Our Holidays!

Happy Holidays!  We hope that you all had a fabulous Christmas Season!  We sure did!  It is definitely the best time  of the year.  I love the family, food, and focusing on Christ.  It also makes it so much more fun to have a 2 year old who believes so much in the magic of it all.

This year we were blessed to spend Christmas with Mama Sloan.  It was more than marvelous.  We had so much fun!

Abigail and I flew out on Tuesday, the 17th.  I was grateful to arrive in Seattle.  Between the hustle and bustle to get things ready to leave, mixed with a little pneumonia we were so excited to get to Mom's house and relax.  Abigail is such a good girl and did amazing on the airplane ride as always.  She was so excited to go see her Grandma Sloan and was in heaven when we got there.  She loved Grandma's attention and all the toys at Grandma's house.

Barton arrived on Friday, the 20th.  We were so excited to have Daddy back.  on Saturday we put up the Christmas Tree.  My favorite part was that Abigail hung 80% of the ornaments so you can guess where they were.  Yep, all in a row at the bottom of the tree.  It looked beautiful!

Christmas Eve was wonderful.  We did some Christmas baking.  We had to make Santa cookies.  Mama Sloan made the traditional noodles with the assistance of Barton and Abigail.  After that we made a gingerbread castle, complete with a princess and a prince.  After that we focused on Christ by watching Joy to the World.  Abigail then made up a plate of treats for Santa and his reindeer.  She was so excited!

  Abigail has never eaten so much sugar in her entire life as she did while decorating the castle:

Christmas Eve Jammies:

Christmas morning was fabulous.  Abigail was so excited that Santa came.  Barton and I were probably even more excited then she was to watch her.  All she asked for was "Princess Hair Stuff".  She must have been a good girl because Santa brought her "princess hair stuff", glass slippers, and a princess dress.  She loved it all.  In the end she was spoiled rotten, we all were.  Abigail had so much fun playing all day long with her new toys.  Her very favorite is her new puppy from Grandma Sloan.  She absolutely loves it and treats it like a real doggy.

(I LOVE this guy..)

The rest of Christmas was spent playing games and skyping with family.  it was wonderful.

The rest of our vacation in Seattle was spent site seeing.  It is always so much fun to go to a new place and explore.  We rode the DUCKS:

We went to the top of the Space Needle:

We went to the music museum that is in the shape of a broken guitar:

We went to the aquarium:

We went on a cruise on the Puget Sound:

Don't be mistaken, we spent most of our time inside sipping Hot Chocolate.

We went to the Science Museum:

My favorite part: The Butterfly House.  Even though we couldn't get a single butterfly to land on us.

Abigail's favorite part: the Snowflake Cutting Station.  What can I say, she is easy to please :)

Barton's favorite part: The IMAX theatre.  What can I say, he is not easy to please :)

As you can see we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  It was really hard to leave Mama Sloan.  She is such a delight to be with!

But alas, we had to come back to the bitter winds of Wisconsin :)  We are grown ups now, this is our first year of not having a school break for Christmas.  So back we came.  At least we had New Years to come back to celebrate before getting back to our normal routine!


New Years Eve we spent with our good friends, the Lofgrans.  We had so much fun!  We played so many games, 8 in total.  Barton was in heaven!

Abigail was in heaven playing with her good friend Jacob!

Abigail woke up a little before midnight so she helped us ring in the New Year!

It was so nice to have Barton home on New Years Day.  It snowed a lot so we stayed inside and had lots of fun hanging out.  While staying warm inside we did Barton's puzzle that he got for Christmas.

Happy 2014.  We hope that this year is as great as 2013 was!  

Our November

Happy Holidays to all of you fabulous people!  This is such a great time of the year.  Once Halloween comes, time seems to fly by even faster.  We had a great time celebrating Thanksgiving.  Sometimes I wish that we could just pause time and enjoy it for a little longer.  Here is a review of our November and of our Thanksgiving.

The weekend before Thanksgiving my cute cousin/roommate came to visit.  It is always good to catch up.

We finally got to meet cute Baby Brooklyn:

The Children's Museum:

We went to a popular Milwaukee Restaurant.The entrance is hidden and you have to know the password to enter.  If you don't know the password then you have to do something crazy; like ring-a-round the rosies or the chicken dance.  Once inside while you are eating dinner you can go on secret spy missions throughout the restaurant.  

It was fun to see how the girls interacted.  They are going to be great friends!

On Monday morning we were going to walk to the zoo.  But then we woke up to a ton of snow.  We quickly changed our plans.

We were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with some of our closest Wisconsian friends.  The best part of it was that my beautiful momma flew in that day.  It is always fun to eat yummy food and be with loved ones.

(Abs helping out with the rolls)

 We celebrated it with the Lofgrans, the McCoys, the Sister Missionaries, and a sister from our ward. 

It was wonderful to have my momma come and visit with us.  She is always a delight to be around.  While she was here she took good care of me while I came down with what we later found out to be pneumonia, she played with Abigail lots, we played tons of games, did Christmas preparations, went to the Children's Museum, checked out Christmas lights, went to the Chicago Temple, etc. It was great to have her here and we can't wait for her to come back again.  

At the Children's Museum:

The Chicago Temple:

Driving around to see the lights: