On Christmas Eve morning, we visited with our friends, the Bairds, for a couple of hours. I didn't take any pictures, but it was great to catch up and let the kids exchange presents. Then in the afternoon we had Lucy's birthday party at my parent's house. My sister made a cute butterfly cake and I found some decorations that went along with the cake.  I wanted to get a picture of her by the cake. It was dangerous because she kept trying to grab it with her hands. :)  The pretty birthday girl.  Molly helping Lucy with the stroller. Lucy walked around with it all by herself many times too!  Trying out the birthday cake.  Yummy frosting!!!  She did a good job opening her presents.  A new book!  My parents got her the Little People Princess Castle. She has had such a fun time playing with it. She loved all of the colorful tissue paper from Uncle Joe's present.  Hanging out with Gramps.  Tryi...

We ended up leaving for Cadillac after Ben was done with school on Thursday. They were supposed to get a bunch of snow overnight and Friday morning. Since Ben doesn't have school on Fridays, that wasn't really too much of a problem...besides trying to get everything organized a whole day early! On Friday night we celebrated Lucy's and Molly's (my sister-in-law) birthdays. Since Lucy's is on January 4th, we will always need to squeeze it in over our Christmas visit. We brought up some "hot chocolate" cupcakes from For Goodness Cakes. They have such yummy cupcakes! Lucy was mesmerized by the candle. I didn't let it  get within her reach.  Trying out the frosting.  She loved the frosting and ate just about every bit of it! Presents!  Earlier on Friday, Curt and Ben got to play outside. Ben has had a long wish list for winter. I think he was able to cross quite a few things off of his list. Some included building a snow fort, having ...

I am waaay behind on updating my blog. I thought I'd just start way back at our family Christmas and see how caught up I can get today. We celebrated Christmas very early back on Saturday, December 15th. We travel to see both of our families in Michigan over Christmas (they live in different cities). Trying to work out that schedule means that we are never home on Christmas. I like to have a morning to wake up with presents, so this year the best time was that weekend. We planned some fun things to make it a special day. I told Ben that Santa knew that we had to have Christmas early and I thought he'd make a special early stop just for him and Lucy. :)  We always get the kids new pj's on Christmas Eve. After they got those on, Ben had a special present for Lucy. He gave her some of his old books and Cheerios. She loved it!  Ben was excited to have hot chocolate and marshmallows to take in the van. We went out to see The Festival of Lights before bedtime. The pic...

Ben helped me make sugar cookies this afternoon. We wanted to have some to leave out for Santa...and eat some of course. I made the dough while he was in school and had it all ready for us to cut out the shapes this afternoon. I hoped that Lucy would take a nap through all of it, but that didn't happen. She joined us from her high chair for the decorating part.  Taking his first shape from the cookie cutter.  He made a star. I love how he is so proud of it. :)  Ben did a great job cutting out his shapes.  He enjoyed rolling out some of the leftovers to make more cookies.  Licking the beater from making the frosting.  Plenty of cookies for our family to eat!  The sprinkle part was a big of a mess, but nothing that the vacuum couldn't fix.  Thumbs up for one yummy cookie.  Lucy watched us from her high chair while she ate some Cheerios. I found this picture on the camera from last week. Lucy makes a...