Gingerbread House and First Words

Audrey constructed/ate her first gingerbread house this week....

Sawyer is starting to talk a little bit. Here are a few of his first words...

Henry Ford Museum

Yesterday we took a trip to The Henry Ford Museum. Here are some of the highlights.....

Sawyer is watching the biggest train display I have ever seen. He focused on this for 10 minutes. He's never stayed so still in his life!

Oscar Mayer Wieners!

"I ain't afraid of no ghost!"

Audrey was a little scared of Darth.

This is the actual Rosa Parks bus.

Daddy and Audrey trying to fly their paper airplane at the air exhibit.

HUGE train!

We let Sawyer out of the stroller and he immediately ran for the GT.

Christmas Dinner

We went to my mom's for an awesome, prime rib, Christmas dinner. As always, the Harveys came too. They are just like family and we have a blast with them every year. We share many bottles of wine and then play games and hang spoons from our noses and other strange things like that. I'm not sure how our strange Christmas dinners got started but the wine probably had something to do with it!

Uncle Ryan left the day after Christmas for his 9 week trip around the world. He is visiting Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand and Indonesia. You can link to his blog and track his adventures under the Blog Buddies section on our blog.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Morning

Opening her new dollhouse!

Daddy helped build a big tower for Audrey's new marbles.

Ready for the presents!

The umbrella was a BIG hit!

We'll probably drive ourselves crazy with Hungry Hippos.

Sawyer still prefers to climb on the presents and bounce up and down.

What more can we saw about Christmas morning other than it's probably the most fun day of the year. Audrey gets more and more fun every year. I am enjoying every second of it because before I know it she'll be too cool for Santa.

Sawyer actually did open all of his presents. It took him the same amount of time to open his 4 presents as it did for Audrey to open her .... well, who knows how many she had, I lost track after about 10!

Ben and I were sad when all the presents were opened. Now we just have to figure out where to put everything!

Getting Ready for Christmas

Audrey helped paint the letters on all of these packages with my dad.

My papa flew in from Florida on Tuesday and my brother came from Boston. We are so happy to be able to see both of them and that they made it in despite the crazy weather. Above are some pictures of Audrey making cookies. She was very into that this year. My papa makes the traditional Polish sauerkraut every year as well. The MERRY CHRISTMAS packages are my dad's creation for my mom. Every year he has a theme for Christmas and always goes a little overboard. I'm sure my mom's not complaining though. My dad knows how to shop!

Christmas in Stevensville

We enjoyed our first Christmas celebration of the week in Stevensville with Ben's parents. We had a great brunch with Santa. Audrey can't get enough of the guy! She even told Santa what I wanted for Christmas. I thought that was pretty thoughtful, especially for an egocentric 3 year old!

Audrey loves her new LeapFrog Tag reader from Grandma and Papa Rapp. I think she will get many hours of enjoyment from it. You can see that Sawyer still is confused about presents. He still doesn't get that there is something good in the box. He'd rather just carry it around or climb on it.

For those who were wondering, we did survive our car ride home, barely. We just missed a 30 car pile up on I-94. Ben and I have never seen such white out conditions. It was very scary. Let's just say I was breathing like I was in labor, just like they taught us in Lamaze. Lesson learned, pay serious attention to weather forecasts in advance!!

Holy Snow!

Our giant snowman made on Christmas Eve.

Trying to roll part of Frosty.

Sledding down our snow pile at the edge of our driveway.

Audrey and Tyler trying to get out of Aunt Brandy's door the day of the big storm.

We've had our dose of winter over the past week. I think we've had about 2 feet of snow. Audrey had a blast making snow men, sledding and rolling around in the snow. She can't walk in it very well because it is just too deep. Ben and I have gotten our workout by carrying her around and shoveling. We finally broke down and paid some one to help dig us out.

Despite the look on his face in the snowman picture, Sawyer now enjoys being in the snow as well. He sticks his face in it and eats it. He's pretty much given up on walking in his snow outfit. We now call him Randy, most of you know the Christmas Story quite well I should hope.

Rapp/Ward Christmas

On Saturday we had an early Christmas celebration with the Ward Family. Aunt Brandy and Uncle Brad got Audrey a digital camera, for kids of course, that she has been playing with a ton. Tyler got a Sesame Street medical kit which seemed to be a hit as well.

Every year we try to take a picture of the kids in their Christmas pj's. It was easier to get them all to sit this year but still nearly impossible to get them all looking at the camera and smiling at the same time. Sawyer was probably just so happy that I actually let him on the couch that he couldn't even focus on the camera for 1 second. After we tortured the kids with the picture session, we allowed Audrey and Tyler to stay up late watching Elmo movies and the adults got to play some Euchre.

For your viewing pleasure, I also added a video clip of Audrey singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town. She thinks the say "toilet town" instead of "toyland town"! Glad we got that on video!

December Updates

Abby, Audrey and Katie before their big show.

Audrey and Tyler being their silly selves. They are entertained by the funniest things.

Notice her Bitty Baby has a matching dress, thanks Grandma!

Ready to DANCE!

We have been very busy the past 2 weeks - hence the lack of updates. We've dealt with some illnesses, hopefully that's over. Audrey and I had pink eye and Sawyer had a few days of very unpleasant diapers but I won't elaborate any more on that.

Sawyer has been walking well for a few weeks now. He's really given up crawling all together. He still falls a lot, especially when he tries to run. He gets right back up though and it doesn't seem to phase him too much. His obsession with climbing is still going on. He now has discovered that he loves to walk down the stairs - very scary as you can imagine! He's getting a little pickier about what he eats. He says YUCK if he doesn't like something. It sounds more like CK but I get his meaning. He has 11 teeth - 3 molars already!

Audrey had her Christmas Dance Recital last Saturday. It was very cute and we loved watching her on stage. Her class did pretty well considering their teacher had a baby 2 weeks ago and they hadn't really practiced that much. Audrey is still very into Christmas and all that goes with it!

I'll try to update again before Christmas but I'm not sure there will be time. We hope you are all having a fun holiday season so far!!

Tree Time

They sure do look alike!

Audrey thought she was carrying the tree by herself!

The winner

We can't believe it's December already! On Sunday we made our annual visit to the tree farm to pick out our tree. Audrey was very excited this year. She is SUPER into everything about Christmas. She talks about Santa, Frosty, our tree, Rudolph, presents, etc.... almost non stop. In the car we can only listen to Christmas songs and the volume has to be UP!

Our trip to the tree farm was good. We beat the snowstorm, Sawyer loved the wagon ride and horses but still hates bundling up. We got the tree up and decorated on Sunday. Now the trick will be keeping Sawyer away from it. Knowing him, he'll probably try to climb it!

Thanksgiving Weekend

We hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Aunt Emily and Uncle Rodney made the trek from NC. Audrey was very happy to see them. She had her first experience with Uncle Rodney's Wii. Bowling and Mario Kart were the favorites. They also spoiled the kids with some early Christmas presents. We've played many games of Don't Wake Daddy, which I recommend for little ones. It's very simple and quick.

We had dinner at our house with Ben's parents, Aunt Barbie, Uncle Rob and Great Grandma B. You can see Audrey enjoying dessert with her Great Grandma. I think she ate more Cool Whip than actual pie but that's the best part!