Slick Willy

No, this is not a reference to our little Will, but rather another more popular one. Yesterday Mary, John's mom got to get up close and personal with former president, Bill Clinton. He was in Decorah speaking on behalf of his wife. Ok, so she wasn't really up close and personal with him, but she did manage a photo op that I thought I would share. (Note to other family members...see, I can put pictures of YOU on here too!)

A visit from Santa

Santa came to our house last night, and we got to open presents at home this morning. Katie and Will were very good kids cuz they got lots of toys. As you can see, Katie got a tent to play in and her and Will got a table and chairs from Santa. Katie also got lots of stocking stuffers and some Little People sets. She loved the card games from Baby Noah too. Daddy got the Lord of the Rings trilogy set (which he is watching at the moment), and Mommy got new pajamas (which she is wearing right now) and a spa gift certificate. All in all it was a great morning! Marry Christmas!

Katie helped make cut out cookies yesterday. They turned out so great that we are making more today!

Katie found her gifts from Santa right away - kind of hard to miss them. Please note the darkness outside. :) Katie woke us up at 6:45 am to get out of bed. Luckily Will had already beat her to it by waking up at 6. :)

Katie found candy canes, pez, markers, and lots of things in her stocking. Will got jipped in his.

Katie begins the task of opening her gifts.

Will couldn't open anything, but he sure loved shaking the paper, making noise with it and trying to eat it.

Bath time fun

Katie and Will are having more fun in the bathtub now that Will sits up in his seat. He likes putting his hand in the water and grabbing any toy Katie lets him have. Here are the first pics of the two of them together in the tub. Please don't pay any attention to the dirty bathtub walls....

New house

Well we finally have the house hunting behind us, and assuming nothing strange comes up at the inspection tomorrow we will be home owners again. We are looking to move around the first week or two of February...kinda depends on how warm it gets. :) We will be moving to Chanhassen, MN. Katie will be able to finish out her year of pre-school in Eden Prairie, and continue there next year if we want. It will be nice to have a 2 car garage and some extra space for the kids. I am posting some pictures of the house for you to see. Overall there is not a lot to do before we move in. I think we'll paint Katie's bedroom whatever color she chooses - to an extent, and maybe the master bedroom. Any decorating tips would be welcome. :)

Front view of home

Backyard - the swing set stays.

Kitchen - obviously...

Sun porch

Downstairs family room

Santa Time

Katie and Will visited Santa today. Both took it very well. I was able to get a pretty good picture of them. Seems Will didn't really care too much.

We are all decorated for Christmas - well, as decorated as we are gonna get. We have the tree up, and some other decorations too. We have a small nativity scene that we got from Grandma Mary last year. Katie has decided that she likes to play house with it. She hides the daddy and the baby, then the mommy has to find them. Today she said "Baby Jesus has a dirty diaper," and she continued to change him. :) We are in for more snow this weekend...hopefully the weather decides to take a break for awhile!

Star of the week

This week Katie is "Star of the Week" at preschool. That means she gets to bring snacks for everyone, we have to make play dough to bring to school, and she gets to bring 2 things that are special to her to show to the class. Basically, it's just a lot more work for me. :) We did get to make play dough for the first time Monday night. That was a first for me. I'm glad we did it while John was home though because you really need some arm muscle.

We also worked on getting our Christmas picture done. I try to do it myself every year, and so far so good. With two kids it's a bit more complicated, but I think I did it. I have a few good ones that I am not using, so I thought I would post one of them. It appears that we took this while we were peaking from a sugar rush. :)

Winter Wonderland

We got our first measurable snowfall today - as most of the upper Midwest did. After lunch, we bundled up the kids and went out to play for a while. Will and I lasted about 90 seconds, while John and Katie lasted about 10 minutes. :) Here are some pictures of the kids in the snow.







John also took on both of the kids last night while I split for the evening. I met my friend Shelley in Rochester and saw my brothers band, County Road. It was a fun night without the kids. I was greeted this morning by Katie. When I asked her if she had fun with Dad, she said "I wasn't very nice to Dad." This usually means that she didn't listen and basically tried to do whatever she felt like. :)