Christmas eve and morning...

On Christmas eve, Andrew's Mom and Dad and his sister and family got here in the afternoon. At about 10:30PM we headed out to go to Christmas eve service at our church. The service was very well done and Andrew sang a couple of songs. At about half-way through we lost Kyle and then Rebecca laid her head down about 15 minutes before service was done and fell asleep. Emily held on to the end and then went to bed after we got home. Santa Clause arrived shortly after. In the morning I was wakened too, "Mommy, Mommy come and see what Santa left..I saw 2 eyes in my stocking that looked like Wall-E, come and see Mommy!!!" That would be Kyle and then he woke up Rebecca and told everyone else that Santa had come!! Rebecca and Kyle were so incredibly excited, it was very cute!! Kyle had even gotten himself dressed in his Christmas sweater BEFORE he came out of his room!!! After stockings had been exhausted we moved downstairs to the presents!! They had alot of fun opening up the gifts and checking out each one! Rebecca, Kyle and Emily especially liked passing out the presents to everyone. Rebecca's favorite gift is her "American Girl" doll (knock-off) and her kitty and horse webkinz. Kyle has been enjoying his new castle with the knights and horses that go with it! They will be discovering their new toys for the next 2 months, I am sure!!!

SNOW, SNOW and MORE SNOW!!

The first day of Christmas break started with a snow day!! We recieved about a foot of snow and the forecast predicts more to come on Sunday! Hooray..snow!! Rebecca and Kyle love the snow - here is a snowman we made and a picture next to our nativity!!

Mitchell Family Christmas pictures

Right before Thanksgiving we went and had our family pictures taken, enjoy...

Thanksgiving up north in East Jordan

It is hard to believe that Christmas is in 5 days! Rebecca and Kyle are very excited about Christmas and the waiting for Christmas eve is getting to be overwhelming! Thank goodness for advent calendars and for links they can cut off to know how many more nights they have to sleep before Chrismas! They each have picked out and wrapped their presents to each other, so it is taking every ounce of holding back to not tell what the other's present is!!!

Thought I would post some of our Thanksgiving pictures before Christmas pictures go up!!

We enjoyed a nice long weekend up north over Thanksgiving at Grandma up north's and Grandpa and Grandma Kelly. The Moreau cousins were also up at Grandma up north's so the 6 cousins enjoyed playing with each other and especially riding on Uncle Jerimy's snowmobile! They also love sledding down Grandma's hill and the near misses to sledding into the creek! I think the highlight was the 20 plus turkeys walking through Grandma's yard and the grandkids running into Grandma's room early in the morning to let her know that the turkeys are in the yard! (Even though she sees them every day!!) Unfortunately, I came down with an intestinal virus that left me nauseous and with no appetite. By Saturday, (sorry for the graphics) the virus decided to leave and diarrhea began!! However, I did manage to go to Walmart the day after Thanksgiving with Mom, Jaydee and Blake and Garrett. The boys were so funny - they thought because they were getting up that early and going that they would be loading in the gifts....not so much! But Grandma did make their day by letting them pick out 2 things at Kohl's and they found a $5 video game, which was the steal of the day!!

Unfortunately, the virus made it's way to Andrew and only mildly to Rebecca and Kyle and then Grandma reported that she was down for the count later in the week as well!!! A Thanksgiving to remember....I guess!!!

Enjoy the pics!!

Celebrating our Thanksgiving feast **The Moreau and Mitchell cousins

Cousin Garrett introduced Kyle to video games! **Grandpa and Grandma Kelly

Great Grandma Jake

Halloween

A Day at Innotec with Innocademy!

Getting ready for the scavenger hunt*******South America family****Rebecca and Kyle*****

Ms. Kendra and Ms. Leslie

Okay - still trying to keep up with blogging and given that Christmas is right around the corner, I decided to get myself updated!! We set up our Christmas tree downstairs today, so in order to post those pictures, I needed to catch up to that point!! Ha!! So - after Rebecca's derby races, we went right into Halloween and Rebecca's "off-site" at Innotec for school on Halloween. Innotec was alot of fun! They played games and the older kids made potato shooters, they all got a to tour of Innotec, had some face painting and ate cider and donuts like crazy!! There are some pictures of Rebecca's United Nations family (her's is South America and they are in red). Along with the director of Innocademy and Rebecca's teacher - Ms. Leslie!!

HALLOWEEN 2008

Getting ready for trick-or-treating*****Kyle in the tunnel at Light of the World

Andrew and Chuck!!!

Halloween night was fun. We came home from Innotec and immediately got our costumes on and headed out to trick-or-treating. We went around the neighborhood and then to our church for Light of the World, where we ate dinner and then the kids were able to play games and get a ton more candy. Andrew became the holder of the costumes and was a good sport about it!!!

