WOW! Merry Christmas!

The Z kids had an awesome Christmas! I guess Santa knew he wouldn't be going wrong with all the microphones and instruments.

We hope everyone else had as great of a holiday as we did. We are truly lucky to have had family and friends with us.

We miss everyone who isn't here with us and hope to see you sometime soon.

Yahoo!

The kids had a blast with their friends, Nessah, Joy, Jacob, Spencer, and Curtis on the sledding hill. There were only a few minor accidents and only one black eye (Ben). All in all we'd say it was the perfect way to kick off the winter break.

A Great Day to go Sledding!

Snow Day

The best way to celebrate a snow day is with breakfast in bed!

A New Best Friend

It is hard to tell which of these two is more happy.....

Happy Birthday to me

Meet our newest family member - Raymond!

Family!

Sammy's Birthday Part 2

Fiona, Jackson, Aunt Tara, and Uncle Jack came to celebrate Sammy's birthday with us. It was so much fun and such great chaos! I think Grandma and Grandpa are having fun with all the kids but we are really tiring them out (Grandma and Grandpa, not the kids).

Happy Birthday to Sam!

Sammy has turned 8. Where has the time gone? Here is her first round of gifts - her wonderful brother passed on his birthday underwear (don't ask, it's a joke between the two of them that has been going on for a while) and she got a new monkey puppet. The new monkey is a girl and her name is Mrs Bush, and as you can guess, Sammy is incredibly excited. She has all kinds of plans for Mr and Mrs Bush's life together.

We went to the movies with Grandma and Grandpa to see Madagascar 2. The kids had a great time eating buckets of popcorn at the movies even Maisie was good.

The other part of Sammy's birthday gift was that a few weeks ago she went downtown with me and we saw Wicked. I am so happy that she was able to see it before it leaves Chicago. It is one of my favorite musicals and sharing the experience with her was awesome!

Happy Birthday Sammy!

Snacks with Santa

This is one of our favorite family's traditions, Snacks with Santa. The kids sang with the chorus, Ben and Sam chatted with Santa (Maisie wanted NOTHING to do with him) and there was face painting (the Rudolph nose). This year was even more fun than usual. After snacks we went to our friend's the Shramer's house and and ice skated on their pond in their backyard late into the night. It was a dream come true, a true blizzard, a big bunch of our friends, loud rock and roll, lots of smiles, and best of all, no injuries! John even skated with us. After a few hours with the hockey sticks out we were getting a little bit crazy and decided we needed to start a neighborhood no check hockey league - what do you think the chances of that happening are ? Our only regret with the night was that we couldn't take any pictures!

Big Sled Race on a very little hill

Snow!

Jackson and Fiona slept over and we woke up to SNOW! Lots of good sledding & fort building - it was hard packing snow. It was awesome!

Please excuse the pink mittens, it was all we could find for Jackson.

No pictures of Fiona, she stayed inside with Uncle John where it was nice and warm.

Maisie's "big kid" puzzle

Maisie is on her way to completing this puzzle by herself. It is her first "big kid" puzzle and she can mostly do it on her own. She is hoping to join the big kids soon @ the dining room table for one of the 500 piece puzzles we do.

The pantless chef

Well everyone has heard of the naked chef. How about the pantless one?

Cookies and McFlurries

It just doesn't get any better than this, not only did we get the baking stuff, we got a bunch of bags of cookies that Aunt Chriss already made. THANK YOU!