Poor Chloe

I will be on a short (hopefully) blogging break. We have a very sick sweet little girl to nurse back to health. We are still not sure of the cause, but she is on her third day of running a fever that likes to hang out between 104 and 105. Needless to say, she needs her Mommy right now.

Christmas - Part 2 (ridiculous, I know)

Part 2 of our Christmas extravaganza covers our time spent with my family at my parent's home. I love that house, and it still feels like home every time I step through the doors.

I'm not going to elaborate on every picture, they pretty much speak for themselves. We spent about three days with my family after a horrific 7 hour, ice-filled car trip. I know, I know, no more lectures, Dad. Anyway, my family from Texas, which included my aunt Cherrie, uncle Randy and cousins Connor and Jake, were able to come up to spend the holiday with us. It is always a great time when we are together. Of course, there was a bit of an empty spot where Pappy, my grandpa, should have been. We missed him a lot, but hopefully we will get to see him soon.

Christmas Eve day and evening:

Randy and Colby playing with my old dollhouse

Chloe in her Christmas dress

Paw Paw reading "The Night Before Christmas"

Christmas Day:

Merry Christmas!!!

Sledding on the golf course* (Christmas Day):
*That is ALL ice, no snow. Very fast and very dangerous. Randy hit his head and was knocked out at one point. Scary but fun!

Okay the above picture might need a little explaining. It is a pic of Jake and Randy just before we left to go back home for Christmas dinner with everyone, including my mom's side of the family. They saw one last hill that they wanted to try. However, since everything was a solid sheet of ice (with no snow) it was too slick to walk. They had to crawl on their hands and knees to the top. It was quite the sight.

The women: my mom, Cherrie, Sue and Grammy

After dinner was finished and cleaned up, the kids opened their presents with my mom's side of the family. Colby had gotten a drum set from my parent's earlier that morning and he and Izabella (my cousin's daughter) decided to put on a little concert. Very loud, but very cute.

As always, we had a wonderful holiday. I only wish we could have all been together for a couple more days. We are truly blessed with a loving family.

Coming up...the third and final Christmas installment. Maybe I can actually finish up Christmas before January ends. Ridiculous. :)

Pardon our Progress...

As you might have noticed, Olivia's Observations is taking on a new appearance. If this is the first post that you come upon, then I am probably not finished sprucing this place up yet. Don't hold that against me, I have a very limited amount of time during naps and in between everything else that I like to accomplish during naptime. My goal is to have a snazzy new blog and Part 2 of Christmas finished before Friday morning. Is this realistic? I don't know, probably not. We are going out of town for the weekend so there is always extra laundry and packing to get done as well. Doesn't my life know I have a blog to keep going?! Hope your day is going as well as mine, I have had lots of baby and boy hugs and kisses today. And, seriously, it doesn't get any better than that.

Christmas (finally) - Part 1

Okay so I am finally going to get around to posting about our wonderful Christmas. To be honest, it feels like it was so long ago that I was contemplating just skipping it, but I really do want to have a record of it and I know my mom would be really disappointed. :)

There is so much stuff to talk about and post pictures of, so I am going to break it down into 3 posts. Here is part 1:

As usual, our Christmas holiday season kicked off the day after we arrived back at home from our Thanksgiving travels. The day was full of decorating for me and lots of oohing and aahing from Colby. When Curt got home from work that evening, we inhaled our dinner and set out to find the perfect tree - and we did! The next day I used blood, sweat and tears to get the tree decorated. (I HATE putting the lights on the tree!) Here is a peek at some of the decorations.

Colby "helping" Curt water our brand new tree

Tree decorating is dirty work!

These are two very special ornaments given to me by my great Aunt Joan.
They were Colby's favorite!

My failed attempts at taking a pic for our Christmas cards.

Our next holiday activity was a Polar Express event at Wildlife Prairie Park. We thought the kids were going to get to ride a train, but it was more like a stage set. A little disappointing, but they still had a good time. The highlight of the night was a visit from Santa.

The following evening was our second annual Holiday Feast. For this party I break out the Christmas dinnerware and my Nana's red glasses and we have a "formal" dinner with some friends to celebrate the season. I love hosting this party! However, this is the one time of the year that I really wish we had a bigger house. Eleven months out of the year it is perfect for us, but on this night we cram in as many people as we can. Unfortunately we don't get to invite some people that we really wish could come. Maybe we'll have to start hosting two dinners so that we can have them all over. This year there were 10 adults and 5 kids and we were packed in. I even had to add a card table to the end of the dining room table. Classy, I know.

The table and the FEAST!

The kids' table in the kitchen

The friends!!!

Amid all of this, I took on the sewing and crafting challenge of my life. I had started making our family stockings last year, but they needed to be finished. I also decided that it would be really great to make most of our gifts. I was happy with the results, but exhausted in the end. If I do that again, I will need to start in August instead of the second week of December! I ended up making Christmas pajamas for my kids, stitcheries for my mom and mother-in-law, an embroidered pillow for my grandma, pajamas for my cousin's daughters and Polly Puppy for our newest niece. Here are some pics of my labor.

Our family stockings

My kids' Christmas pajamas

Pajamas for my cousin's daughters

Polly Puppy for Grace

I forgot to take pictures of the stitcheries for our moms and the pillow for my grandma. Here is a picture of my mom opening her gift on Christmas morning. (I am sure she will appreciate me posting this!)

Okay, that is the end of Part 1. If you have actually read through this whole thing, thanks. You are a trooper. I promise to be back in a couple of days with part 2.