until even more of us can go again, DisneyWorld 2014 here we come (with a much bigger group by then too)!  Aunt Tina even held out and had our new cousin Tommy after we got home so we could see him right away.