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!

Tags: basement, Belouseks, Chicago, Christmas, GG, Santa, Thanksgiving

OK, so I’ve admittedly been terrible about blogging about all the events going on in our lives. I spend lots of time editing and posting new pictures, as you can sometimes see in the Recent Photos widget, but I never seem to get around to writing about it. Honestly, I think the photos tell a better story anyway (not to mention I’m already writing when I do the captions…).

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

Tags: Alex, Belouseks, birthday, booms, cars, Chicago, Christmas, circus, Cole, family outing, friends, GG, Grandma Marilyn, Grandma Pat, Grandpa Dan, Halloween, holiday, Joe, Karen, museum, Papa Bob, party, playtime, Santa, school, Thanksgiving, Tucson, Vandermark family, Zach

…so it must be time for Christmas!  The month of November was a busy one – a baby shower, a wedding reception, 3 straight weeks of home games for the Vikings, and oh yeah, Thanksgiving – so the month just flew by.  It went by so fast, we didn’t even take many pictures, which is unusual for us.  We had a very nice Thanksgiving, spending a relaxing day up at Mom & Dad B’s house and enjoying Mom’s yummy turkey dinner.

Getting the ornaments ready for the tree

Never ones to want to venture out into the chaos that is Black Friday shopping, we spent that weekend making the change from Autumn to Christmas, getting all the Christmas decorations up around the house and, of course, decorating the tree.  Now that the boys are bigger, they were thrilled to be able to help Cole and Mommy hang ornaments.  They had a lot of fun with each ornament, as you can see in the pictures in the Nov-Dec 2009 album.  As always, the finished tree is beautiful, all ready for Christmas.  Happy Holidays to everyone!

Tags: Christmas, holiday, Thanksgiving