Random Recap: End of November - Mid December 2011

This news is nearly 2 months old and I am sure most everyone already knows, but the day after Thanksgiving, Kristoffer and I made the ultimate Black Friday purchase...a new car! The weekend before he was driving the Tracker home and all of a sudden he lost all ability to steer it. I'm sure every wife does not want to hear the words "it feels like one of the tires is about to fall off" about the vehicle your husband drives over 100 miles a day to and from work. We have some amazing people in our lives who are in the car repair business, so we slowly drove the Tracker there and waited for the news. God was definitely watching over Kristoffer, and thankfully he wasn't driving on the interstate when it happened, because the cross member (part of the alignment that hold the front two tires in place) had rusted into two pieces and the wheels were basically just flapping around in there.

The Tracker had been a great car for us and made many long trips with us, but was old and had a lot of miles on it. We had been hoping that it would last "one more winter" for the past couple of years, so it came as no surprise when they said it would be more to repair than it was worth. Not pleased with the timing, but happy to find Kristoffer a safer car we set out on a quest for a cheap, fuel efficient commuter car for him.

Our search took us to a local Chevy dealer, thankfully it was close enough to home that we could leave the boys with some loving family while we did the initial leg work of buying a car. While they were finishing up the detail work on the car, we ran home to get them so they could ride in Daddy's new car!

The Tracker had definitely seen better days, but it was a bit emotional seeing it go! It had been Kristoffer's car since the day I met him, and I knew what to look for when I was waiting for him to get home. More than anything, we had really just enjoyed the luxury of not having to make a car payment for it for all these years!

It is definitely not our family car, but is the right size just in case we all need to ride in it.

source Google Images

We purchased a 2012 Chevy Sonic. Every day on Kristoffer's commute, I used to wait for him to call and say he was stranded somewhere (that's how unreliable the Tracker was!), but this new car offers a piece of mind that is priceless!!

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When we decorated the rest of the house for Christmas, Karter was super excited to have his nativity set out too.

He is so precious, and every day he called me in to see all the people that were coming to see baby Jesus!!

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My MOPS group had a cookie exchange for our last meeting of the semester. Each member was to bring 4 dozen cookies.

4 dozen Christmas cookies! This platter has drummed up quite a bit of business!!

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My boys!!!

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Back in August, Kristoffer took over as the teacher of our Sunday School class. He is an amazing teacher and I love to watch him grow in his faith. Our last two sets of curriculum have been video series, Karter loves helping Daddy prepare for class!

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The week before the big move we moved our TV into the house and had Dish come out to set up our TV. Our two very curious little boys kept wanting to "help" the guy set up the satellite, so I rented a movie on the iPad for them to watch.

When he was all done, the boys were just as excited as Daddy to have our TV set-up! Karter kept showing me our "new" TV...he didn't remember this one from MN.

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Kaden is NOT scared of anything, this boy grabs life by the horns and goes. He gave us a few scares when he was still in his crib and started climbing out. One time he climbed/fell out and we thought he had really messed up his leg and he hobbled around for a few days. After that accident we knew we had to move him into a big boy bed. The transition has gone great and he sleeps better than he ever did in the crib!!!

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We packaged up some of our raspberry jam we made this summer to give to Karter and Kaden's Sunday School teachers.

For our Sunday School class I made some Christmas tree cookies.

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The boys have loved the unpacking process and rediscovering some of their old toys.

This old Elmo has provided a lot of entertainment...

...and belly laughs!!

If you are still reading, thank you and congratulations!!! We are just about caught up on our lives and very close to having regular posts again!!

Latest Sweet Treats

Even with the move and trying to get settled, I have still been finding time to stay busy in the kitchen baking up some sweet treats. While I've taken the time to make the yummy things, sometimes I have really slacked on documenting them. A week or so before the move I made a big Smurfs cupcake tower and forgot to take any pictures of it or the process, and then for Christmas (along with moving) I made over 6 dozen cookies to take to different family gatherings...and again, didn't take one picture of any of them! Here are a few (not so good) shots of the things I have made in the past month....

A wonderful woman at church always has a birthday celebration for Jesus with her family on Christmas, and this year she asked me to make a cake for her!

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My Grandpa collects Oliver tractors, so I decided to make him some cookies for Christmas. I asked around to try and find out his favorite, and I guess he has always wanted a Super 66...so I made him his very own Oliver Super 66!

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Keeping with the cookie gift theme, my Uncle Matt likes Harley Davidson's and I made him a collection for Christmas.

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We had a NYE party at our house this year, and at the last minute I decided to make some cookies for the event. Our niece and nephew were visiting and I have a hard time resisting their cuteness when they want to help Aunt Dana in the kitchen!!

