Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! We've had a great Christmas, and this year it's lasting us quite a while. We've had Micaela here with us the last few days and we've had a great time! We are bringing her back today, but wanted to share this family picture with you first.

Peace!

Peace to you! We've been enjoying a number of Christmas celebrations around here in the past week! Brent and I were invited to Christmas parties on Friday night, Saturday night, and this afternoon. They were all lots of fun and a great blessing!

We agreed to bring desserts (or candies or treats, whatever you prefer to call them!) so we spent Thursday making the following items. It was nice to make big batches and bring similar plates to each event. I did make a Fudge Truffle Cheesecake for this afternoon's family festival at church, but didn't get a great picture.

Brent's helped get together a quartet at church that sang at today's festival. I thought I was hitting "record" on our new camera (which I LOVE!) to get a video, but I guess I still have a lot to learn about it. You'll just have to pretend that you can hear how great they sounded!

Here are a few more pictures of our Christmas tree, taken on my NEW camera! Have I mentioned yet how much I love it?


Yes, that's yours truly, and yes, I'm wearing my Vikings jacket. It takes a lot of guts to wear Vikings gear here in Packerland, but I'm brave enough to stand my ground! It's been quite the year to have to do that! Earlier on the night of this picture, I convinced Brent to take me to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the Vikings game that moved unexpectedly to Detroit. Interesting!

There's a little picture of our Christmas season so far. Have a blessed Christmas week!

Thanksgiving Celebrations

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you each had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! This post will show you some pictures about our weekend, but first a few housekeeping things:

1. Yes, we're still alive!

2. I've had problems getting online with my phone. This means I can sometimes see Facebook, or even blogs, but have had a real hard time uploading any messages or commenting on other people's posts.

3. My computer has been giving me more and more problems even getting started up, until finally Brent just cleared it out and started over from scratch. It's been a big, long, ongoing hassle.

4. I love my new job. I really like my co-workers, my patients, what I actually do, and of course, THE HOURS! I feel normal again -at least as normal as I'll ever be! :)

5. Brent's been back at the appraisal firm and things seem fairly stable.

6. We've gotten much more involved at church and it's been a great way to make friends and have Appleton start to feel like home.

7. I have lots of pictures of all the things we've been doing since (gasp!) my last post in July, but being the chronological person I am, I haven't wanted to go out of order. I finally gave up so I could at least get something online, and I have high hopes for back-tracking. Someday.

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Okay, onto Thanksgiving! In fact, it turns out, this should just be labeled "Entertainment by David". I guess I didn't take a single picture of anything having to do with Thanksgiving!

We went to the Twin Cities during a snow/sleet/rainfall that made our trip an hour and a half longer than normal. We had Thanksgiving dinner with my family on Thursday, and I'm sure my mom will post a picture of that someday. Afterwards, they had agreed to watch David for my sister and brother-in-law so he entertained us for the rest of the night. Here is is with his favorite truck, carting around his other toys to make a "pile of junk" as he called it.
Getting out the Lego blocks, which helped us build a BIG tower.

My mom serenaded us throughout the afternoon.


Brent sat back, watched some football, and probably thought to himself "what did I get myself into marrying into this family?" Actually, he fits right in.

We tried to take a Christmas picture, so here is just one of the many to choose from. I don't know if we'll get around to it or not, but I guess you'll have to watch your mailboxes to see! If we don't mail them out, I'll post the ones I liked even better.

The funny part was, that this little guy REALLY insisted on being included in the picture. It's interesting how sometimes he'll ignore the camera or look away, and other times he gets super goofy. This was a goofy moment!

At least Uncle Brent goes right along with the goofy-ness.

I sure love these two and their big grins!

Early in the evening, he decided to play "bedtime" and brought a big blanket over and some books and put himself to bed on the couch.

Reading "Pajama Time".

Grandpa decided to join in on taking a little nap. I guess the only floor space to be found was in a tube. Hmmm.....

David decided to join Grandpa, and climbed right up.

