A little Poo

After last years White Elephant gift exchange I had a whole year to come up with something with a little shock factor. Mia's daycare provider gave me the idea of using cinnamon craft dough to make a piece of poop. So a week before the party I mixed up this dough using cinnamon, apple sauce and glue. After I was done "constructing" Kent and I thought it was missing something so we put a couple pieces of corn in it and it was a masterpiece! Joanne was the lucky one that got to open it and she was such a great sport! Everyone got a good laugh out of it.

Sexy Stu

Stu got this beautiful sweater embroidered with a humming bird from Michelle. No matter how girly the sweater looks, Stu could make ANYTHING look manly...may this be a lesson to everyone: Be careful what you do at parties, you might end up on the internet...

New Years Eve

New Years Eve we left my parents in the afternoon and drove home. We had malts and all kinds of yummy snacks (that is why Mia is wearing nothing but a diaper and is sitting on a towel) and we watched the Ball drop in NY City on TV then we watched a movie. Not too exciting.

Simenson Family Christmas

The Weekend after Christmas we went and had Christmas with my family. Isabelle was outside the whole weekend sledding. Mia wore grandpa's hunting hat to fit in to the country scene and she got to even help him blow snow with the tractor. The car in the picture was a gift from my dad to Kent. When they were out pheasant hunting this past fall, they came upon a junk yard by the old coal mine. Miners used to live nearby and this was an old toy that was left behind. When Kent and dad found the car, it was squashed and rusty. My dad, who restores full sized cars for a hobby, decided to fix the toy car up for Kent. It turned out awesome and it was one of Kent's favorite Christmas gifts.

Severson Family Christmas

For Christmas we went up to Kent's parent's house and spend the weekend there. The kids had a great time playing outside in the snow. Kent and Heidi had a little cook-off. Kent made his Dutch Bitterballen and Heidi made her Spring rolls. It was really hard to pick a winner since they both were so good, so I think we will have to have another cook-off next year just to be sure! Note the cute apron Kent is wearing. It even had a "K" on the big heart for Kent!

Present Opening Marathon

Our Christmas festivities don't end in one day, our Christmas spans over a week's time(our house, Kent's parents Christmas weekend, my parents New Year's weekend). So on December 22nd, the day before we left for Kent's parents to spend Christmas up there, we had a little Christmas of our own, just the four of us. We had a special meal of chicken in grape sauce and then we opened presents. The girls were so thrilled to finally get to open these presents that had been sitting under the tree since after Thanksgiving. Kent slaved away for what seems like forever to make them the wonderful doll houses that you see. Someday the girls will really appreciate the dollhouses that their daddy made for them!

O Christmas Tree!

I just thought I would show a picture of our Christmas tree. The last few years we just had a little tree but this year we decided to get a new one and I am very glad we did.

Isabelle's Christmas Play

Every year our church holds a Christmas play that is put on by the Sunday school kids. Now that Isabelle is older, she gets to take a more active roll in the play. This year she was a fisherwoman and had a wonderful speaking part that had a great message about the birth of Jesus. She really loves being in the spotlight and I am sure she will continue to get more speaking parts since she is so good at it!

My Beautiful Girls

Okay, call me a bragger if you must but aren't these some of the cutest girls you have ever seen? This is Isabelle and Mia in their Christmas dresses. They both picked out their own dresses this year (yes, the two year old picked out her own dress, she has a particular style already, and most of the time has pretty good taste). Neither one of them wanted to go with the traditional holiday dress this year, which was fine with me. These dresses will be able to be worn a lot more during the year.

Air Isabelle

Starting in November Isabelle joined the YMCA girls basketball team. She had practice once a week and a game every Saturday. It was a five game series and it just wrapped up the weekend before Christmas. She had never played organized basketball before so it was a big learning experience for her. I think that she definitely has potential to be pretty good someday. She is not afraid to get in on the action and she really loves to play. Those two things, I think, will make her a huge success. And for selfish reasons, I hope she will keep it up because I love to watch her play. Someday when she is playing on the highschool team, I will be the loudest mother in the stand, wearing 15 buttons with her picture on them and a t-shirt that says something like "#12 is my daughter, or Isabelle's biggest fan." When I was in school, I never got those crazy mothers...now, I get it.

Ready? Okay! TRICK OR TREAT!

This year for Halloween the girls were cheeleaders. Just like last year, I made their costumes there are no store bought costumes in this house -NO WAY! How unoriginal! Isabelle was a Beulah Miner cheerleader in honor of my hometown and Mia was a Roseau Ram cheerleader in honor of Kent's hometown. We had lots of fun taking these pictures and the girls got lots of yummy candy.

Pheasant Hunting

In mid-October Kent and my dad went hunting for a weekend. They saw many birds, shot many times, got one bird...Oh well, they had a really good time and got to enjoy beautiful weather, scenery and good company. I didn't get outside in time to take a picture of the pheasant before they cleaned it, I was having issues with the grasshoppers (those of you that know me, know I am terrified of those disgusting creatures). By the time I got out there, the Pheasant was almost clean so Kent just held up the carcass that was left...

Just Smurfy

So Kent decided to repaint the laundry room and thought it would be a great idea to let Mia help. Him and I differ in parenting in that way. I love when my children choose "clean" activities that don't involve hosing or scrubbing down the kids, the house, or me. As you can see, she got more paint on herself than the wall, but she had a great time! Kent had to take his shirt off to pick her up and take her upstairs to give her a bath.

Itasca State Park

The Second weekend of September we went camping for the last time this year. Both Kent and I had never camped at Itasca before, but we had heard great things about it. The drive was not too long about two hours and it was great scenery most of the way. When we got there, we were told by one of the rangers that our campsite had the best view of all so we were pretty excited(the scenery picture is our view). The trees and the lake kind of reminded my of Kayla and my trip to Norway. It was pretty cold at night so we all wore many layers to bed but during the day it was perfect weather. We rode our bikes about three miles up to the headwaters were the Mississippi River started. That was pretty neat. The girls had fun jumping across the rocks. I will try to post more pictures later.

Mia and Isabelle Go Hollywood

On August 18th we went up to visit Kent's Family. Before we left Kent had picked up a gift for Kate's Birthday. While he was shopping, he found sunglasses for 50 cents each so he bought a bunch of them so the kids could play with them. This picture was taken in the car on the way there. They were practicing their "movie star with attitude" look.

Sesame Street Live

In mid-August we took Mia to Sesame Street Live. We all had a great time. Mia's eyes were glued to the stage the whole time and she even got up and danced around a few times. We had great seats, we were five rows from the front and were on the aisle.

Little Princesses

This weekend it was just too hot during the day to even think about going outside so the girls got creative inside. Mia wore her little pricess dress she got for her birthday and Isabelle wore her poodle skirt from last halloween. They danced around the house and had a good time.

Fourth of July Weekend

Forth of July weekend we went out to the north western edge of the state to Kent's grandma's farm. It was nice to get out the country and smell all the fresh air. The weather was very nice and we were able to enjoy outdoor activities. Kent took the kids out to an old abandoned homestead were they used his metal detector to search for treasures. We lit off some really nice fireworks on Saturday night and Kent went golfing Sunday morning. On Saturday the guys took the old tub out of the bathroom to replace it with a new shower. Not thinking about it before hand, I had no way to give Mia a bath, since all that was left was the shower in the basement. So we got creative and I hauled hot water out to the front yard with a bucket to the old tub and put cold water in it until it was a good temperature and gave Mia a bath. Nothing like bathing country-style!

Daddy's Little Helper

Kent was doing some work under the Kitchen sink and Mia decided that she wanted to help.