christmas chaos

our christmas was quite busy this year.....check it out!

christmas with friends

mangers and gingerbread houses

christmas with the zwieps (12.24.2007)

christmas day

a birthday and a birthdate

a birthday and a birthdate

mom turned 50 yesterday. she still looks great. we celebrated her birthday with a wonderful steak dinner complete with some amazing birthday cake.

amy had a check up yesterday and everything looks great. the doctors scheduled her c-section and now micah has a birthdate, january 15th at 7:30am. we are so excited!

we also celebrated christmas with the 6 of us.....

matt zwiep got lots of tools this year thanks to us women battling the black friday crowds.
he was like a boy in a candy store.


dad got crafty this year. he bought a picture frame and framed a few pictures of matt and i and matt and amy. mom had no idea he could be so crafty!



dad will always be a little boy at heart.....he got a table top hockey game for christmas. there was some (or a lot) of assembly required, and we don't have all the right players, but he is still happy with the gift.


finally it was time to play....


look at that concentration!

christmas day

christmas day was a low key day that matt and i spent with mom and dad. matt and i opened presents and mom and dad each opened one. and then we took a christmas walk in the woods.


merry christmas!




modeling the soft shell matt got me!



the goonies and a fm transmitter for the i-pod




mom got a knife block and dad got some tools



sanctuary woods in holland:

christmas with the zwieps (12.24.2007)

after a wonderfull weekend with the wiechel's matt and i headed over to holland to spend christmas eve with my dad's family. as always dinner was amazing, and the table settings were beautiful. we even ate outside! the schram's enclosed their porch and blasted in the heat.

once dinner was over, we headed inside and opened gifts, which only took 1 hour and 45 minutes this year, a fairly speedy time for us!

Grandma and Grandpa
Grandpa with three bottles of wine and a loin cloth.....hmmm

matt and brian
me and nathan
sisters brothers
caitlin and grant
christian, what a crazy kid cousins
dad practicing being a grandpa!

mangers and gingerbread houses

the weekend before christmas we spent in ohio. we had a lovely christmas dinner and spent some good quality time with matt's family.

who knew copper was present and Jesus' birth?


later he got sick....so we gave him a blanket and advil. he is still not up to par though



we made and decorated a gingerbread house. when i say we made a gingerbread house i really mean we actaully made it, annie and i baked the bread for the walls and everything. matt constructed our templates for the dimensions of the house.



matt making the "grass"


finished product:

christmas with friends (12.19.2007)

we got together with heather, aaron, sam, michele, and rachel and had a little christmas party. we each bought $5 gifts (boy was it hard to find something decent for $5!).




don't worry, toby was not actually a gift....


i made a peppermint cheesecake for us all to enjoy as well.



copper and toby meet for the first time and had a blast playing with each other.


and they played hard and had to take a rest....