The Final Christmas - or first of 2012

This weekend the Schmidt family traveled down to Branson for the final Christmas - or first of 2012, however you want to look at it. Since we were in Iowa over Christmas we usually celebrate with Tim's family in January when it's less hectic. So we rented at 5 bd/4ba house on Table Rock Lake at a resort called The Cliff's that was very nice. It had plenty of room for all 11 of us to enjoy ourselves. The 92 inch TV media room didn't hurt either :).


We started Friday night off with some present opening so the kids could have some entertainment for the rest of the weekend.


Pre-present opening poses. And yes the girls are basically holding Theo in place for the photo. He wasn't that excited about it all.

And this was the view from our deck. Very peaceful this time of the year with just a few fisherman going by.

And Megan's favorite gift - her own cleaning cart! I expect to have a shiny clean house this week with all the extra help now that she has her own "stuff".

Overall the weekend went by very quickly with family meals and a little bit of shopping. We were packing up and heading north on Sunday before we knew it. Tim is still recovering from his food hangover.

Jessie's Wedding & NYE

This New Year's Eve we celebrated with our friends and also officially welcomed a new member, Greg Conger, who married our dear friend Jessie Barnett. As we usually all get together for NYE anyway, Jessie just made it easier on us and picked the location. So up to northern IL we traveled and spent time in Waukegan, Libertyville, and Grayslake.


Wedding Day - Leann and Jess are proudly handing out programs.


Wedding rehearsal - Greg might have said something about not wearing red/Cardinals gear after the World Series win so we had to not disappoint him. The bribe was to get a photo with the couple then they would take the shirts off. Rehearsal dinner was a Mickey Finn's - one word...Growlers.

Wedding Day again - and the lovely cake, there was a snowflake theme throughout.

At the church - Jessie is behind Fr. Bob unfortunately.



At the reception - Dave, Scott, and Tim all texting Pollard because they missed him.


The happy couple at their table for two. Jessie was a BEAUTIFUL bride and her dress was amazing.

Our GBS picture

And yes - boat races in the hotel hallway. Not our finest moment - but some Wisconsin friends of Greg decided to challenge us to "flippy cups". Little did they know how skilled we were due out St. Pat's adventures. We did require them to go "up and down the river" which they didn't appreciate. In the end: MO 2; WI 1 - they didn't ask us to play again.

Congrats to Jessie and Greg Conger!! What a way to bring in 2012.

Christmas #1

This past week we spent up in Iowa City with the Papke Family. Both of my brothers were home in addition to my niece who we were meeting for the first time. The week went by very quickly and we were sad to leave Iowa. Abby now wants to live in Iowa.


Making head bands with Aunt Rebekah.


Reading books with Kitty, Aunt Rebekah, and Abby's new baby Lena Sarah.

Christmas Morning - Santa did remember to come to the Papke house and we have two new babies. Abby has Lena Sarah Schmidt and Megan has Applebee Schmidt. If you couldn't tell they picked out the names themselves.

One of the many moments where Megan was in close observation of everything that Kitty was doing.



Christmas Eve - quite a bit a loot.


The cousins loving on each other.

Grandpa Papke getting his hair done by Megan at the "salon".

Making cookies with Grandma Papke. There wasn't one left so they must have been good! Pretzels, a Rolo in the middle, and an M&M in the middle.

All Megan asked Santa for was a green football - looks like he came through, and she is happy.

It was very nice to be home with the whole Papke family over Christmas. It's not often these days that we are all actually in one place, so some quality family time was much enjoyed.

On to New Years Eve.......

and in the middle of the Christmas Chaos

And in the middle of it all Tim has a birthday. My hubs is now the ripe old age of 34.




We celebrated with a reindeer cake - since he didn't shoot a buck, this might be close enough. The green frosting was not my best idea ever but it's the holidays, so at least we had a festive color going on fingers/hands/mouths/lips/teeth.

Happy Birthday baby!

and the Christmas Chaos begins....

This weekend began the craziness of Christmas Exchanges, parties, and December birthdays.

Our first event (and of course out of order photos - thanks blogger!). We had our annual exchange with the Slenker family.


