Christmas Puzzle and Kids

This was a quite Christmas. 

The Browns visited for a few days the week-end before. 

We played games and talked and ate some yummy food with the Johnson's.

Their trip a little too short! 

This is our traditional puzzle this year I missed Justine helping me... 

Emric and Amelie helped a little but I pretty much did it all by myself!

On Christmas Eve, we watched - I mean, I and Amelie watched - "It's a wonderful life"

Emric and Mike watched an old Star Wars!

We watched also a short version of 'The Nativity'

But the BEST part was getting to Skype with Justine for an hour!

She is happy and doing well and it warms our hearts!

Then after Christmas, Alexi and Heavena came. 

They brought a little cooler weather with them,

(80's and 100% humidity was too hot and weird in December!)

Justine's Mission Call

A couple of Months ago, Justine to our surprise, 

announced that she was open to the idea of serving a mission!

We got really exited for her.

I told her that if she decided to go, she would never regret it!

Both Mike and I had wonderful experiences serving in the England Coventry Mission.

We loved our time there and have very fond memories.

A lot of those memories are serving together in Birmingham - where we met! :)

She got everything done in Hawaii as far as meeting with her bishop and Stake President.

And getting her papers ready, they were sent from there.. 

We got her assignment letter a few days before she got here today.

She opened it right after Emric got his Patriarchal Blessing.

  Alexi and the Johnsons were also present.

Justine had just gotten off the plane!

So here she is, opening her mission call:

Baltimore Maryland Mission reporting the 11th of February 2015 to the Provo MTC

We are so HAPPY for her!!!!

Justine

Sweet as can be

With a peaceful heart of gold

Kind, loving & supportive

Selfless

Justine my second born and first girl..

When I found out the baby in my belly was a little girl, I jumped and danced for joy!

I was going to have a little Princess - 

And that, she was - a P R I N C E S S - especially to her daddy!

Had him wrapped around her tiny finger...

But her royal requests were and are usually always wise and generous.

She is my cuddle bug.

She has helped pulled me through some tough times, so many times...

A second mom to her little sister and a wonderful big sister to her little brother.

I am so grateful for this beautiful, lovely soul who graces our family.

With Loved Ones

 With her Second Mom

Christmas

 Our tree and one of the 3 baby Jesus made by the 3 older kids, years and years ago!

I believe this one is Justine's masterpiece! :)

Chloe loving her huge gigantic Christmas chew bone from her girlfriend Libby!

And that is only half of it! Libby has the other half!

We had our traditional homemade waffles for brunch after we opened presents.

The best part of my Christmas were 7 cute little love cards everyone wrote to me after
I wasn't feeling all the love from a certain someone.

I was given these by sweet Justine when I got back from a 1hour1/2 walk with Chloe all by myself.

-Yeah... Sometimes, as in all relationships, feelings can get hurt. Even on Christmas day-

I'm only posting the fun pet ones.
The other ones I will cherish for years to come! :)

 

Thank you for Yum Yums...

Thank you for Walks...

Thanks you for Scratches!

You're almost Perfect

But I wish you would've got me a squirrel...

Love Chloe

Written by Alexi

Dear Meooom!

Thank you for giving birth to master - Emric - and taking care of him so he can take care of me. 

And thank you for feeding me sometimes too.

Thanks for palace of a home where I can go where ever I want.
Including those awesome counters.

Thanks for telling the dog to leave me alone,
but i think it would just be a better idea to get rid of her, right meow

 Teeny

Written by Justine

Mission Puzzle accomplished

It took tons of late night hours, 

my slightly OCD sister Audie, Chris and a few teens, 

to finish this hard Coca Cola Puzzle!

They sure are cute though!

Here it is, all modgepoged...

Crazy kids playing Tug-of-war with the dogs!

Let's not mention how dirty this dog toy is!
Gross Gross Gross and Gross

Loads of laundry

The Daily Loads of Laundry!

With 3 families, sledding trips, snoman making, trip to the pool,
muddy forest walks, 

we had to keep on top of it. 

Or we would have been buried under it...

Oh... let's not talk about the socks!

Can you spot the 3 dogs?

