Decorating for Christmas

Kyla and I got the Christmas tree up and decorated this weekend. She was so excited to decorate for Christmas and was already getting the decorations out and ready to put on the tree before I could even get the tree up. We bought a pretty small tree last year because we didn't have much space for it in the house we were renting last year and we have a lot of decoratios and Kyla had to make sure that everyone of them made it onto the tree, even if that meant having four or five decorations on one branch. She had so much fun putting decorations on the tree and getting out our nativity set, nutcrackers and other holiday decorations. Then she said "It is Christmas now because we have are Christmas tree."

Her Elf on the Shelf also made its first apperance of the holiday season this weekend and showed up in her bed. I was not thinking that this would be a bad spot for it until she decided to stay up until 10:30 talking to her elf telling her what she wanted, what I wanted and what daddy wanted for christmas this year. She was so funny she said to her elf "For Christmas I want...(she paused and looked around her room)...I already have a lot of toys, so I just want four things, I want a lightbulb with flowers on it, a pink angel (to match the other three angels she has in her window), a new cup and a kitty that turns on and walks." I said that I didn't know if they made lightbulbs with flowers on them, and she said "Santa makes them". I think the elf is one of her highlights of Christmas, she absolutely loves finding it each morning, talking to her, smiling at her and asking us lots and lots of questions about her elf.

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a very happy Thanksgiving day and weekend. On Thanksgiving day we drove in a white out snow storm to Anchorage to go to Grandma Elsie and Grandpa Daves house for thanksgiving lunch. All of the family was there and we had great food and great time visiting with everyone.

After lunch we headed to Petersville to my parents cabin to relax and snowmachine. We had plenty of thanksgiving food with us to eat all weekend. Kyla had a great time outside even though the highest temperature we ever saw was 7 degrees. She had fun riding her kitty Cat snowmachine out on the lake and did very well driving it. She was completely on her own riding it with us just riding next to her or in front of her on our snowmachines. She got the hang of driving it real quick and was doing laps back and forth on the lake. We went out lots of times for just a short time each time until she got too cold. She really likes riding her snowmachine and had a huge smile the entire time. We can't wait to go back up there around Christmas time to do some more snowmachining.

Move in Day: Our New House!

We have a new house!!! On Friday, November 18 we finally moved into our new house. We are so excited to own a home and are busy getting all settled and unpacked. Kyla is so excited about her new room and new bed. Until now she has been sleeping in her crib converted into a toddler bed and now she has a full size memory foam mattress with super cozy princess bedding and she loves it! She has been sleeping all night in her bed, which she has never really done, until now she has cried a lot during her sleep and always wanted to sleep in bed with us. Her room is very fun with all of her toys and lots of cute stuff. She is very proud of it and loves showing it off to all of the visitors we have had so far and hardly even lets them leave her room to finish the tour of the house. So far we have had several visitors. On the day we moved in we didn't even hardly see her all day because she was so excited about her new room and was busy unpacking and playing with all of her toys.

On moving day my mom and Aunt Carol drove the snowmachine trailer up to our house loaded with all of our belongings and helped us getting everything in the house and helped us with starting to unpack and put things away. On Sunday we had are first visitors, Aunt Lynn, Michelle, April, Travis, Aunt Diana and Jesse all came over to see the new house and then the following weekend Aunt Lynn, Michelle and Ashley all came over so Ashley could also see our house while she was in town. I cant wait to have everything put away and have more visitors.

Besides getting things unpacked and put away we have also been busy shopping for everything we needed for the house. We bought a nice washer and dryer during home depots black friday sale and will finally get it this friday after two weeks of not doing laundry. We also had to buy blinds for all the windows, a medicine cabinet, garbage disposal, rugs and lots of other odds and ends for the house, so we have spent a lot of time and money at home depot in the past couple weeks. We also have lots of new things that have been given or made for us. My mom made a coffee table, end table and console table for us, are relator gave us her old fridge that she just replaced and My cousins Michelle and April gave us a nice table with 6 chairs that belonged to a family they know who just moved. We are so greatful for all of the great new things we have received and it so fun putting are house all together. When everything was still in boxes I thought that there was no way we had enough room for everything that we owned, but I was suprised with how much closet space and storage we had. We have found a home for almost everything and the off season stuff we are not using has all gone down to are crawl space.

I finally have more than enough kitchen space for all of my dishes and kitchen gadgets and I still even have empty cupboard space. We still need a few more things for the house to get everything organized and we need to decorate the walls and get lots of pictures framed. But, for the most part we are settled and don't have too many projects we need to get done or major shopping trips, until summer that is. Once summer comes along we need to build a back deck, a shed, a garden, a front patio, put up rain gutters, plant grass and landscape, so we will have a very busy and expensive summer, but it should be fun too.

It has been so fun watching our house from the first day they broke ground to completion. It has seemed like a long process since we were so excited to get into the house, but it was only august that we decided to buy a house and began looking around and decided to go with a new construction. I'm excited to put together a photo album of the entire process.

Sledding Fun

Kyla, Jon and I went sledding at our favorite sledding hill at Rabbit Creek Elementary school. Kyla had a blast sledding and was even going down a run with a jump on it. She loved the jump and would scream and laugh every time. Several times in a row she would sled down with us at the top of the hill watching and then she would get off the sled and pull it back up to the top of the hill, I couldn't believe how big and independent she is getting. She loves to go sledding and now we need to find a new fun sledding hill by our new house once it finally warms up a little, we have been stuck inside for too long with below zero temperatures for the past few weeks.

New House Construction: August-November

In August Jon and I started looking at buying a house, we found a relator that Jon already knew and she was great. We looked at probably twenty houses before finding the one we decided on. We chose to buy a new construction that had not even been started yet, we looked at the previous house that the builder had done and this one would be the exact same house just in a reverse model. We are excited to get into a new house and not have to worry about doing any updates or repairs.

The house we chose to buy is a 1400 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house on a 1 acre lot. Jon was really wanting a house with a garage, but this house only has a carport so in the summer he will either build a detached garage or convert the carport into a garage. We will have a busy summer with getting that done, plus we will have to do all of the landscaping.

We liked the area that we decided to buy in because it is walking distance to a great elementary school as well as two different lakes. We also like that the lots were bigger than in most of the other areas we looked in. We are really excited to own are own home and look forward to getting all settled in.