Maple Weekend

Duane and I took the kids to the Gabel Farm for Maple Weekend today.  We took a hay ride to the farm, got maple suckers and candy, checked out some boiling sap, and hiked the Sugar Bush trail!

The kids enjoying the hay ride.

Duane showing the kids how they tap the trees to suck out the sap.

Jonas really liked that Rosie the dog followed us through the whole trail.

Collins Snow Day

It has been a while since I've posted...over a month!  I will try to play some catch up today since I have (another) unexpected day of from work.  

The Lafferty girls joined us for a snow day in Collins.  There was some tubing/sledding fun, playing on the swing, and a hike to the creek!

The tough 4 that made the hike all the way down!

Disney on Ice

Last weekend we took the kids up to Rochester to see Disney on Ice.  The Lafferty's came too, and we even got to go to Red Robin for lunch afterwards.  The kids all agreed - Stitch was the best part of the show!

Waiting for the show to start

The show featured four Disney movies:  The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Stitch, and Peter Pan.  And of course, Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy entertained us as well.  

It was fun for everyone, and the kids were great with the car rides and long wait at the restaurant.  Can't wait until next year!

Flooding

We decided to hike down to the creek on Saturday to check out the flooding creek.  With all the snow melting and all the rain, it was pretty crazy to see how high the creek had gotten.

Maybe it is hard to tell in the pictures, but the water was moving super fast, too.  We played around and hiked for a couple hours, and right when we were finishing up, we got caught in a torrential downpour!  We were all soaking wet - but the kids still wanted to play in the tree house when we got back instead of coming inside.  Thank God for the warmer temperatures on Saturday!

Happy Birthday, Brynn!

Brynn turns 8 tomorrow!  We spent a lot of the weekend celebrating - first on Saturday in Collins, and then on Sunday in Depew.

First up:  Collins Birthday!

Enjoying yummy strawberry cake at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Present time!  Brynn got lots of really neat Lego Friends sets, and a Spirograph!  Remember those??

And of course, some game time with Grandma.

Birthday in Depew:

Presents first - Grandma won the best present reaction with a soundtrack from the movie Frozen.  Aunt Lisa won the most confused reaction with a "Boogie Board" (which is apparently some kind of electronic writing tablet).

Cake - Pokemon!

And just some random party shots:

I apparently didn't take any pictures of Jonas at this party.  He was there.  So although this is technically still Jonas' blog - he is pretty hard to find in this post.  I think you can spot him on the right side of one of the gifs if you look close enough...:-)

The Last Christmas Post

Since we did not have all of the kids together for the majority of Christmas Day, we celebrated again at each of the grandparents' houses this past weekend.

Saturday we went to the mall in the morning to get the cousin Christmas picture taken.  Somehow we had the wrong time and got there 40 minutes early...so we walked around the mall finding as many escalators as we could to go up and down.  That worked surprisingly well to keep the kids all amused, and we were able to successfully get a nice Christmas picture, which you will have to wait until January 9th to see.  

After that we headed to Grandma and Papa's for lunch and presents.  

Grandma always gets the kids each a Christmas ornament:

(an alien for Jonas)

(Perry the Platypus for Bransen)

(A horse for Brynn)

And the kids all got lots of other presents from their aunts and uncles, and Grandma and Papa.  It is a rule at Grandma's to open one present at a time so that everyone can see everything, but even with that rule, things get a little crazy, and I still missed a bunch!  Here's some of the cool things they got:

We had fun watching our family open presents we had picked out, too.

After opening presents for HOURS, we relaxed and had some game and movie time.

On Sunday, we went over to Grandma Deb and Grandpa Dan's for another delicious Christmas meal and to open gifts there.  The highlight for the kids was their glow pets!

And the highlight for Duane and I was our super cool new portable picnic table!

The kids spent some time relaxing and playing a fun Disney game with Grandma Deb after the present opening.  

And with that - we are finally done with Christmas posts!  Merry Christmas!