Christmas Eve

Here's a couple cute pictures from Christmas eve day~ One of the funny face Emma gave us while she was taking a bath and the other was nap time with grandpa Weber.

The festivities on Christmas eve include the children's program at church followed by an evening with the Rieck side of the family. We were able to take a nice family picture at church, however we were missing Megan because she spent Christmas eve with her boyfriend James' family. One of the pictures below is Henry & Ileen with 4 out of 5 great grand children (Ella, Leah, Brooke, & Emma), as Luke we being a little camera shy. December 24th is Grandpa Rieck's birthday so there was a birthday cake for him. I guess we did not sing Happy Birthday soon enough as little Ella and Leah had their fingers in there sneaking a lick.

Christmas Sunday

December 23rd in MN looked like blizzard conditions as the wind was blowing at 40 mph in addition to a light snow. Since Jon's parents live out in the country there was a lot of area for the wind to blow across the fields. But, even with these conditions we ventured out to church and then over to Bob & Valerie's for lunch and to watch football.

Being a Packer fan in MN can be tough, especially when your team does not show up to play against the Bears. Believe me I heard a lot of haggling from Jon's family this day as the Packers lost to the Bears, 7 to 35. However, I did not hear any smack talk once the Vikings game was over on Sunday night. Seems the Vikes had a hard time against the Redskins and lost 21 to 32.

While at Bob & Val's house I got to spend some bonding time with Emma. She fell asleep on my chest. This is one of my favorite pictures from the whole weekend. Isn't she precious!

Also while we were there Bailey found the sheep's wool that was lying under their Christmas tree. She knocked out Val's decorations and tried to lay on it. I think she liked how soft it was. Rather then her potentially knocking the tree down we pulled it out for her to lay on. I think she really liked it. She even had some snuggle buddies.

Once we took a few pictures of Bailey I thought that Emma would look so cute lying on the sheep's wool as she was sleeping so peacefully, which she did. Since that was so cute, we thought it would be even cuter if she was in the buff. However, as soon as the clothes came off, she woke up. I have a video of her wriggling around on the wool, which is cute, but Jon doesn't think I should post it. Here are a few of the pics I took as well.

Sunday night was Christmas cookie & candy night. Betty made spritz cookies, while Melissa and I worked on making different chocolate dipped candies. In addition to this, Melissa and I made 4 dozen varieties of the Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies ~ plain oatmeal, oatmeal with Andee's mints, and 2 dz oatmeal chocolate chip. Mmmm Yummy!

Voss Family Christmas

On Saturday we had the Voss family Christmas, which was being hosted this year by Casey & Valerie Rieck at their new home in St. Charles, MN.
We attempted to get a 5 generation picture, however, Emma was fussing a bit so it was hard to get all the ladies looking at the camera at one time. We are going to attempt another 5 generation photo at Noah & Tracey's wedding next weekend. In the photo are Great Great Grandma Voss, Great Grandma Rieck, Grandma Weber, Momma Gilmore, & baby Gilmore.
We always do a white elephant gift exchange and there are always a lot of interesting gifts passed. Many times there are re-appearances of gifts from past Christmas gatherings, which creates a lot of laughter.
I love getting together with all of Jon's family as it is much different than my family, which gatherings tend to be smaller and quieter. I had to laugh when amongst the chaos, Valerie wanted to start the game telephone to see how far and if a message could be passed around the room correctly. Needless to say our message of "Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Santa is in the back yard with his reindeer" somewhat made it through 4 people. When passed to Uncle Doug, he changed it to "bite me" and passed it on. When it got to Great Grandma she looked at Sarah and said "bite someone?" Oh the laughter that was had. :)




Since we were with the extended family all day, I did not get a chance to hold Emma all day long, so when we got back to Jon's parents house I was able to have some bonding time with her. Christy, Charlie, and Courtney also came back to Joel & Betty's house so we all had dinner on Saturday and then played some games. Bailey was glad that they came as they brought their dog Zoe as well. Bailey & Zoe love to play & wrestle together.

Christmas Visitors

The excitement of Christmas 2007 started with arrivals of our family from Seattle. We picked up cousin Janelle from the airport late on Wednesday night (Dec. 19). She said she does not remember much of her stay at our house that night because she had surgery on her mouth earlier that day and was on some pretty good medication. Aunt Valerie picked Janelle up during the day on Thursday as they had some shopping to do and then they were heading back down to Waseca for a bridal shower on Thursday night.


On Thursday night, Megan came up to our house as we were all anticipating the arrival of Mark, Melissa, and baby Emma. Their plane arrived late Thursday night about 11:45, but by the time we picked up luggage and got back to our house it was about 12:30 and little Emma made sure she let us all know that she was hungry. Of course sleep was a big second to catching up with M&M and getting to hold Emma, so 6:00 seemed to come fast since we didn't go to bed until 2am.


