Frederick Meijer Gardens

Over break, we went to Frederick Meijer Gardens. They have Christmas trees decorated from around the world and a cool little train city that represents part of West Michigan. It was pretty cool. We really didn't get any good pictures, as you can tell by the pictures that are included in this post.


Big Red in the background

Nice little waterfall.

Adelynn checking something out.

Daddy, please hurry

Adelynn was so excited about her sweet new ride that she couldn't wait for Mike to finish putting it together before she "took it for a whirl."

Santa Claus came to town

I thought I would share a couple of pictures of our traumatic Santa Clause experience. Needless to say, the excitement definitely ended as soon as we reached the front of the line. See my previous post about the comparison between Adelynn and Randy and goggle boy in "A Christmas Story."

BEFORE




AFTER

Pretty, pretty Christmas princess

As mentioned in a previous post, Adelynn had many Christmas dresses to choose from. She looked so cute in her different Christmas outfits, and we were even able to get a couple of her smiling.


Adelynn is holding the "CD" player that Santa brought her. It plays all sorts of Sesame Street and children songs. Elmo, Bert and Ernie, Abby and Zoe and Cookie Monster all have their own CDs. We thought that it played the lyrics, too, but it's just instrumental. No matter, Adelynn still loves it. Her song of choice right now is "Hoppy, Hoppy." As in, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands." We then move to Ehnie and ducky ("Rubber Ducky") and then Cookie ("C is for Cookie"). It's quite the little system we have. I should also mention that this is mostly done in the bathroom, as these songs have become her potty music of choice.

We were so excited to get a nice picture of her looking at the camera (mostly) and smiling. This is one of the beautiful dresses Paula got her.

Nice view of the dress here. This came from one of Adelynn's friends (and one of my teacher friends) from Paula's house. This has been in the closest for a year (along with the other dresses Paula got her). Adelynn loved to twirl and twirl in this dress. Also, if you said, "That's a pretty dress, Adelynn," she would lift it up to show you. Hmm....

The snowman was a huge hit the first couple of weeks of Christmas decorations (which are still up, by the way, and will be until next weekend). We found snowman "parts" all over the living room, and then Adelynn would try to stack him back up again.

More Christmas

First of all, I have to say that Dena will probably be a bit disappointed in this post (and anyone with access to Dena's pictures) because I definitely stole all of these off of her Facebook. So, sorry for those of you who have already seen these--they were just too cute to pass up.

These pictures were taken on Christmas Eve and really do a nice job of capturing our little pistol.
I was a bit taken back by the last one. I can't believe she looks so big!!

Mom, what were you thinking?

When I see this picture, I think of the Dumb and Dumber quote, "Killer boots man!"
I also think that this will be one of those pictures where Adelynn says, "Mom, I can't believe you actually let me wear that."
Well, the outfit, ok the boots at least, were not meant to be a permanent fixture for the outfit. I was just trying them on to see if we needed to get another pair of winter boots. They just went so well with this "sweet" outfit that I had to document it on film, or whatever it is digital cameras use. The shirt was taken off and will not be worn again by Adelynn. No belly shirts for her. The holiday festive jeans were worn again (a couple of times)!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!! I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas. Ours was amazing. The family time was awesome and many memories were made. It was so fun reading Christmas books and telling Adelynn the Christmas story. She liked it best when we acted it out with her Little People nativity! What an awesome gift we were, and still are, given with our salvation through Jesus Christ.

Adelynn learned the motions to "Away in a Manger." She is always amazing me with what she is capable of doing. Needless to say, being home these two weeks have been just awesome. We have had such great play time. One Christmas vacation goal was to "re-do" the basement which meant nothing more than moving around some furniture and bringing Adelynn's toys downstairs. Now, though, we have an organized space where we can actually hang out and Adelynn can play with her toys. We've hung out a lot downstairs playing. This is time that I cherish and have enjoyed every last second of over Christmas break.

This post is a little random, but I will work on sticking up more Christmas pictures throughout the next week (or two) here, and I'll add captions.





The Brown/Tasker Christmas party was an ugly sweater party. We decided to go in matching turtlenecks. Mike decided he LOVES turtlenecks and hopes to wear them on a regular basis.

Actually, I'm just kidding because although I think he can pull them off quite well, the turtleneck will only be an ugly sweater party occurrence :). While it was super fun, we definitely were looking the gaudiest, so we may have to tone it down a little next year :).

Adelynn decorated these cookies by herself (mostly) at daycare. Paula is AWESOME and a huge blessing to us and Adelynn (as I have said lots of times before). She does such great things with the kids.

Here is Adelynn (minus the adorable tights) on the day of her daycare Christmas party. This dress (from Mrs. Paula) got a lot of use this holiday season. She LOVED it and was like Superwoman when she put it on. She really became like this whole other person. It was hilarious. Ironically enough, Santa Claus was her kryptonite.

When we went to go see him, in this very dress, it did not go well. If you imagine the Santa Claus scene in "A Christmas Story" and picture Randy and the kid in the weird goggles, you will have our Santa experience. Adelynn SCREAMED a blood curdling, ear piercing scream. Well, if I'm honest, it would be screams. Needless to say, we have a pretty funny video, but no cute picture with, or near, Santa this year.

Here is Adelynn in one of her three Christmas dresses (all gifts) on the way to church. Blurry picture, but cute smile.