Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve over at Grandma and Grandpa Dorene's house. We had dinner and then exchanged presents since we wouldn't be getting together on Christmas. Mikkele is old enough now that she knows that we always get new jammies on Christmas Eve. She had begged all night to be able to open hers so she could get a little more comfortable. She finally got her wish and immediately went in to change.

Hallie was a little disinterested in opening the presents. She would start helping, then get distracted and move on. Mikkele got to help open a lot of presents between Hallie and Grant.

Mikkele also go spoiled by her Grandma and her Aunts/Uncles/Cousins. I love her reactions to presents. She always has the best faces. She's still in love with Justin Bieber and is super excited about the puzzle and activity book, as well as the CD that has a JB song as well as many of her other current favorites.

Hallie loves "dodo's"! Grandma and Grandpa gave her a whole house of little dodo's. Her favorite game to play is take the dogs out and let mom put them back.

Grant always get lots of yummy treats for Christmas, since his favorite thing is FOOD!

After all the present opening we went home to get the kids in bed so Santa could come. We had one extra elf helper this year....Mikkele :)

Snow Days

School was canceled the Tuesday and Wednesday before Christmas because we had so much snow! Mikkele was super excited! She spent most of her break from school outside playing in the snow. We even got Grant and Hallie out in the action a few times.

We spent a good majority of the first day clearing driveways and sidewalks in the neighborhood. We would get a driveway cleared and move to another one and by the time we were done with that one we would need to do the previous one again. The pic above is one of our neighbors with his snow blower showering Mikkele with the snow.

Hallie all bundled up and ready to play in the snow.

Hallie thought it was fun to slide down the ramp. It makes a perfect little sledding hill. Our post man doesn't think it's as fun as the kids do though.

Catching snowflakes with her tongue.

Mikkele and Hallie at the top of the sledding hill, ready to go down.

Grant had a good time being pulled on the sled around the yard. There was a few times that Mikkele went around a corner a little too fast and dumped him into the snow. He just giggled and said "MORE"! He loved it, but got cold really fast. A slight disadvantage to not being able to be up and moving while playing in the snow.

Mikkele's Christmas Concert

Mikkele is in choir this year at school. The 5th-8th graders put on a Christmas concert on December 16, Jeremy's birthday. They sang a trio of songs from A Charlie Brown Christmas and then a couple other songs that were more native to different countries. The kids did a great job! Grant really enjoyed listening to the kids sing and kept saying "more" after each song was over. Mikkele got to stand next to 2 of her best friends, Rietta and Kensi.

I tried adding a video, twice, but it is being a pain. So no video...sorry.

Wax Museum

For Mikkele's book report for November and December she had to choose a biography on an influential person who is no longer living. During November she had to read the book, and during December she had to work on a speech and a poster to display at the wax museum they would have to show off which person they chose. The person she chose was Princess Diana. It was a lot of fun to go around to each of the kids and hear what they had prepared on their person. Each person would be in a pose until you pressed their button. At that time they would stand and recite their memorized speech.

Mikkele's friend Anna was the first woman to swim across the English Channel.
(I can't remember her name...whoops)

Her friends Kamrin and Gracie were Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller.

Levi was Elvis

Sophia was Amelia Earhart

There were many others, but I didn't take pics of everyone. It was fun to walk through all three 5th grade classes and listen to each of the kids. They all did a great job!

Grant's Christmas Concert

Grant's class put on a cute Christmas concert. They sang a couple of Christmas songs and then we watched a really cute slide show that had pics of the kids throughout the year so far. His teacher, Miss Ellinger, sang the song "Angels Among Us" during the slide show. Talk about tear jerker! The kids all did a really good job. Super cute!

Miss Jane helping Grant during the Jingle Bells song.

Gallier Family Christmas Party

We had the extended Gallier family Christmas party early on in December before it got too busy. We had dinner, a little talent show, and then had a nativity with the cousins. Mikkele was Mary, and Jaden was Joseph.

Jaxon was baby Jesus.

Mikkele sang the song "Mary's Lullaby"
All the other cousins were shepherds, wiseman and Hallie was an angel.

Well she was the naughty angel. LOL. She kept taking the straw out of the manger. Some of the other kids kept telling her no. At one point she hit Lane for telling her no. This child has an attitude problem. I need to get a copy of the video it was actually kinda funny. Sorry Lane!

The kids did a great job portraying the story of Jesus' birth!

Volleyball

Mikkele had the opportunity to try out volleyball for the first time this fall. The city starts offering it in 5th grade, so she's been anxious to get to the 5th grade so she can have her go at it. She has done many sports in the past, but they haven't really been up her alley. She's definitely not a tom boy like her mom was growing up. I do, however, think she needs to be introduced to all different kinds of sports so she at least knows the basics, even if she doesn't excel at them. And if she does well, great! If not, oh well. At least she tried and put forth her best effort. All that being said, she did great! I think this is one sport that is up her alley. She improved so much during the season. Her serve is getting stronger, and she is getting more and more aggressive as she goes toward the ball. We had a little joke toward the end of the season. I kept telling her the cheer "Be aggressive...be be aggressive". She hated it when I would chant it to her, but helped her to remember to go toward the ball. She is excited to play again in the spring after my volleyball season.

