Happy Birthday!

Friday night we celebrated Trever and Mom's Birthday! We started out at Dos Reales where they were required to wear some stunning sombrero's before they could eat their fried tortilla with whipped cream on top!

Christmas 2007

First of all, let me post a small disclaimer for my side of the family. You may notice that there are ZERO pictures from the Builta Christmas gatherings. For round one (Grandma Builta's on December 15th) my battery was dead. And, on Christmas Eve with the immediate family, Kirk was taking pictures so I didn't. So, if I ever get copies from my family, I'll post them at a later date. I'll also appologize for some of the dark pictures to come, but enjoy nonetheless!

Christmas Round 1 was with the Builta's on December 15th. Since my Aunt Carol, Uncle Kenneth, Aunt Kathi and cousin Kara all decided to spend Christmas in Florida, we gathered a little early. We tried a gift exchange this year and I think it went pretty weel.

Round 2 was the Saturday before Christmas with the immediate Kuipers family. Of course we overate and opened gobs of presents. The only picture I have from that night is of Kyla with her new undies and I didn't figure she would appreciate that being posted on the world wide web!

Round 3 was brunch with Grandpa Kuipers, Dee and Marshall. Again, mass quantites of food! No wonder the scale never stopped when I worked out today!

I actually have some pictures of Round 4! The extended Ficklin family met at Aunt Sue's house in Onarga. Here is a picture of Grandma and Grandpa Ficklin and all of their descendants! They even let me in the picture...that wouldn't happen in the Builta family. Maybe next year Trever will no longer be a "guest".

Trever and Kyla with cousin Kelly!

Neela got a Christmas toy from Grandma and Grandpa (aka Kathy and Greg). She loves playing in her new tent.

Round 5 was with my family...those pictures will come eventually!

Round 6 was just Trever, Neela and I. This is my present from Neela! A few weeks ago I came home from work and 3 of our Christmas ornaments had been destroyed and spread throughout the kitchen. So, Neela "made" me an ornament that says "I'm Sorry" and has paw prints on it. She has 5 more back ups if she breaks any next year!

Round 7 was at Grandma and Grandpa Ficklin's house. There were so many presents! I have tons of pictures of this one. Here are just a few of them.

The DeOrnellas family! Check out Caisey's cool pink Illini shirt!

Ava is Trever's 1st cousin once removed (I think that's right). She belongs to his cousin Kent and his wife Kelly. What a cutie!

And finally Round 8! Caisey got her very own Christmas on Christmas night. What a lucky girl!

Santa was awfully good for us! Part of it might have been the gift registry that he had as suggestions! We have a ton of great stuff for our new home, but best of all was being able to spend time with our families! Merry Christmas!

Update

It's been quite a while since we've updated our friends on our whereabouts. We've been keeping ourselves busy with the new house, Christmas shopping, work and trying to squeeze all of our friends and family in over the holidays. Since our last post we've celebrated a birthday in Illinois, traveled to Ohio for another birthday and some antiquing, had Christmas Round 1, and survived our first snowstorm at the new place.

The first weekend in December I fought the ice and made my way to visit with some of my LeRoy friends. It was great to spend some time with them and see Jenna's new house. That Sunday we headed to a 5th grade basketball game and off for pizza and cake to celebrate Caisey's birthday. I'm hoping she brings the gift we gave her back at Christmas. I bought it so I could play with it!




The next weekend Trever and I headed to Ohio to celebrate Kyla's birthday. It just so happened that some other relatives were visiting Ohio the same weekend. We spent all day looking for the perfect antique cabinet to put in our kitchen before hitting the mall and meeting Aunt Sue, Beth and Jerry for dinner.

This last weekend was the first big snow. We made it to Grandma Builta's house Saturday night for Christmas Round 1. This is the first time we have done what I call a "white elephant" exchange. I'm surprised with how well it came off. I came home with a fleece blanket made by grandma and Trever came home with the game 1 vs 100. I think we faired pretty well.

Sunday was suppose to be a Christmas party at our house, but it turned in to a small intimate gathering instead. After our first big snow, Trever spent the morning scooping the drive with his brand new snow shovel while I got the soup and sandwhiches ready. Between the poor weather and a kid that was under the weather, the only ones that made it up were the Brucker's. It was a lot of fun to catch up with Kate, Eric and Alyson. We'll have to have everyone up again sometime after the holidays.

We've got a slow week this week, but we're gearing up for a lot of driving, eating and gift giving next weekend! It's nice to be wanted at so many different places over the holidays, but it gets difficult to please everyone. I'm sure we'll have many more pictures and updates after Christmas!