Merry Christmas

So for this post, I have decided to add a bunch of pictures from our holiday celebrations over the past few weeks. Merry Christmas to all!

Santa brought me a treadmill for Christmas... I must have been a VERY good girl!

Rachel in one of the two fairy princess dress-up outfits that Santa brought her.

Rachel, Jake, and Mom hanging out... Rachel says thumbs up for Santa!

Jake is trying to figure out how this new toy works.

Rachel was very excited when she came downstairs to see all the presents Santa left.

On Christmas Eve, it was finally a little bit warmer so the whole family went outside to play in the snow. Here is Rachel standing next to the big snowman we built.

Jake was happy to be outside!

Rachel opening her presents the Saturday before Xmas at Mimi and Papa's house.

Jake trying to eat his candy cane while Dad is looking the other way.

Mike's brother and sisters with our family before the Iwaniw family Xmas on Dec 13th.

Brother and Sister Photos

Rachel wanted to sit with Jake in the rocking chair yesterday and she told me to go get the camera to take some pictures. Of course, I was more than happy to do this. So here are my two babies getting so much bigger everyday.

Mike loves calling Jake "gummy bear" because of his huge smile where all he shows are his gums (even though he does have two teeth in there). Rach, well she is practicing her different smiles and shows us a new one every time!

Trip to Santa House

Here are some pictures from our trip to the Midland Santa house this past weekend. Rachel and Jake both did great sitting on Santa's lap. They loved it.

Regina's 10 yr High School Reunion

Some of you had talked to me about how I was unsure of going to my 10 year high school reunion this past weekend. Well, Mike and I ended up going and although it was small, we had a great time. Talk about a flashback! We had great food, drinks, and conversation with the good group of people that was there; and Mike, what a champ, you would have thought he was one of our class - they all loved him. Here are some pictures below:

George Pappas and I; a good friend who was also my date to Senior year Homecoming dance.

Melissa Salloum and Natalee (Musik) Topolewski (spelled completely wrong). Melissa was UM ChemE with Mike and I and interesting fact of the night is that our company is buying her company... we may work together again!!! :-)

Kara Siak and I - I have known this girl since 6th grade!!


Mini Scorekeepers reunion with Mike and Adam Hunt... both were bouncers at the bar in Ann Arbor.

Our table companions (Mike is taking photo)...

Midland Santa Parade

These are pictures from the Midland Santa Parade the weekend before Thanksgiving. It was a chilly day but sunny so my mom and I took the kids while Mike and my Dad were working on the ceiling in the basement.

Rachel had a blast and got more candy than she even got on Halloween! Jake loved it too and was squealing at everyone that walked by. I was impressed by the amount of people, floats, and animals in the parade; it was so neat!

Little Musician

Jake certainly does love music. In the first picture, it shows his new favorite activity: "playing" the piano. He absolutely loves to sit in his bumbo seat next to the piano and bang on the keys.

Also, Daddy is showing Jake how to play the guitar. The one time Jake got his hand on the pic and Dad had to take it away quickly, because of course it was going straight for the mouth.

Going Trick or Treating

Since I took the kids to the daycare party, Mike decided to take them trick or treating while I passed out candy (although that was a bust since we only got about 10 trick or treaters to our house).

Mike carried Jake in the Baby Bjorn and pulled Rach in the wagon (at least for a little while when she didn't want to walk). Both of them had a great time. Jake would yell at other trick or treaters when they walked by and Rachel filled her entire pumpkin with candy!

Both kids were happy but tired when they got back. Jake was so tired he slept the entire night (7:30 pm to 6:15 am) for the 1st time ever! It was a "spooky" night for sure!

Daycare Costume Party

Rach, Brady, Wyatt, and Izzy
Rach and Brady, two little devils

Wyatt and Rach

Daycare had a Halloween party on Friday for the kids. The kids don't normally go in on Fridays since I am off (and yesterday Mike was actually off too), but I wanted them to be able to show off their costumes and see their friends.

Rach, Jake, and I stopped by for an hour at daycare mostly so Rachel could see her friends in their costumes (and so she could pick up her bag of treats!). It was so cute to her playing with her buddies all dressed up. Here are some pictures of Rach with some of the kids in her "class".

Halloween Costumes

Halloween was a total blast this year. Here are some pictures of the kids' costumes. Jake was a monkey (that is a banana on the top of his head for the costume :-) and Rachel was a "little devil" (fitting her personality as of late jk).

Pumpkin Carving

This past weekend we all went to Troy so my parents could babysit the kids while Mike and I went to the UM vs. MSU game.

During our trip, we decided it would be a good time to do pumpkin carving. Because we made two separate trips to the pumpkin patch (and pumpkins are included with a hayride), we had quite a lot of pumpkins! We only ended up carving 4 and here they are!

Rachel was only interested in the carving for about 5 minutes and Jake was napping most of the time during carving so here are the main two artists - Mike and I. I also have to give credit to my dad who helped carve and did the owl pumpkin.

More Pictures from the Cummiford Visit

Here are just some more pictures from Saturday afternoon after the trip to the pumpkin patch. We let the girls run around outside in the princess dresses that Shae had brought to share with Rachel.

The first picture is Leah holding Paige.

Poor Jake, he is not in too many of these pictures as he was feeling pretty bad last weekend and we found out he had gotten his first ear infection! Yuk! Poor kiddo but luckily he is doing much better now.

More Pictures from Pumpkin Patch Trip 2

Here's a bunch of pictures from our 2nd trip to the pumpkin patch with the Cummifords...

Visit from the Cummiford Family

Last weekend, the Cummiford family came to visit us. Everyone had such a great time! Uncle Aaron, Aunt Leah, Shae, and Paige stayed with us the whole weekend.

Since the pumpkin patch/baby animal farm was such a hit previously, we decided to go again! Here is a picture of the kids all posing : from the left, Paige, Shae, Rachel and even Jake!

Trip to LeCronier's Baby Acres

We took a trip to LeCronier's Baby Acres today, which is a pumpkin patch and animal petting farm with all sorts of activities for kids. Mary and Alex Vallieu came along with the whole Iwaniw family. The girls had so much fun and Jake loved all the action too.

Rachel "shared" her daddy with Alex since Mr. Brian had to work (Mike had the day off from the startup madness).

Here are some neat pictures from the trip:

Rachel riding the pony and me being a nervous mom next to her.

Rachel holding a baby rabbit.

Daddy holding Jake in the baby animal barn.

Rachel feeding the goats. After this picture was taken, the goats got so excited that they pushed open the gate we were standing next to and knocked Rachel down. She wasn't hurt but it startled her (and Mary, Alex and I who were standing right there as well). Afterwards, she said "Those goats hit me with the gate; that wasn't very nice."

I thought this was such a beautiful picture that Mike took of Alex and Rachel. It shows the wonderful weather we had today. We can't wait for Alex to get her little brother or sister because she is going to be a great big sister. She was really sweet to Rachel during the whole trip.