Sarah's Wedding

What a wonderful wedding Sarah and Jonathan had this past weekend! Sarah (Paul's sis) was a beautiful bride and the ceremony was so God-honoring. Paul was honored to sing in the wedding, Noah was a ring-bearer (actually a gift-bearer; he gave a gift to Mom Ice during the ceremony), and Olivia was a flower girl. I was so nervous on Saturday as I wound Olivia's hair on sponge rollers for only the second time ever! She went swimming with them in and, of course, they were completely wet when she was done swimming! So then I spent a frantic hour drying them with a hair dryer. Praise the Lord her hair came out just fine (although I'm sure the wedding would've gone all right if her hair hadn't turned out!).

We thank the Lord for bringing Jonathan to Sarah and to our family!

Happy New Year!

It feels good to put up a new post finally. The month of December has been so busy for us with lots of Christmas programs and piano recitals, etc. And we've been tossing some viruses back and forth in the family, so I haven't felt like blogging much. But I think we're back to normal now!

Noah was a wise man in the school Christmas program and Olivia was an angel. The sleeves on Olivia's costume provided her with constant entertainment throughout the whole program. :)

Olivia helped me make Christmas cookies this year, while Noah was home from school, sick on the couch. So that day was divided between making cookies and cleaning up Noah's sickness. NOT a pleasant day. I didn't eat too many of those cookies!

An area church has an annual "Bethlehem Walk". They give you Jewish names and you walk through the woods on the way to Bethlehem to be counted in the census. Every so often scenes are depicted - the angels singing "Gloria", the wise men on the way to see the baby King, the shepherds. Then you finally come to Bethlehem and the bustling town activities. Later you go to the inn looking for a place to stay, but of course there is none. But the innkeeper does let you go into the stable to see the baby born to Mary and Joseph. The whole evening was a wonderful experience for all of us.

The Friday before Christmas we just wanted to have fun, so we drove to the Navy Pier in Chicago for "Winter Wonderfest". It was a wonderful inside carnival with great activities for the kids. This was a roller coaster Noah and Olivia rode on.

This picture was taken near the indoor skating rink, which we want to try next time!

These are some of the kids' favorite gifts:

MP3 player for Chloe - just a play one, of course!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I look forward to catching up with all of you soon!

Getting Decorated

The other night we finally got in the Christmas spirit - we put the Christmas music on and put up the Christmas tree. It's interesting to decorate with lots of little hands that are just dying to touch all the pretty things coming out of boxes that have been stored all year long. Eventually Olivia was given the assignment of official photographer. These are the pictures she took:



And I could continue. Lots of pictures of the lights! So Olivia was reassigned to helping with the lights. Noah also helped with lights.Noah also likes to make his own ornaments. This is a matchbox car on the end of a loop of paper.

The next day we decorated the kids' little trees for their bedrooms. Barbie helped decorate this tree.

We are now officially in the Christmas spirit at our house! Merry Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful time in MN celebrating Thanksgiving. We were able to see some relatives, and the kids had lots of time to play with their cousins. On Friday we went to the Mall of America - crazy! Actually, it wasn't so bad - we played at Lego Land and went on some of the rides. Saturday was my mom's 60th birthday, and we celebrated at a fancy restaurant. We were brave and took the kiddos too - they loved all the "extras" - the sorbet to cleanse the palate, the juice for toasting the birthday girl, the warm washcloths and the chocolate-covered strawberries at the end of the meal. Mmmm....yummy!

Fish and Giraffes Beware!

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Weekend Trip

We went last weekend to Sarah's (my sister-in-law) wedding shower. What a fun time to be with my sisters in law and my mother in law. We thought it was funny that we all ended up wearing brown to the shower.

Sarah's beautiful engagement ring says "For My Glory" in the Cambodian language, where she and her hubby will be missionaries.
Papa Ice has it all figured out - he had the kids helping him rake the leaves while we were at the shower!

Costumes and Candy

Last night we went to church for Family Fun Night. The AWANA directors offer this carnival every year on the Wednesday that is closest to Halloween, so this year it fell on Halloween. The kids get to play carnival-like games and win candy and prizes. They also have a contest for costumes, which have to be Bible-based.

Chloe was a frog - one of the Egyptian plagues.

A pretty good frog pose!
Olivia is into everything princess, so she was disappointed when she found out she was going to be a queen...Queen Esther. Then she started liking it and told everyone she was "Queen Esto".

Noah's costume was made about 30 minutes before we had to leave for the carnival. He is Paul in prison (see the ball and chain?), and he won third place for his outfit! (in his age bracket)

Noah was pretty good at this game.

Olivia just LOVED her butterfly hand.

Olivia and her friend Michael

Is she peeking?

By the end of the night my camera was sticky from all the little fingers touching it, so this picture is a little fuzzy. But I thought these costumes were pretty good - salt and light is on the left, Moses is in the middle and another Queen Esther on the right.