Happy New Year... it's still the new year, right?

We celebrated the New Year with the Herman family again this year.  Then, the next day, we got to celebrate Maiya's third birthday.

Backing up a bit, the week before we rang in the New Year we had a great visit from the Pruss family.  We had our final Christmas celebration as the kids opened their gifts.  The kids all played together the whole day and then the adults got to hang out and watch a movie while they slept quietly.  We really enjoyed having them stay over and would have liked it even more if they hadn't had to pack up and head home early the next morning.  Maybe next time we'll get them a little longer.

Later that week, we had a few people over to our house to watch the MSU bowl game.  While they didn't win, we still managed to have a great time with our friends.  Jen came from as far away as Grand Rapids.  Melissa, Steve, and Jack came from Brighton.  And, Ryan and Katie came from all the way across the street!

Last weekend, while the girls headed to Bravo's for Nez's birthday, Dan, Pete, and I took the kids to the Livonia Rec Center so they could play in the pool area.  All three kids ended up loving everything, especially the water slide.  Surprisingly, it took the most convincing to get Colin on it, but he was happy he went, and ended up going MANY more times.  We then grabbed a few Hot and Ready's and waited patiently for the girls to return for presents and dessert.

You can find the last of our December photos here.  And, the photos from this year can be found here.

Skating Downtown

We headed downtown tonight for dinner and ice skating.  Meme, Papa, Alison, and Aunt Missy all joined us as well.  We had a great dinner at Hard Rock, and then walked across the street to Campus Martius.

The smallest skates they had were a bit too large for Jake, but for his first time, it was tough to gauge if it really made a difference or not.  He had fun skating between our legs and kept urging us to go faster.  The best setup we found was Mommy supporting Jake under his arms while Daddy pushed and slowed the two of them.  It was the best method for Daddy's back at least.

When our backs couldn't take any more, we let Jake know that we were tired, and he replied, "But I'm not tired at all!"

Alison started off about as shaky as last year during the Motown Winter Blast, but by the end she was able to go around the rink several times by herself without holding onto the wall.

Here are a few of the photos we took tonight.

Merry Christmas!

We had a great time celebrating Christmas with all of our family.  The celebration started early in December when Jake and Mommy went up to the Christmas party at the Moose.  It continued on through a party last weekend at the Herman's house, Christmas Eve at the Husted's last night, and the Christmas Day at home.

Jake was a lot of fun this year.  He knew exactly what to do to get gifts out of bags or wrapping paper.  He kept asking people to not tell him what the gifts were as he got parts of it exposed.  He wanted each gift to be a grand reveal.  Even with splitting up the two sides of the family over two weekends, he still got a bit overwhelmed this morning and told us he just wanted to open the rest of his presents, "next Saturday" since Mommy usually tells him we can do fun stuff on the weekends.

You can find all of the photos we took over the past month in our online photo album.

We hope you enjoyed your time with family and friends and we hope you have a very happy New Year.

Thanksgiving 2009

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We sure did.  This year, besides all the usual suspects, we were probably most thankful that we had all finally gotten over the Swine Flu.  It wiped us out pretty bad for about a week.

Our celebrations started on Wednesday when we got to see the Pruss family who was up from St. Louis.  Jake, Elle, and Zach all had fun playing together.  The adults enjoyed some takeout from, where else, East Side Mario's and then played a little bit of Little Big Planet on the PS3.  The visit came to and end much to soon, but we look forward to seeing them again around Christmas.

We spent Thursday at Grandma and Grandpa's house where there was plenty of food, and with DLCnM, there was also plenty of family to hang out with.  The weather was cooler, but still nice enough to let us throw the pigskin around for a while.  Dan and Colin then played hide and seek out in the yard and woods for about an hour even after they had to take a break to grab flashlights since it had gotten so dark!

On Friday, we headed over to Meme and Papa's house.  Jake got to hang out with them, and Alison, for a while by himself while Michele and I went to the movies with Nez to see New Moon.  While I didn't lose my breath every time a character took of his shirt like the two Twilight mom's next to me, I did enjoy the movie over-all, regardless of what Mark might think about me for even going.  After that, we spent the rest of the day hanging out around the house and playing board games.  Then, after Papa and I moved it up from the basement, we played some Wii Sports Resort.  Hopefully, getting the console up on the main level will get them playing it a bit more often.

Today, we got started on the Christmas decorations around our house.  Jake has been waiting patiently, and was very excited to get out Rudolph, Frosty, and Homer Santa!  He then decorated his fish tank with some window clings and hung the mini ornaments on the little tree in his room.  Hopefully tomorrow we'll get the last of the leaves taken care of and then get the outdoor decorations up.

You can find the updates to our photos starting here.

November? Already?

This post is coming in a bit late, but in case you were worried, we did celebrate Halloween in the Anderson household.  We started off by going to a function at Michele's school earlier in the week where Jake got to wear his costume and go to a few different rooms with different activities.  Then, with Halloween falling on a Saturday, it was actually busier than normal.  Jake had both sets of grandparents to help him celebrate.  He also had his buddy Jack with his parents, Melissa and Steve.  The boys had a fun evening of playing and then trick or treating followed by more playing!  Here are some of our shots from those days.

The day after Halloween, we added DLCnM to our overnight guests, GnGT, to celebrate Grandpa's birthday.  We had a nice brunch and ended up spending a bit of time playing outside since it was so nice out.  You can see a few of those shots here.