Abby has received her first BB gun - not sure if it's really more for Tim to kill rabbits in the garden or for Abby, but she was pretty happy to see it.


Megan received a Tinkerbell hair set and we are all the more beautiful now because of it.

And here are the presents before they tore into them.

The next morning we packed up the truck and headed to Carrollton, IL for the Schmidt Family Christmas gathering. It's entirely too much food for the whole day, but I don't think it stopped anyone from eating because it was so good! We did have a special visit from Santa though.....



And by some miracle Megan actually sat in Santa's lap - what you don't see is me taking her up there and talking with Santa to coax her into it. It helps that each child got a present too from Santa. And Megan stuck with the same request - "I want a football."



Then it was on to the little kid gift exchange - Abby and Megan are waiting patiently for the green light to open their presents. We now have a couple more Barbies to add to our mix, they were very excited.


Here's the post opening photo of the little kids. Most of them have run to their parents to get their presents out of the boxes so they could play with them right then.


Sunday we spent the day in Collinsville, IL for our nephew Theo's 2nd Birthday. The theme was Fire trucks/Firemen.


An out of order photo - Abby with Santa in Carrollton. Also a miracle that she is sitting in Santa's lap, she watched a couple kids get some presents ahead of her so I think that was her motivation.



Theo and Tim's birthday's were celebrated on Sunday.


After presents Betsy and BJ had set up for the party to go to the Collinsville Fire House for the kids to check out the trucks.

Abby and Megan enjoyed all of it.

Here's all the kids, Theo had a new fire truck he carried around the whole time.

Our birthday boy!

So that rounds up the festivities for this weekend. We still have a couple things left to wrap to finish our Christmas preparations and it should be smooth sailing next weekend. The girls are very excited to meet their cousin "Baby Kitty".

And maybe you'll see a Christmas card from us.......still waiting on the photos.

Cookies and Santa

This past weekend was the completion of the "Christmas preparations" which concluded all decorating and baking projects. It wouldn't be Christmas without Great Grandma Papke's molasses cookies. I've got my handy decorators helping out as usual.



You would think that the cookie trays would have been a good idea to keep the sprinkles from getting on the table.......


I believe there was some taste testing going on as well - Megan's mouth is a little too red.

Sampling after we were done.



All thumbs up from the Schmidt girls. As Abby said "these are the best cookies" and I can't argue with that.



After the cookie decorating (and outfit changes as the girls thought they needed to pick out their own clothes) we headed to Bass Pro for our annual meeting with Santa. Many of you will be disappointed that the girls actually liked Santa this year. It was a little sketchy while waiting in line, Megan needed a little coaxing and wouldn't take off her coat like she was ready to bolt. Abby went straight to the reindeer (last year's spot) and Santa asked her a few questions and got her interested in talking which in turn eased Megan into it. So there is a photo without crying and Megan asked for a football and Abby a dolly.


Some outdoor posing with Santa's sled.

And ending the night with a little adorableness. Ahhh, I love Christmas, and it was the most pleasant Santa visit we have ever had. It was a good night.

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas...

This past weekend commenced the beginning of dragging all the Christmas decorations upstairs - can you tell how excited I was, since I'm the one who has to do the dragging.
It is one of my favorite times of the year though and the fact that my kids love it just as much makes it all the better.

A new addition to our decorating this year was for the girls to have their own tree in their room to decorate with their ornaments. Really we have too many ornaments for our other tree and this was an idea to make more room - and give them something fun to do.

So I purchased the tree after last Christmas - and I know it's a little Charlie Brown looking - but once it was dressed it looked great. We headed to Home Depot to buy the lights, tree topper, garland, and tree skirt. The girls picked out everything on their own - and everything I saved for getting a tree on clearance last year was wiped out - but they love it.


They each put on their own ornaments - Abby even shared since she has about twice as many as Megan.



And then the finishing touches - which includes rearranging the ornaments everyday and clustering random things under the tree for "decorations", like stuff animals, a pretend curling iron and hair dryer, you know, "decorations".

Ahhhh Christmas, got to love it.