Goof-ball!

I guess something on the TV caught his attention so he sat right up and stayed awhile.

Then, he got really silly and climbed through the tube to try and join Grandpa on the inside. He got a little stuck at the point you see in the picture and of course by now we were all laughing pretty hard!

After the "tube incident" we decided to build a fort. He was pretty proud of it and made a doorway so I could come in and join him. We read books by flashlight and told stories. It was fun! Don't you just love that goofy grin, too?! (I also have to add the side note that I can't look at that plaid wool blanket and not think of my Grandma. It was hers, I miss her daily, and am reminded of her often with little things like this.)

The next morning, Brent and I did some Black Friday shopping (and found some great deals on things we've been planning on for a while!), then we drove back home during some great weather. On Saturday Brent went hunting with his dad, uncle, and brother-in-law while I stayed home to work on dinner. We had invited his family over for Thanksgiving Dinner Round Two, but after the guys decided to go hunting all day I decided to just think of it as an "Andrews Family Dinner" so it would feel less stressful doing it all alone. It helped! Brent's mom and sister did bring a few things, so that sure helped too. It turns out I didn't take a single picture from our time with them so you'll just have to imagine our fun together.

Today we were able to have a fun afternoon with friends! Stan and Cheryl were in town visiting and it was SO MUCH FUN to reconnect! We go way back, with connections left and right through family, Bethel, and CLBA activities. I'm friends with each of their kids as well so it was fun to hear updates about each of them!

Well, there you have it! A little update on us, and a view of our weekend. Like I said, I'm hoping to backtrack on older pictures, but I guess I should learn not to make promises, and just surprise any of you that might still check this blog! :)

Chicago's Shedd Aquarium

This post is for all of you to enjoy, but it's especially for MICAELA, who loves all things dolphins!

While Brent and I were in Chicago for our first anniversary, we knew we would visit the Shedd Aquarium. We walked there from our hotel the last morning (we were covered in sweat by the end -it was a HIGH humidity weekend!) and spent quite a bit of time there before heading home on the train. After drying off a bit, it was fun to discover what a great place it is! I'm excited to go back again someday, and especially excited to take Micaela there someday!

There are a ton of pictures here so you can see all the ins and outs of the place, but I'll only highlight a few. Like this one of an anaconda... Yuk!

Shiny little blue fish. They glowed!

Please excuse the glare that you'll often see in pictures. Around the top of each tank was a neon sign which was cool, but not great for photos.

Okay. You gotta check this out. Except you might not want to. If you can click on the picture below and see it enlarged, check out the eyes on these eels. YUK! They're SOOOOOOO creepy! There were these two gross eels (one is hiding back in that hole) that were really light in color, and then they had these beady, blue eyes that just stared at us. They even seemed to follow us around the room. Ewwwww!!! I still get shivers thinking about them. So I had to share with you. Maybe that'll make my shivers go away, or just pass on to you. Enjoy! :)

I made sure to include a person in this picture so you can get the perspective of just how large this crab is. Wow!

Can you see who's hiding in here? Nemo!

Check out the HUGE turtle on the ramp.

Every fish in his tank had this strange bump on the head. Maybe they kept running into each other?

Check out these fish! I think they were called "pencil fish", but now I can't remember and I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment. I'm just trying to get this post published!

The dolphins! Finally, right Micaela?!

Sorry it's so hard to see these. The lighting really made it tough. This pair kept swimming around together, which was pretty fun.

This little fella kept following me around with his eyes. It was pretty cute!

Awwww....... So cute!

I love the bright colors you can find in nature!

Do you see the little frog? He was pretty tiny!

Can you see the chameleon? He's hiding!

There's our trip to the Shedd Aquarium! Did you have as much fun as we did?

I also have three videos, but those don't seem to be processing for me tonight. I often seem to have problems with that. Hmmm.... Micaela, I'll just show you this weekend while you're here, and the rest of you? Well, you should just come visit and I'll show you, too! :)