GIRLS DERBY RACES

Rebecca did an awesome job and her very first derby race!! She was so good about the races, a little intimidated about being in front of people, but she did good! She finished 2nd place and that was great, she was very humble about it! Brenda is handing Rebecca her trophy and then there is a picture with her leader - Ms. Stacey and the rest of the girls in her group! Kyle was even the derby track supervisor and was carefully watching the cars race down the track!! It was a fun night for all of the girls!!!

Pumpkinfest, Soccer and a cute brother and sister moment...

Here are some pictures from the Pumpkinfest weekend in Zeeland. Rebecca had a soccer game that morning, so she and Dad were there and then Kyle and Mom ran in the Pumpkinfest 5K run, along with our friend Sarah and her son Connall!! Thanks to our other friend Gary who probably had something to do with our picture in the paper!! Ha!! The other pictures are from Rebecca's soccer team and the picture of her. Note the handsome coach (on the left)!!!!
Finally- Andrew took this a few mornings ago - for some reason we usually end up with both kids in bed with us during the night. This was just too cute!!! Be on the look out for some Halloween pictures coming soon!!!

Trick or Treat Camping Weekend

Spooky Faces!
Rebecca bobbing for apples
Kyle helping carving pumpkins
A kitty and lightning McQueen

The candy hayride

This past weekend we went camping for the last time this season at Oak Grove trick or treat weekend. We had a great time and the weather was beautiful! We started the day with Rebecca's soccer game, which she did a great job with and then we went back to the campground and played some games. Like finding the tootsie rolls in the hay, Rebecca tried bobbing for apples and then we carved our pumpkins! Rebecca requested a kitty cat pumpkin and Kyle a Lightning McQueen pumpkin! We then went trick or treating around the campground and then went on a candy hay ride! We enjoyed roasting smarshmallows as Kyle calls them by the campfire. We were able to get a bike ride in and ride to the preservation sand dunes near Holland State Park. After climing 239 stairs, we were able to over look the sand dunes and could see Big Red Lighthouse, Lake Mac and Lake Michigan. Very pretty!! Enjoy the pics!!

Post Family Farm

Last week during Rebecca's break from school we went to Post Family Farm which is a pumpkin patch in Hudsonville that has very yummy pumpkin doughnuts!!! Kyle and Rebecca had a blast! Their friends Zachary, Dylan and Mia and Brookelyn and Reid were there as well!! Their favorite thing was to climb the hay bales. We then rode on the tractor for a hay ride to the pumpkin patch, where they each picked their own pumpkin. Then they feed the crazy goats and petted the other animals and then Rebecca rode on the zip line! We finished the afternoon with pumpkin doughnuts and apple cider.....ummmmmmmmmm!! Enjoy the pics!

A day at Holland State Park

A couple of weekends ago, we had our good friends from Lansing - (the Harrions) come and visit us. Here are a couple of pictures from the beach that day. It was so amazing, the waves were just rolling in, but there was no wind. It was a beautiful day to spend with our friends!!

Our Summer Camping Trips

FOURTH OF JULY CAMPING

So, I am filling out my paperwork for Kyle's preschool and realized that I need to bring in a few pictures for his teacher. Which lead me to going through our camping pictures. I thought I would post some!
To the right is our Fourth of July weekend with my brother's family at Sleepy Bear Campground. Rebecca and Kyle love camping and especially making "smarshmallows" as Kyle calls them!

And to the left is Rebecca and cousin Garrett at North Bar Lake near Empire. This lake was the greatest! To get to the lake you had to hike on a trail that brought you to North Bar Lake. Then there was a huge sand dune that separated the lake from Lake Michigan and where Rebecca and Garrett are is a small current or channel that runs from North Bar lake to Lake Michigan - it was only ankle deep so the kids were having a blast in it!!

Here is Kyle and cousin Cassandra to the right. Kyle LOVED that the small current would run his boats down the channel and into the big lake. He and Cassandra would chase the boats down into Lake Michigan!!

CRAN-HILL RANCH CAMPING

One of our favorite places to go camping in the summer is at Cran-Hill ranch near Big Rapids. It is a family camp we do with our church and it is so kid-friendly!! This year - my heart was so heavy, because Rebecca was old enough to ride her bike with the other older girls to the barn store and back. It was hard to see my baby riding by herself with a pack of other girls!!! But she did very well and Kyle was upset at first but then he got to make fire with Daddy and was happy again!

Sitting on the fence after tie-dying t-shirts!

Going canoeing - Kyle was a little scared - but we had fun!

Rebecca riding Angel.

Kyle riding Fonzo.

And of course, visiting the kitties!!!

Hope you enjoyed our camping trips!!