Christmas 2016

Here is Christmas from 3 months ago! Life has been a little crazy...actually a lot crazy but that's a different post. We were living with friends during December so we celebrated together. I think it's going to be a tradition because they came to our house last year. 

Like always my mom makes the kids matching Christmas pajamas. It's crazy to see how much the kids have grown since this picture.

Christmas was on Sunday so we decided to celebrate on Saturday since Sundays are so busy for us with church. The kids opened stockings first.

We filled them mostly with snacks. Unlike tiny toys once they are consumed they're gone. It makes everyone happy.

Rosalie's first Christmas :)

I made our traditional Christmas wreath bread for breakfast. Along side it I made baked eggs with spinach and tomatoes.

Behold! The Christmas pickle. 

Our friends the Wilhelms have a tradition that who ever finds the pickle on the tree gets to hand out the presents. George was the winner.

Mrs. Christen demonstrating how the new toys work.

Everything is for eating, right?

Trying out the new bike helmet while playing with her doll house. Christen and I stayed up late the two nights prior assembling that doll house. It was crazy but we got it done and she was thrilled with it. 

Thanksgiving Weekend

 Thanksgiving weekend is always relaxing around our house. We don't visit family during the holidays because of the distance and most of our friends are out of town. Instead of cooking a huge meal for just our family we decided to make homemade pizza. The kids were thrilled and I didn't spend hours in the kitchen. Everyone was happy!

Thanksgiving day was chilly and we ended up getting a few snow flurries. We bundled the smalls up and took a long walk in downtown Dover. There were quite a few people out walking off their Thanksgiving turkey. Even in the chilly fall when all the leaves have fallen and everything is gray it's still beautiful. One of the reasons we love NH!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we drove over to Kittery, Maine for a few hours. We checked out the Evergreen Festival at Second Christain Congregational Church. We didn't find anything that we couldn't live without but we did find Santa. George was obsessed with Santa this Christmas even though we don't "do" Santa. It was hilarious how excited he got every time he saw someone dressed up. You can tell by the look on his face.

And you can't be in Kittery without grabbing a cruller and coffee from Lil's Cafe. It's one of our favorite spots around these parts and the kids are constantly asking to go. They think Lil's and Kittery are the same thing. 

Lovely downtown Kittery and her classic streets and houses.

4th Of July In Maine

 After we attended a picnic on Friday the 3rd we loaded up and drove up to Bangor, Maine. We have great friends that we had not seen since last October. The kids slept half of the 3 hour drive and did great for the last bit that they were awake.

We started off the weekend with the 4th of July parade in downtown. You would have thought that it was the best parade in the world by how George was behaving. He wore himself out yelling and clapping.

Sunday after noon was pretty warm so we ran down to Gifford's for some ice cream. They had the best baby cones for the kids. Our local ice cream shops have a tendency to make the portions way to large. Giffords's were perfect. 

All of George's closest buddies have received fishing poles in the last few months and George has really, really been wanting one too. Nathan bought him one while we were out of town. He practiced his cast all weekend.

Monday morning we headed to downtown again for breakfast and a little exploring. We had bagels at a local spot called Bagel Central. Our kids were up early so technically this was second breakfast. 

I was really impressed with downtown Bangor. We were told that a lot of work has gone into the area in the last few years. Nathan picked up some great local beer in the Bottles & Cans shop pictured below.

After walking about for a bit we popped into the Maine Discovery Museum. We were so glad that we checked it out. It was amazing!! I'm pretty sure we were there for almost 2 hours and we didn't get to enjoy all the exhibits. George, of course, enjoyed it the most but Edith had blast as well.

We can't wait for our next visit. This one was our best yet and it's just going to get better once the kids can all play together.

Thanksgiving 2014

Oh, hi white Thanksgiving! The day before Thanksgiving it started to snow. Wet, heavy snow. By 9 Wednesday night we lost power with a lot of other people in NH. We toughed it out until morning and then headed to a friends house who happened to be out of town for the holiday. 

Thankfully we had accepted an invitation to Thanksgiving lunch so we didn't lose the joy of consuming ridiculous amounts of amazing food.

Oh, what goodness.

My camera might have been compromised after being left at our friends house.

We end up not getting our power back until Saturday afternoon. We roughed it at our friends house until it was restored...oh, and they have a hot tub...it was brutal.

GA Trip: Part 1

Here are a lot of pictures from the first half of our trip to GA. As usual, flew into Atlanta and spent a few days with my family before heading further south to see Nathans family.

The annual Leonhard 4th of July party was held on Saturday night and it was tons of fun just like always. This is the first year George has really been able to know who everyone is and know where he was.

He played very, very hard and, unlike all our previous trips, slept well. Nothing screams vacation more than worn out children that sleep well.