End of the year is super busy for me at work, but I was able to escape with a 1/2 day on Friday so we could all head down to Waseca prior to dinner time. It was hilarious when Jon's mom got home from work. Since she saw our cars in the driveway, she basically jumped out of her car and came running into the house. She was sooooo happy to see all of us and so excited to have a full house for the Christmas weekend. She was hopping around and hugging us all saying Merry Christmas....I called this her happy dance. :)


Our activities on Friday night included heading into town to watch Betty play volleyball and then we stopped at the Yellow Mushroom for dinner. Yummy! Here is a pic of proud uncle Jon hold our niece and then the cute outfit Emma was wearing on Friday night. We call this outfit the great Aunt Melonie outfit as it reminded all of us of her and she made the knitted hat that Emma was wearing. Too cute!

Oh Christmas Tree!

Here is a picture of our 2007 Christmas Tree. We have had the tree up for a few weeks now, but it looks so much more complete with all the wrapped presents underneath. Guess what that means...we are done with our Christmas shopping!! We went out yesterday to finish up the last few items we needed to purchase, which surprisingly the stores were not as busy as I thought they would be. Once home I got all the remaining presents wrapped. We are all ready for the next 2 weeks!

It's amazing that next week is already Christmas! The holiday seems to come so quickly, which is probably due to being so busy at this time of year as well. We are really excited for this week to come as we will be picking up family from the airport both Wednesday night and Thursday night. We are not planning to go back to Appleton this year for Christmas as timing just didn't work out for us this year. However, we are excited for my parents to come after Christmas to spend some time with us and to celebrate the holiday here at our house!

Have a great week and Happy Holidays to all!

Doggie Date Night

Friday night Bailey had a girls doggie date night with her friend Nattie. Amanda and Jerad went to the Timberwolves game and asked if Nattie could come over a hang out with Bailey for the night. These 2 love to wrestle and play with each other for hours. I wanted to get a picture of them together because they are so cute, but they move so quickly my camera could not keep up at times. Here is a few pics from their doggie date.

oh puppy

So our dog Bailey is so docile that she lets us do almost anything to her like dress her up, cuddle her on our laps, play with her feet....AND put a football helmet on her head.

I decided it was time to update the bathroom by getting rid of our Viking themed bathroom and make it into something more neutral. This means Jon's Vikings clock, sign, and Vikings helmet had to find a new home.

I found a cute striped shower curtain that matched our already bright yellow walls and purple & yellow towels. Plus we bought the over the toilet storage to put all the towels & wash cloths in. (our house does not have a linen closet of any kind) Only a slight change...but definitely more neutral.

Holiday Party

Friday night was my company Holiday Party. Since our company recently moved to the 23rd & 24th floor of a newly remodeled building, they decided to have the party at the office to show case it. The party started in the atrium with champagne, hors d'oeuvres, and carolers followed by dinner and drinks for the remainder of the evening up stairs.

I was very impressed on how the whole office was decorated as it did not even seem like our office. The only used the recessed lighting in areas and had remaining of the lighting provided by candle light. It was very beautiful and festive. Jon was a lucky man as he had to dates for the evening, both Sarah and I. Or maybe that was 2 women to keep track of all evening. :) A good time was had by all, maybe too good for some. Needless to say I was not feeling so hot on Saturday.

Whoops!

Since we had a lot of snow on Saturday afternoon, on Sunday morning Jon and Christopher went outside to plow the driveway. They moved all the cars from the driveway to the road and then worked on clearing the driveway first. However, as they were finishing up the plow came by to clear the street, but had to go around the cars that were now in the road. So Jon started to move the cars back into the driveway. When he went to move Sarah's Grand Am it was stuck so he got out to give a little push & rock it back and forth. Well, when he got out of the car the door locked and it was running!

Sarah did not have any extra keys on her and she lives on the northern side of the metro....a good hour drive. Luckily with a little assistance from Christopher and our neighbor, the 3 guys were able to pry the door open just enough to get an antena in the crack which then could reach the unlock button. Whew.... that was a close one!

Holiday Sweater Party

Saturday December 1st we had a Holiday Sweater Party in our basement. We decided to have one last big bang in our basement before we start remodeling. Here are some fun pics from the festivities. Enjoy! 2:30 was sweater time and the ceremonial tapping of the keg!

Department Outing

On Thursday Nov 29th I had my department outing, which was bowling at the Park Tavern in St. Louis Park. Being the party planner at my former employer...I was elected when I started my job at Collins to put together the first CCAS department outing.

Everyone had a great time getting out of the office for a couple of hours and knocking down some pins. There was different prizes for highest & lowest scores, most splits, most strikes, most spares, best bowling form, etc.. I was on the team that had the highest overall team score, which we won a Cold Stone gift card. My favorite!!!

Here is a picture of Kris, Sarah, Kirsten and myself after bowling. We have been referred as "the fearsome foursome" as we all used to work at our former employer together and are all now with Collins.

Some of us hung around after bowling for a few refreshments and to watch the Packers/Cowboys game that was only on the NFL network. The outcome was not quite what I was hoping for, but my BIL Mark was excited as he is a Cowboys fan. Of course he made sure to rub it in a little. :)

BRACES OFF!

Jon had a big milestone in his life today....He got his braces off!

He has had them on for almost 2 years and he says the end result was well worth it.

He can't stop smiling.

Here are some before and after pictures.....