Schmidt Christmas

My dad's family gathered the weekend before Christmas at my grandma's house. The boys love to dig in great grandma's closet to find "new" toys. The family makes for a house full and the potluck style meal added fun variety.



My cousins Kyle, Braden and Austin get a kick out of Noah and Levi.


The Hot Shot won the prize for "most popular old toy".






Noah and aunt Karen helping great grandma open her Christmas gift.


New clothes (much needed) for great grandma.


My cousin Krista and her husband Nathan are expecting a baby this spring!

Preschool Christmas!

Ben and I had the privilege of watching Noah and his 18 classmates give their preschool Christmas program last week. It was adorable. Lots of songs and finger plays, rhythm instruments and jingle bells. Snacks were served and Noah got to show us some of the Christmas crafts he'd recently made.

Look out, here come the rhythm instruments!

"Away in a Manager"

Noah went to speech before preschool that day, by the end of the program he was rubbing his eyes.

The tree holding the gifts the children made.

Enjoying snacks.

Rylie, Noah's friend. He took this picture. She came over to meet me and was such a sweet girl.

Aunt Pat, Noah and Gayle. Noah loves his teachers, even though he's usually too shy to talk to them when we see them outside of preschool.

As parents, this was our first Christmas program, and it was a treat. Relaxed, cute and fun!

The Weekend

The weekend started with hot chocolate and pancakes for the boys. They love hot chocolate, but it's really more like lukewarm chocolate, but I have to tell them it's "hot", otherwise they get upset with me because they want "hot" chocolate, not "warm" chocolate. It can get very confusing.





Then it was time for haircuts. It went quite a bit worse then the last time we tried. Levi was very stubborn. There were numerous standoffs...

But, when we let him pretend to cut our hair, he softened up.

Post haircut, eating peppernuts.

All bundled-up in the car.


Noah and the other 3 year olds through First graders at church sang two songs on Sunday morning. It was terribly cute. Noah played with his shirt and didn't move his lips during the first song. But, I think he actually sang the second song. The one he sang is called "Christ is born" and it's sung to the tune of Jingle Bells and Noah insists that the word Christ is pronounced Trist. It's pretty funny to listen to him sing it. He told me I can say it Christ and he'll say it Trist.

Merry Christmas & Happy Birthday

My birthday is 5 days after Christmas and I usually require that the two occasions be kept completely separate. But, this year Ben's gift idea blended them yet kept them separate. He had the two chairs I got from my grandma reupholstered. So, one is a Christmas gift and the other is my birthday gift - and they got done early!!!



I love the fabric, it's graphic and organic and earthy and well....perfect! Plus, they added new foam/padding (whatever) to the chairs and they're much more comfortable now.

Noah feeding Rylee

Noah volunteered to feed Rylee and he did a good job. I think she enjoyed it too.

Thanksgiving

We stayed in Kansas for Thanksgiving and were blessed with the opportunity to share two Thanksgiving meals with our extended families. I failed to bring my camera to our Hertzler gathering, but I remembered it for the Epp gathering.

Megan and Cambry, so cute.

Each year, my aunt Patricia organizes a craft for the kids to make. Can you tell she's a preschool teacher? :-) This year, it was coloring in the letters that spell "Happy Thanksgiving" which most of the children really enjoyed working on. My boys were quite distracted with all the toys at Ty and Addi's house, but I managed to get them to do a little bit of coloring.

Even Rylee got to do some coloring.

During the coloring chaos Erica and Sherri laughed old family photos.

And then we tried to get all the grandchildren together for a photo under the banners they made. It was hoot! It started out well and then started to disintegrate. Some of the photos are blurry b/c I was laughing so hard while taking them.

Check out the variety of expression on this one. :-)

And then Cambry and Noah started diving onto the floor.

And when the chaos ended, Rylee was worn out.

A new season

Basketball season that is. Ben's started officiating and the rest of us are getting our heads wrapped around our new schedule.

Thankfully, we usually keep the whistles hidden.