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A boy from our church was turning 8 and his mom asked me to create an Alvin and the Chipmunks cupcake tower for him. This is what it looked like here, they arranged some of the Alvin figurines around it at the party and it turned out really cool!

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Last weekend Kim & Terry had a cabin warming party and asked me to create some cabin related cookies for them. Of course, I had to try to make one look like the cabin!

I ended up with about 90 cookies and arranged them on two platters, but I only took a picture of one platter. I think one of my NY resolutions should have been to be better at taking pictures....more pictures and better pictures!

Handy Men

I am so far behind in our posts, I'm not even sure where to begin! Hopefully this week I can do a HUGE random post and get us back on track. We have been so busy, I just haven't had much time to slow down and reflect on the cuteness of our boys! Not sure where to start, I thought these cute pictures made a good jumping off point...

We had decided once we got things somewhat organized and put away, that we were going to put our elliptical in our bedroom. Not the ideal location, but we would be able to workout and watch TV without waking up the boys. Our plan was that I was going to cancel our Y membership and just do our workouts at home. I was really dragging my feet on cancelling, because going to the Y everyday was such a big part of our daily routine I really hated to give that up. About a week into our new arrangement, I was using the elliptical during nap time and about 20 min in it started making a terrible clanking noise. I immediately stopped and hoped that Kristoffer could fix it when he got home.

With the help of his trusty sidekicks, we thought it was fixed!

It may have taken the sidekicks every tool in the box, but it was fixed!

Or so we thought! Kristoffer got on to test it out and the entire right wheel broke off! A very large bolt broke into two pieces. Spending a year in the garage of our MN home during the winter, probably wasn't the best thing for the elliptical!

I'm sure glad we didn't cancel our Y membership!!

Wordless Wednesday - Big Boy Potty!

Christmas at Home!

Sorry for the lack of updates for the past few weeks, but as most of our readers already know...we have spent these past few weeks MOVING!! "The Great Move of 2011" officially happened on December 17th. It has been kind of been a whirlwind since then between trying to make our "new" house our own and celebrating Christmas! We were all so thankful that the move happened before Christmas (even if just one week before!) and we were able to celebrate Christmas in our own home!! :)

We spent that whole week before cleaning and getting unpacked, and we got somewhat finished just in time for my mom to join us on Christmas Eve. She got here just before the boys woke up from their naps. When Karter woke up, we had received a special message from Santa. The boys were really excited to have Grandma Vicky here to help them decorate cookies for Santa...

...but of course, the best part was eating the icing and sprinkles!

Mmmm!!

Lucky Santa to get a plate full of these beauties!! All week when we would talk about making cookies, he would not let us forget the reindeer. So along with the cookies and milk for the big guy, we also left out a nice big carrot for the reindeer.

We woke up Christmas morning to Santa wishing us a Merry Christmas, and the boys were sleepy, but surprised to see all of the gifts that he left for them! Karter was SO excited to see that Santa and the reindeer had eaten the treats that he left out for them.

I wish I had gotten a picture of it, but before any gifts were opened, Kristoffer read us the story of our greatest gift from Luke 2.

After listening to the amazing story of Jesus' birth and prayer, the boys were ready to see what was in their stockings. Too bad we started with the stockings, because Kaden got stuck on his stocking and was very reluctant to move on to anything else. He got a 5 pack of Hot Wheel cars and was perfectly content to play with them! And of course his "two balls...I got two balls!".

What other day of the year can you eat candy at 5:30am!

This year was so fun and magical. Karter is at a fun age and really got into all things Christmas.

When all of Karter's presents had been unwrapped, Kaden's still sat in a pile unopened!

He would rather eat skittles off the floor! He was completely happy eating candy at 5:30 in the morning and playing with the cars that came in his stocking. When we would ask him to open anything else, he would say "no, I have cars".

After a lot of encouragement and Karter starting to open them for him, Kaden finally decided to get in on the action.

After all of the gifts from Santa were opened, Karter played elf and passed out all the gifts from under the tree.

Daddy had to help him pass out my pile (someone likes to use excessive packaging when they wrap!).

Kaden really got into open the packages from us.

What a precious morning with our cuties!

The boys were both excited to help Daddy open his gifts.

Santa brought Karter a shaving kit, and he was super excited to shave with Daddy before church.

Oh man, what cuties!

We quickly got cleaned up and headed to church to celebrate our Savior's birth, and then the rest of the day was spent with our extended family. We were extremely happy to have my mom visiting and celebrating Christmas morning with us!