Hospital Pass Time

Games and more games...

We got some board games for Christmas and brought them to play with Alexi.
I'm glad this time we were able to spend some time with him while he was in the hospital.
He usually finds these stays quite boring...
This time he had lots of visits! :)

 

Hospital stay

Alexi had a 'Holiday' stay at the Hospital.

He got a Staph infection in his blood.
He is now on antibiotics for 4 weeks but had to stay in his steril room for a week.

The good news is that he had a nice huge luxury suite!

Emric stayed four nights on the couch, kept him company and played video games with him.

He was quite happy to make this sacrifice to be with his big brother.

(all night and day gaming, he was one happy camper!)

I just love this picture of Mike and Alexi!

Christmas Day @ 10:44 pm

Feast and Famine Board Game

Sugar and more Sugar Consumption

Sleeping

Watching Movies and more Movies

Puzzled by the Puzzle

Christmas Morning

Sarah Invited the Browns to stay a few days for Christmas.
It was so nice of her.
I'ts not easy putting that many people up for that long.
Sarah is so AWESOME!
She is a giant of a friend! So caring and unselfish...
I wish I was more like her!
:)

The Waiting for everyone to get out of bed...

some are more eager than others!
We had waffles following the opening of presents.
A Nakata tradition.

Muddy Forest Walk

Today, being Sunday,
 we got to see all our fellow church friends from the Liberty ward.
It was so neat giving hugs and greetings

After Church, our Men and our kids tagged along with Sarah and I
on our daily walk in the woods with the dogs.

The kids were actually dirtier than the dogs!
They had so much fun hanging on a huge tree vine and got really muddy!
They played the Hunger games...
And some of us had so much fun cleaning up all the mud on the clothes and the shoes...

Christmas Puzzle

The Johnsons have a tradition of doing a puzzle before Christmas day.
This one was a challenge! A challenge that I didn't even try to atempt!
I normaly love to do puzzles.

Road Trip...

Again...
I vowed I would not take another trip this year after the adventurous summer trip.
Well I lied.
We hit the road to spend Christmas in Ohio,
with Alexi, the Johnsons and the Browns
(Sarah invited them too)
It went pretty well, only one incident when I texted Sarah
"Someone please shoot me!"
Not bad, not bad!
Let's see if the return will be even better with no sibling unkindness...

Chloe is the best little traveler... may I say better than the kids? 

Ward Christmas Party

This morning we had our Christmas Bruch Party

With a little live Nativity play with songs. 

We had a very nice time.

I brought cut up apples with caramel.

I liked what they did with the deco.

Amelie was a lucky little angel.

On a sadder note, Justine didn't get her plane...
today doesn't look good either...
But that is to be expected with buddy passes.
The tickets are way cheeper, but you have to be prepared to wait for a seat,
sometimes a few days.
I was stuck once in France for 10 days!
Hopefuly, it will not be that long for Justine!
She would miss Christmass!
We do not want that now, do we?

Christmas Spirit

Today as I was checking out at the grocery store, 

a group of handicapped children sang some 

Christmas carols.

It was so sweet. 

It warmed my heart.

Something else that makes me happy: the thought of seeing my sweet girl tomorrow!

Christmas Choir, Late Nights & Ice Skating.

Amelie joined the 4th grade school Choir this year.

She practices for 30 min, every Tuesdays and Thursdays, before school at 7:30am.

That is the time she normally takes the bus for school.

She loves to sing!

She is always singing and performing...

Mike must have hundreds of  recordings on his Ipad by now!

Anyhow.

She was really tired, as you can see in the pictures, 

because she had a friend come for a sleepover and they went to sleep around 4 am!!!

That was after doing 6 hours of Gymnastics on Friday from 4 til 10pm!

Only Daddy was able to get these rare smiles...

She had more yawnings...

 

 

 

She ended up getting all her energy back in the evening 

when we took her Ice skating with another friend! 

They ice skated for 3 hours!
They had a lot of fun.
And got all wet pretending to fall in the melted ice puddles.
Yeah, it's hard keeping ice frozen in 70/80 degree weather!
They have to refreeze the ice with a machine every few hours...