Spending time with GG

This year, we once again spent Thanksgiving weekend in Chicago to celebrate the Holidays with family and friends – a great way to kick off the Holiday season! We spent a day with GG, eating lunch at a nearby Polish buffet (yum!) and opening presents. The following day, we had breakfast with Karen’s godmother, dinner with the Belousek family (and meeting our new cousin, baby Joshua) and in between we played for a few hours at a nearby children’s museum. We then concluded our whirlwind trip with brunch with the Chmuras (aka “Uncle and Auntie Chooch” and Amanda) before making the trek back home.  See the Thanksgiving 2011 in Chicago album for the photos.

We continued our Christmas holiday celebration in the following weeks with performing at the church Christmas Concert, an awesome Advent calendar (Lego Star Wars!), a Christmas play performed at the Stages Children’s Theater, and Brunch with Santa at Macy’s with some of Zach and Alex’s friends from New Horizons and their families. You can find all of these pictures in the Nov-Dec 2011 album.

Also added – some pictures from our church’s Fall Festival in September, courtesy of Grandma Pat, and an update to the basement project! We’ve hired a contractor to finish the walls downstairs to the point where we can paint, and it’s almost done! The pictures in the Basement album show the rooms with the drywall up – what a difference that makes!

The Vandermarks, Sept 2010

I’ll try to get better about posting simple updates when a new batch of photos have been loaded (like the remainder of our April trip to AZ that uploaded last night), but in the meantime, here’s just a straight list of the albums that have been updated/created since last Sept:

• Sept-Oct 2010 – the Scarecrow Festival, the circus, Halloween
• Visit with Auntie Mary Ann – who came to visit us in Sept
• Infiniti Crash II: The Deer – the results when a deer runs in front of a car doing 65 mph.
• Nov-Dec 2010 – Christmas decorating, Thanksgiving in Chicago, big snow storms
• Christmas 2010 – yep, pictures of presents and family at Christmas
• Jan-Feb 2011 – Cole’s 16th birthday, fun birthday parties, making cookies and craft projects
• Zach and Alex’s 5th birthday – including their 1st “friends” party
• Mar-Apr 2011 – Karen’s birthday, planting a garden
• Spring Break 2011 – a few days of fun in Chicago
• Arizona – April 2011 – a family get-together

New bunk beds with Star Wars bedding!

Another big milestone the boys reached this month: bunk beds!  Just one quick year after graduating to toddler beds, Zach and Alex were beginning to outgrow them, so we decided it was time for big boy beds.  The boys are quite proud of their bunk beds with all its drawers and special staircase.  Alex chose the top bunk, while Zach wanted the bottom because that’s where Brother from the Berenstain Bears sleeps.  Photos of the new bed are in the Jan – Feb 2010 album.

The boys had their checkup this week as well, and they’re doing great – although as skinny as always.  Alex is about 31 lbs (10th percentile) and is 38.5 inches tall (14th percentile), while Zach is about 30 lbs (5th percentile) and is also 38.5 inches tall.  They weren’t too happy about their shots this year, but it does save them from getting them all at once next year as they prepare for kindergarten.

While I have been adding lots of pictures, it’s been forever since I last posted to the site, so for those who didn’t get a chance to see the pics yet, here’s a recap…

• The Nov – Dec 2009 album was updated with pictures from a performance Cole had at Barnes and Noble where he did a couple solos in a fundraiser for his band, as well as photos from Z&A’s visit to Santa and some other odds and ends.
• Christmas 2009 was a lot of fun for us this year because the boys were filled with anticipation for Santa’s visit.  We left cookies for Santa (he likes oatmeal raisin at our house) and treats for the reindeer, and the boys were in awe when they were gone the next morning and replaced with presents.  Santa didn’t disappoint with the gift they asked for the most – a Transformer known as Bumblebee.  Later that day, Grandma Pat and Grandpa Bob came down with Cole, and we had a wonderful Christmas Day.
• The week after Christmas, we went down to Chicago for a few days to celebrate the holidays with friends and family.  We visited with the Chmuras (Uncle and Auntie “Chooch”), watched the Vikings-Bears game with the Belousek side of the family, and spent a day with GG.  We also spent a little free time playing at the nearby DuPage Children’s Museum; for those who live in the area, we HIGHLY recommend it – it’s a great place!

The Vandermarks, Christmas 2008

We hope you and your family are having a wonderful Christmas this year.  We had a really nice one – although it certainly would have been better if a big issue at work hadn’t kept me on the phone for more than half of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Oh well, sometimes work happens.  In any case, we were thankful for the time we did spend together and with my parents on both of those days, enjoying some wonderful meals and some fun times playing together.

This was the first year that Zach and Alex got the concept of Santa, so that was a lot of fun. They had gone to visit Santa at the mall a few times while there to play at the indoor play area, and they had asked him to bring them “dump trucks and Star Wars stuff.” For the days and weeks after that, they’d remind us over and over that “Santa is going to bring us presents!”  And sure enough, he did.  They did indeed get some new dump trucks and some Star Wars figurines, but I think their favorite gifts are their very own flashlights, which also double as light sabers.  They carried them everywhere yesterday and today.  Some times it is the simplest things that bring the most joy…

It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally uploaded a bunch of pictures from November and December onto the site.  In the Nov-Dec 2008 album, you’ll find photos chronicalling art projects and holiday decorating, as well as some fun in the snow.  In the Thanksgiving – Chicago album, we have pictures from our visit to celebrate the holidays with the Belousek family and with Great Grandma Jean (be sure to check out the video clip of the boys enjoying pie at GG’s house – they were pretty excited about that pie ).  Now here’s hoping it doesn’t take me another month to get the Christmas pictures posted…