New Years Eve!

New Years Eve - Newfoundland style! Once again we celebrated the new year at 8:30 like the Canadians eh! Jennifer, Janice, Dan, Emilee and their kids all came over and we had a little party. Jen and Jan brought over fun party hats and fun necklaces for the girls - and Matthew. :)


At 8:30 the kids all jumped off the couch into the new year. It's fun to have family around to be able to celebrate these kinds of holidays with.

One big jump off the couch into the new year!

Annika's Birthday - the BIG 6!

Yahoo! Annika is now officially six! Yes - I am six months late posting this. :) We started off her birthday with the traditional birthday breakfast doughnut - her choice of course! This year she chose a most magical rainbow doughnut. :)

As soon as the doughnut was gobbled down it was time for opening presents. She got some super fun stuff this year geared towards science.

A super spiffy microscope that hooks up to the tv. You can see all kinds of things with this thing. And she got some fun science experiment kits, books, and a doctor kit so that she could take care of her "pets."

After getting ready for the day we headed down to Build A Bear. This was the one thing that Annika absolutely wanted to do for her birthday. She couldn't understand why she couldn't invite her whole class to come. :) Considering how much we spent on just three little girls I can't fathom how people do it for a group of 15.

Annika making a wish for her new little friend.

Annika picked out a little "Peace" Bear. We couldn't sway her from
this one - not sure why she picked it, but she loves it.

Mieka and Emma choose the Rudolph. It's nose lights up and says some
sayings when you squeeze it's ear. Super cute.

Amazing all the little accessories that you can get for these dolls.
Mieka ended up getting roller skates for hers. :)

Later in the afternoon we headed over to Monkey Island with all of the Southern cousins. It's a bounce house place like Kangaroo Zoo, but a bit smaller. Made it much easier to corral all the kids into one area. It also had a few carnival type games and rides.

They had so many kids packed on to this little carousel I
thought for sure it would break. :(

To cool off we had ice cream. I think we overwhelmed the ice cream lady - we had a lot of ice cream cone orders.
To end the day back at home we had a little birthday cake from Annika's favorite bakery - Dippidee's. A super exciting and fun birthday for a super exciting and fun girl!

Christmas Morning

Santa came! Hooray! And he brought presents galore!

Maybe it was a blessing that Annika stayed up until 12:30 - we got to sleep in until 7:00! Yay! Well - we actually woke up before that because we were excited about the girls seeing their presents - but still we got to sleep in more than usual.

Santa brought Mieka a fun castle with lots of princesses and ponies. Annika got a Build A Bear closet full of clothes for her newest build a bear - Snowflake. They also got some fun games and videos and their own scripture cases and scriptures. Dave got me season tickets to the Hale Theater - yay! Now we have a fun guaranteed date almost every month. Woo hoo!

We decided this year to let Annika and Mieka pick out a present for each other. I was amazed at how thoughtful they were of what the other one wanted. Mieka picked out roller skates for Annika and Annika picked out a Strawberry Shortcake doll and "swimming pool" set for Mieka. I think both were pretty excited.

The next presents opened were from Grandma and Grandpa Sucher - a dinosaur and a membership to Thanksgiving Point so that we can now go and visit the dino museum when ever we want. :) They also got a fun magnetic doll set from Marianne and Gary. Dave built a large bulletin type board out of metal that we hung on the wall so they could dress their dolls easier. And Nancy gave the girls a super fun tunnel that both they and Asher played in for some time. Thank you everyone for the super fun presents!!

There was one last present that was hiding in the tree - we wrapped up a dvd case with a little note inside: "I'm waiting - come and find me." After opening it Annika rushed out to the tv, turned it on, and there waiting to greet her was her very own tiger. We ended up getting a kinect for our xbox and got the Kinectimals game. Both girls had a super fun time playing with their kitties all morning.

Annika petting her cheetah. This is my idea of a good pet!

Mieka teaching her kitty how to play dead. It's amazing how the computer can pick up movement. As soon as Mieka flopped over on her back her kitty would too.

Dave even shoehorned into the tv time to play his new kinect game - Dance Central. He's quite the dancing king. :)

After vigorously playing with all the new toys we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Southern. They had fun presents waiting for the girls as well. The girls then played for a few minutes while we chatted.

After the fun and excitement we returned home to play with all the toys again! What a super fantastic Christmas. We are so blessed!

Christmas Eve - the BEST Christmas Pageant Ever!

For the last couple of years we have done a Christmas Pageant/Play at Grandma and Grandpa Southern's house on Christmas Eve. This year we livened it up a bit by having the kids read some of the parts. They did great!

Mieka was a shepherd this year. And Annika was at first a wicked Nephite, but then decided that she was nice after all. :)

Mieka taking care of her flock of one by night.

"Wicked Annika" taking part in the aluminum balling of Samuel the prophet.

Yay! Now's she's "Repentant Annika" - praying with Nephi for the coming of Christ.

After we got home the girls opened their Christmas pajamas and we put out the cookies and milk for Santa.


Dave and I didn't get to go to bed until 12:30 because we didn't want to go to sleep until Annika did. Amazingly she had little trouble getting out of bed at 7:00. :)

Snow ice cream

Well - when life gives you loads of snow .... you make snow ice cream! Yay! I found this recipe online and the girls thought it was pretty good. I think that I'm going to look around a bit more though and do some experimenting with chocolate ice cream to see if we can find the perfect recipe. :)

Mieka mixing the cream, sugar, and pudding up. Good stuff!

Annika got to fold in all the snow - 10 cups in total.
Don't worry - we made sure it was clean snow.

Enjoying the fruits of their labor. Kind of sort of tasted like soft serve.
Next time I'll put less sugar in.

NOTE: There are literally 11 new posts following this one. Eek! I got a bit behind on posting - but now we are finally all caught up. Yay!

Making our own mangers

For FHE yesterday, we made a little manger and baby Jesus for each of the kids. Each of the kids got a little bag of hay that they could use to fill up the manger and make it nice and soft for baby Jesus. The caveat was that they could only put a piece of hay in if they had done something nice for someone else. There was a lot of hugs for mom and dad going on originally so that the kids could put some hay in. And then they figured out that they needed to do a bit more to get that hay. Both Annika and Mieka have been getting lots of hay this morning - helping with shoveling the mass amounts of snow, picking up toys, making beds, helping to make breakfast. I think by Christmas day that baby Jesus' manger is going to be overflowing with sweet helpings and hay. :)

Mieka decided that her baby Jesus needed some company.

Also had to post cute pictures of the girls in their Sunday Christmas outfits. Cute! :)

Not quite so cute family picture ... but when you are rushing to get out the door to church you go with what you get. :)

Jingle Bell Mieka!

Mieka had her super cute preschool program on the 17th. She boogied and sang with the best of them. :)

A picture right before the program started. One grandma told us she was so cute that she should be on tv. :)

Singing AND signing Silent Night. Yay Mieka!
Mieka's teacher Miss. Jilane is amazing! She does such great stuff with the kids.

They also each got up and said what they wanted for Christmas. This time Mieka said she wanted a skateboard! Huh? Well - maybe next year.

After they were all finished with their program they got to go and sit on Santa's lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. He also gave them a book for Christmas. Mieka got Curious George's Christmas - her favorite!!! She was so excited. :)

Yay Mieka! You did such a super fantastic job. We are so proud of you! Love you!