Family photos

Who could not love this face???


Aunt Wendi and Jon

The Cairney's

Aunt Nicki, William and Jon Stoltenberg

I bet that Uncle David wishes that he would have just hopped in with his family instead of getting his own awesome portrait - I just love that guy!!!

Pender Christmas - 09 or 10??

One of the gigantic piles of snow that we played on this weekend

Papa and Nanny, opening the pottery that Kate and Ben gave them

William, Ben, Great Grandma B.B., Kate and Jon

The Kids and their new snuggies

Well, last weekend we were finally able to make it back to Pender to celebrate Christmas - and what a wonderful time we had!!! After many weeks of post-ponements, tons of snow, drifting roads shut and dangerous wind chills, the long wait was definitely worth it. We had such fun. We headed over on Friday night and the kids could hardly stand it they were so excited - OK, me too!!! Wendi and Jon were already there and it was fun getting caught up with them and Mom and Dad. Saturday morning we went to cousin Jase's wrestling tournament for a bit - congrat's on the wins Jase! and then the Stoltenberg's arrived at lunch. There is nothing like having fun with cousins.....I have such fond memories of this growing up and I love that Kate and Ben have those special times with family too. After lunch we tackled some big sledding hills, dug an awesome snow tunnel in Papa's back yard, opened presents, and spent some quality time together. It had been way too long since we had all been together. Sunday AM - Mom made a delicious breakfast with some of our favorite Suhr tradition's (swedish pancakes & ponrea) with all of the fixings - thanks Mom for all of the delicious food this weekend!!! Then we all headed home after lunch, but not without planning our next get together. I think that we all agreed, not seeing one another for more than 2 months is just way too long!

With Christmas celebrations now over, we are looking forward to basketball for Miss Kate and whatever exciting things that Ben can dream up over the next few weeks.

Cairney Christmas Gift

Grandpa and Grandma Cairney chose to donate to the Heifer Foundation in honor of all of their grandkids this year for Christmas. I loved this idea! The kids read their letters aloud to each other to share the story......her is Kate reading ours....
"Christmas is a time of giving.......Kate and Ben, you have given three rabbits to a family in Poland. Rabbits have many babies in a years time so this gift will help feed the family and they will be able to sell some of the rabbits at the market to get money that can be used to send the children to school or even buy a house in which to live......because rabbits have so many babies, the family will be able to help out other families in need by giving them a pair of rabbits."
Instead of buying you a gift this year, we gave the money to the Heifer Foundation. Thank you for sharing your Christmas.....with love, Grandpa & Grandma Cairney

Cairney Christmas/New Year celebration

After an exhausting day of playing with his cousins, Ben falls asleep with all of his new pals smothering him with love - too cute! Thanks Cairney West and cousin Joe for the new furry friends - he absolutely loves them!

The girls - showing off their new scarves that Grandma made them

and the boys, just as excited about the new PJ pants that she made them. All of their favorite teams!

Cairney cousin pyramid - this gets better and better each year. Way to go big guys on the bottom!!

Happy 2010 to everyone! We spent this weekend celebrating Christmas and the New Year in Indianola with all of the Cairney's. We had such a wonderful time! Delicious food, beverages, games, playing cards, watching football, playing Wii, basketball, telling stories, and getting all caught up on the latest happenings with everyone were the highlights of the weekend. Kate and Ben also loved having sleepovers with their cousins all weekend, what fun!!! Thank you Dick and Celie for hosting the fun weekend and for our gifts - we love you both!!

If the weather cooperates, we are headed to Nebraska to spend some time with the Suhr's and Breitbarth's celebrating a belated Christmas next weekend - can't wait!!! Kate and Ben are looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with school and preschool tomorrow.

Christmas photos

Kate with her new basketball and skates


Mr. ninentdo DS was very excited about the new Star Wars game

It's kind of hard to tell, but the kids are standing inside of the fort that they

have built at the end of our drive way. They have a tunnel door from one side

to crawl through and then the hole at the top. It is very cool and taller than they are so they love it! -

Christmas

Our candlelight Christmas Eve dinner


The kids at Perkins - what kind of face is this Benny?

At church for Christmas Eve "Eve" service

this is Perfect Kate. Christmas morning, still in her PJ's, new Hannah Montana Roller Skates

on & putting together some new Lego figures!

We had such a wonderful Christmas. Even though we were all a bit disappointed that our original plans of heading back to Pender were changed once the weather got bad in Nebraska, we started some of our own Christmas traditions here. Our annual routine of going to Perkins after Christmas Eve "Eve" (the night before Christmas Eve)church held true. We all enjoyed a yummy meal and of course the kids were super excited because they love that place! We usually go there after Christmas Eve church, but this year we went to the Eve "Eve" service because we could and the weather was supposed to get bad on Christmas Eve. Thank you HOPE for having church that night - it was such an amazing service with the live nativity (donkeys, sheep and even some awnry goats (-: ) and once again, celebrating the wonder and magnificance of Christ's birth. How blessed we all feel being able to BELIEVE in such an awesome and amazing God and RECEIVE his love and grace in return. We played games after getting our PJ's on, and then turned in for the night. Christmas Eve day was very relaxing around here. Doug went to work until noon and then we just played all day. The weather continued to deteriorate in Nebraska for all of our family there, but here it really was not that bad. The kids even enjoyed some time out in the snow. Kate had been asking Doug and I what we used to do on Christmas Eve and we shared stories and memories with them. I decided to surprise them all with a special candlelight dinner and then we opened our gifts from one another after that. They were so excited! We finished our evening with watching the movie Snowbuddies and then got our cookies and milk ready for Santa.

Christmas Day, Miss Kate woke up at 0630, but did a great job letting her brother sleep in until almost 8 - that was CRAZY! They both enjoyed playing with their lego's, new race track, board games, DS games, and playing out in the snow most of the day. Kate skated around the kitchen in her new skates without even one wipe-out - way to go SIS!

That night, we ended our day with another "dark dinner" (that is what Ben refers to the candle light as) and cupcakes with candles for dessert to sing "Happy Birthday Jesus"! What a wonderful celebration we had! Such fun memories for us all.....quality time here at home together playing games, sledding and shoveling snow, laughing, cuddling, eating yummy Christmas treats and truly enjoying the reason for the season. We are so blessed.