Surprise!

After several years of working at the GRHV my dad is finally retiring. His colleagues arranged a surprise party for him and boy was he surprised! It was a great time!  Here is the crowd gathered to celebrate...

Here he is just after the surprise...

And here he is after another big surprise, Scott flew in from Denver for the party!

And finally... the cake I made for the party.

Ho Ho Ho!

We went to visit Santa today.  I was worried Mati would be scared of him but it was just the opposite; she lit up and smiled, loving every minute of sitting on his lap!

Here we are riding the train out to Santa's cottage.

(Did you know Santa had a cottage in Michigan?)

Here's Santa on his front porch greeting us.

Here's Mati visiting with Santa.

And finally, Mati checking out Santa's sleigh.

My Favorite Turkey Craft

I love the kids' crafts that encorporate tracing hands and feet to mark their size over time; this one is by far my favorite.  You need 4 pieces of paper (brown, red, yellow, orange), glue, a pencil, scissors, and googly eyes or white paper circles with a black dot drawn in the center to look like eyes.

Next you need to trace each of your child's hand on one of the red, yellow, or orange pieces of paper.  I then lay the other colors on top and cut out all three colors at once.  These will be the turkey's feathers.

Repeat the same tracing process with the feet.  Trace each foot on brown paper; these will be the turkey's body.

You will then have all of your cut out hands and feet which should look like this:

You will also need to cut out legs (I use orange paper), beak (more orange paper) and a snood (the red thing that hangs off the beak.)  I just freehand those shapes.  You could probably be more anatomically correct and make the wattle which hangs off the neck but I like this turkey without a wattle.  You need to overlap the feet at the heel to look like the body then place the hands (feathers) in alternating colors around the turkey.  I like to put the left hands on the left and the right hands on the right.  When everything is assembled it should look like this, TA DA!

I labeled it with Mati's name and age, and "Thanksgiving 2009."  I let Mati hold it for a split second before I taped it to the fridge.

Mac-n-Cheese Please

Mati does a great job eating a variety of foods.  She's just as happy with peas as pizza.  Today however she was really enthusiastic about her mac-n-cheese.  Here she is enjoying her dinner...

And here she is REALLY enjoying her dinner...

And the result, a pocket of mac-n-cheese...

Happy Halloween!

We had a spooktacular time with family on the west side of the state.  We started in Hudsonville with dinner and dessert at Aunt Denise's house, along with Cousins Roger, Rebecca, Zach, Matt.  Here are the trick-or-treaters ready for a fun night.  Matt (Batman), Mati (Cowgirl), and Zach (Gangster.)

We then moved on to Dan & Heather's house to meet up with more cousins.

Morgan (cat), Aly (lamb), Dean (fireman), Andrew (ninja) and Mati (cowgirl.)

Here's Mati and Daddy ready to head to the first house...

Here's the first door we went to, Mati's first official trick-or-treating experience!

And here is how the night ended; Mati hanging out on the stairs (her new favorite activity is stair climbing) and watching a few trick-or-treaters come to the door.

Our Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

The weather turned nice Sunday afternoon so we headed to one of the pumpkin patches in Mason. Mati wore her Halloween dress to celebrate the special trip. We pet the goats in the petting zoo, sat on straw bales, walked around the pumpkin patch, picked out a couple of pumpkins, and ended our trip with pumpkin doughnuts... yum!

The New Toy Box!

A while back I found a beautiful toy box in a catalog and showed it to Doug. He said "I could make that!" So we found some plans online and he did it. Doug built this gorgeous oak toy box for Mati. She loves playing with the toys inside and sitting in the toy box itself. What a blessing to have a talented woodworker in the house!