Christmas Tidings

A very Merry belated Christmas to you! Our holidays this year were the perfect amount of crazy and wonderful. One of the benefits of living so close to all our family and friends is that we are able to see so many of our loved ones during the holidays, even though it means hectic schedules. One of God's messages to us this year, however, was SLOW DOWN! There were a few weekends we had booked during this Christmas holiday that ended up being canceled completely because of weather. While we initially were devastated that we couldn't share in festivities with our family, we ended up really enjoying our time together as our little family of three. He forced us to take a breather and appreciate each other, which is what Christmas should be. We were able to see everyone eventually anyway, just a little late. Here are some snapshots of a few Christmas-time events. 

I didn't get a lot of pictures of Christmas setting-up because I wasn't feeling well during that whole week, but I did manage to capture Lily's tree decorating skills. It was so fun to have her participating with us so much more this year. She loved putting ornaments on the tree, specifically in one area and usually on one single branch.

Winter weather means playing in the snow. One of Lily's favorite things!

I attempted the Elf of the Shelf, even though Lily wasn't really sure about it. She wasn't afraid of her this year like she was last year, but wasn't exactly excited about it either. Here were a few of the poses we found our Elf in this year. 

Christmas with the Dodge family was wonderful. It was so great to see everyone and to have Lily and Peter Aaron enjoy each other's company while stealing the older kids' games.

Christmas at the Schroeder home consisting of LOTS of presents, eating way too much and, of course, singing Christmas carols. 

Christmas morning was so wonderful for all of us. Lily understand so much more this year about presents and (with an endless amount of help from my Mom) made her stocking this year that she really enjoyed watching progress. She understood Santa and loved watching Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Polar Express. I was up most of the night Christmas Eve with a bad stomach bug, but was able to

Turkeyween (Halloween and Thanksgiving)

I thought it would be really fun to write about Halloween and Thanksgiving all in one post (no, I'm kidding, I have just been putting it off that long). Either way here's a recap of our most recent holidays.

Halloween

We were able to attend a lot of Halloween events this year, which was really fun for Lily (and us because we got a lot of candy!) Lily's most favorite character right now is Curious George so obviously that was our first choice and I happened to snatch up a George AND Man in the Yellow Hat outfit for my loves. :) 

They got to show off their digs at our church's Harvest Party which had games, a chili cook off and of course, candy. Below is the happy family (I'm just dressed as mom because Curious George is sexist and has no leading female roles. JK JK it's a great show!!) and Lily with Doc McStuffins (or as we like to call her, Winter Lily). 

We also took a trip to the Toledo Zoo with some friends from our church, Jenna, Tessa and Thomas for their Little Boo at the Zoo. All the other kids headed straight for the candy, which gave us a chance to browse the animals with basically no one else around which was a great experience. By the time we got to the candy part the lines were much shorter and the kids only wanted to wait for a little bit so it was a really great experience for all of us!

Lily is officially not a fan of carving pumpkins. She was uninterested in the "pumpkin guts" last year and I thought she might enjoy it a little more this year but she had no desire to touch the gooey stuff at all. Once I cleaned the seeds she liked to play with them but that's as close as she got. 

Finally the big day arrived. A few of our church friends (The Winters, Ebrights and Drambareans) brought their little's over for pizza and trick-or-treating. I didn't get many pictures of the actual event because it was cold and raining a lot! The kids didn't care one bit, they just wanted the candy. Even little baby Cyrus was a superchamp (pun on the name Superman in case you missed it). Afterwards the kids went through their loot, licked their hands and watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." Lily is still talking about trick-or-treating and it's December! I think it's safe to say she loves Halloween!

 

Thanksgiving

We kicked off Thanksgiving this year at my parents house. Everything was delicious and cozy and perfect. I think the part that stands out most to me were the smells, as I walked up to the door I could smell our wood burning fireplace then as soon as I opened the door there was the aroma of delicious food. It reminded me so much of my Grandma and Grandpa Schroeder's, where we used to have our Thanksgiving dinners so it was the best way to start the day!

Daddy carving the turkey.

Grandma taking a picture of Daddy carving the turkey.

Love #1 and #2

Lily picking the corn off her mashed potatoes. Her dinner consisted solely of carbs that night. 

Baby got to enjoy the dinner as well. Lily is so giving!

Braving the cold and wind to go find a Christmas tree for my parents!

Capping off then night with A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. 

We continued the tradition of spending Thanksgiving in Kentucky at Grandma Jackie's. Lily had a great time with her family, especially because she got to spend a lot of time with her Memaw whom she hadn't seen in several months after her move to North Carolina. It was a wonderful reunion and we all really enjoyed spending time together. 

Amazed at Uncle Chad's decorating skills. 

We hadn't even had Thanksgiving dinner yet! :)

The feast #2!)

Her new favorite activity- cleaning dishes! Anything she does with Memaw is fun.

I think Lily's favorite party (and mine too!) was the lights at the Kentucky Horse Park. They have all kinds of characters and scenes lit up and you drive around the park until you get to the main entrance where they have games and petting zoo's and so much more. 

 After many, many months of asking Lily was FINALLY able to ride a pony! His name was King and he was a wonderful pony. Lily had a blast and I was so happy she was finally able to do that again. 

 They also had an amazing train exhibit that Lily loved. One of the stations even had Thomas the Train, which was her favorite. 

We capped off the trip by making cookies (and by we I mean mostly Brynt with a little help from Lily).

 God has blessed us so truly with the most wonderful group of friends and family anyone could ever ask for. It's because of these wonderful people we have holidays that will bring us cherished memories for the rest of our lives. 

South Haven

We have really awesome friends. There are two in particular who had an awesome idea to take an awesome trip to South Haven, Mi and invited us (because we're also awesome???). It was literally the most perfect week of the whole year. A few weeks after school started so the tourists were gone, still warm enough to go swimming (at least the girls thought so) but not too warm that anyone got sunburned. Our friends, Kelsey and Jordan Winter, also have a 2 year old whose name is also Lily. It can get a bit confusing at times, but our Lily quickly remedied the situation by renaming Lily Winter, Winter Lily. I guess she thought she had a Native American vibe to her. Either way, it stuck and she will be referred to as "Winter Lily" until she tells us to stop :)

Vacation Recap:

This was our first visit to the beach after we got the house unpacked. The girls LOVED seeing the water. In fact, Winter Lily didn't hesistate to jump right in the freezing cold water, not minding she was fully clothed. Our Lily was a bit more timid, but loved it just the same. 

We mainly spent the rest of our time at the beach. It was pretty windy, but the sun was out and it was in the high 80's so we didn't mind. Winter Lily really enjoyed playing in the water, while our Lily found her entertainment in the sand with the toys Jordan (or as Lily calls him, "Uncle Kelsey") got for the girls. 

Our evenings were filled with yummy meals cooked by the men and playing in the backyard. After the kids went to bed we watched TV, had dance parties, and ate a LOT of junk. It was a true vacation! 

Lily really couldn't get enough of Winter Lily. Especially when it came to holding her hand. She loves this girl so much! 

We spent an afternoon downtown looking at the shops, but the main goal was to get ice cream. It was Lily's first experience with Superman ice cream and needless to say it was a delicious mess!

My family (mainly my Mom) has a tradition of taking a million sunset pictures on the dunes of Lake Michigan. Lily started running a fever the day before we left, but was luckily feeling well enough to indulge her Mama in this simple pleasure. I won't share the million I took, but here are some of my favorites:

It was a really great trip with really great friends. We are so thankful to have such wonderful people in our life who are so great at planning trips!! Thanks again to the Winter's for this great vacation!