Some of her cheering section

18 Months Old

The last month with Hallie has been both a blast and a stress all at the same time. This girl is hilarious! She is constantly doing things to make us laugh. While at the same time on the go constantly and getting into everything and making her mama nuts. But she sure is cute!
This is a common scene in our house lately. She has been hitting like crazy! So into time out she goes. Too bad she still thinks it's kind of funny rather than being disciplined. And no she didn't learn to fold her arms from being in time out ;) After she hits Grant or the cat (who are her usual targets), she'll say "be nice to bubba, or be nice to kitty". Which is what I feel like I tell her all day long. She is quite the little copy cat right now.

Some of her other new words are pretty-which is anything from a bracelet, to a necklace, to a hair bow, to a shirt, etc. Lots of things are her pretty's. Other words are car, shoes, bapa-for grandpa, nice, ball, go, and tickle.

She is up to 29.11 lbs. and about 33 inches tall. I thought she had surpassed Grant in the weight department, but it looks like he's put on some weight since his surgery in June and is still a few pounds bigger than Hallie. I think he might have somewhat of a complex about his baby sister outgrowing him, so he's trying to pack it on. ;)

She is a wild sleeper. I usually cover her up 3 times or more before I got to bed, but she always ends up on top of her covers and sideways. And most of the time, and arm or a leg is sticking out of the bars.
She is mostly down to 1 nap a day. Once or twice a week she will still take 2 naps, but for the most part she is down to 1. I've been trying to stretch it to the early afternoon, but she is usually down by 11 or 11:30. And she will usually sleep for 3-3 1/2 hours.
At night she goes to bed around 7:30 and she will usually sleep until 7. She has to have one of her fleece blankets around her face and another blanket on top. And she also has to have her songs on in her little glow worm toy.

Mikkele has taught her how to throw a ball this last month. Which has turned into-throw whatever you can get your hands on. We are trying to teach her to just throw balls, but so far it hasn't worked.

She has had a hard time with the change of weather. She loves to be outside, especially since we've been outside working in the yard a lot. So she gets all bundled up and comes out to be our big helper. She doesn't like to have her coat, hat, or gloves on though. As soon as they go on, she tries to get them off. She's quite the pro at zippers now.

We have finally started introducing eating utensils. I don't know what is messier, eating with her hands, or learning how to eat with a fork or spoon. She isn't doing too bad, and she sure loves the new trick of eating like we do.

Her hair is getting long enough to be able to pull into piggy tails. They didn't last very long in the back, but she sure looked cute in them.

She is now officially old enough for nursery! She had a bad ear infection that first Sunday, so she didn't get to go, but she will be going tomorrow! I am one excited mama! It has been 5 1/2 years since I haven't had a kid with me during class. Maybe I'll actually be able to get something from the lessons now. :)

It's so fun that she is growing up and learning new things every day. While she makes me crazy sometimes with how busy she is, I am truly grateful that she is able to do all the things that sometimes we take for granted. Love you Hal!

Fall Cleanup

Our yard has 4 large trees. Each fall there are a TON of leaves that need to be raked up. Over the summer, the electric department had some tree trimmers come to cut back some limbs of a few of the trees that were close to the electric lines. Once they were done mutilating the trees, our poor trees looked horrible and sunlight was coming through in parts of where our yard had not seen sun in a long time. I decided at that point that I would just rather take them out completely and put in a bigger garden area than what we have. Jeremy and Mikkele had a different plan that included a dog and a dog run going in place of the trees. I think we'll compromise and make both fit. I told Jeremy that we needed to get the trees down before all the leaves fell so we only had 2 trees full of leaves to clean up instead of 4. Well that was a great idea, and the process was started before they fell, but it took a few Saturday's to get it all done because of weather and Jeremy being on call 24/7. And what a mess it turned out to be. But it all has been cleaned up and ready for winter-minus the stumps they still need to be taken out, and we have a ton of firewood that we'll be able to use in a year or so once the wood dries out. More work will need to be done in the spring to get my garden area ready. I'm pretty excited to have a bigger garden this next year though.

Jeremy had a little bit of a Tim Taylor power trip as he was using the chain saw.

It was a whole family affair to get the yard cleaned up. We even recruited some friends and neighbors. :)

Never too young to put them to work right?

And of course you have to play in the leaves a bit. That makes the clean up part worth it. (And that's why the neighbor kids come to help :))

Grant even got in on "jumping" into the leaves. He didn't love it when big sister threw some leaves on him though.