Geocaching Fun

Daddy got a GPS for Christmas! YAY! We were all very excited to go geocaching.

On our way to meet the extended Blauch family we stopped to find a cache in Carlisle. Despite our best efforts, trekking through mud and thistles, we just couldn't find it. We were bummed, but went right back out the next day to try again near our house. This time we were successful! We found three out of the five we looked for and learned quite a bit on how to find them. We think we actually found one of them but didn't know it?!?

Here we are signing the log at our first cache of the day, in Mascot Park in Ronks.

Checking out the ducks after finding the cache.

The girls were very happy to play at the park while Mommy and Daddy looked around for a cache they never did find!

Our second cache... at McDonalds on Rt. 30.
Inside were coupons for free coffee and ice cream. It was only 11AM but we shared a cone anyway!
We had been out about an hour and a half when we started hearing some complaints from the younger half of Team Miller.

Daddy: "Let's go find another one!"

Jillian: "I want to go home and play with my toys!"

Daddy: "C'mon Jill, just one more! OK?"
After all, Daddy wanted to play with his new toys too!

So, one more... at Greenfield.

And just to prove Mommy and Daddy are not grinches, we stopped after that and went home. :)

Christmas Day

Santa sure did come! We all slept in until 7:30 when Jill woke Mommy and Daddy up. She just could not wait, so we gently roused Natalie and checked out the tree. The big man HAD been there and we saw two very happy little faces when they saw the art easel! Santa left the girls a letter with some clues to a few hidden presents. They found them with ease and happily began opening presents. Mommy and Daddy opened some too!

Nonna and TOF arrived around 8AM bringing even more presents Santa had left at their house! We opened those presents and gave them some too, before Daddy made the requisite Egg McMuffin sandwiches for breakfast. Before too long it was close to noon and we left Nonna and TOF and headed to Manheim to continue the celebration with the Blauch side of the family.

Santa sure did come!


Natalie in her new robe!
She was too cute. She opened a book and immediately went to her room to put it on her nightstand. Then when Mommy opened some socks, she took them and put them in her room. Also at one point she held up a new outfit to her body as if to see what she would look like in it!

It was a very Barbie Christmas for Jillian. And she couldn't have been happier!

See? This is her HUGGING her Barbie townhouse!

Natalie was just overwhelmed by everything.
She had about five more presents to open when she kind of gave up. She curled up on the couch and was content to watch. She perked up later when we went to Manheim, but those leftover presents at our house waited until the next day to be opened.

Natalie (and Jillian too!) love their wooden birthday cake set. Here she's blowing out the 'candle'.
The girls had a ball with this during the past few days. They bring the cake to you singing Happy Birthday and then proudly serve you a piece. They did it eight times in the space of 20 minutes on Friday alone!

Testing out the easel.

Christmas Eve

Somehow, all the shopping, wrapping and sewing managed to get done in the nick of time for Christmas. Whew! We're going to focus on that, instead of on the batch of unbaked cookie dough still sitting in the fridge...

Christmas Eve started our festivities. Unfortunately, Mommy had to work that morning and Daddy had lots of errands to run so Jilly and Natalie went to day care... we had to spend the majority of the day apart :( But we met up that afternoon, got dressed up and joined the extended Miller family at Nonna & TOF's house for the traditional lasagna and braciole dinner. It was yummy as always! The kids were entertained for hours by the old school Little People sets TOF had resurrected from the attic. We didn't have any crankiness until after 9PM, almost 2 hours past Natalie's bed time! We went home, left oranges (no cookies, see note about uncooked dough!), milk and carrots out for Santa and went straight to bed so the big guy could come.

Well, we tried to at least. Jillian was not a very sound sleeper that night. She got up every hour or so and, to make sure Santa wouldn't find her awake, Mommy and Daddy were also awake, constantly putting her back in bed. The interesting thing was she wasn't waking up excited about Santa or the presents she'd be receiving in the morning, she was just merely waking up for no real reason at all!

Daddy and the girls checking Santa's progress on NORAD's web site.

The girls modeling their new Christmas shirts, made by Mom.


Pre-dinner nail polish session.

Kisses for Natalie!

A family portrait on Christmas Eve. This is as good as any we've had in the past six months,
after all, we ARE all looking in the same direction!

Nonna and TOF

Pretty Jilly!

Kids Update

Just a kids update...

Today in the car we are talking about how excited we are for Christmas. Trying to steer Jill's thoughts to the giving instead of receiving aspects, Mommy says how she's so excited to give Daddy his gifts.
J: You know that thing we put behind the couch, we need to wrap it.
M: That's right we do. But I moved his gifts so he wouldn't find them.
J: Where are they?
M: I put them in the SECRET PLACE.
J: Why?
M: So he won't find them.
J: OK, I'll tell him not to look in the SECRET PLACE.
M: No, Jilly, then he'll know where they are!
J: No he won't. I'm not going to tell them they are there.
M: Uhhh... Just don't talk about them at all, OK?
J: OK. What did we get Nonna and TOF?
M: We got them a... Never mind. I'll tell you later. (mumbling about loose lips)

At five years old, Jill's beginning to grasp the concept of Christmas this year. This is coming from three angles really... religious, giving and of course, Santa.

• She's loves playing with our nativity set. (Such a good idea to have gotten the resin set and not the Lenox!) She understands we are celebrating Jesus's birthday and that the kings brought the baby presents. And the cutest thing is when she says we should thank the animals for letting Jesus use their manger! We also have an advent wreath on the dinner table and she makes sure it is lit each night for dinner.
• Giving... Nonna took Jill for a couple of "Fairy" trips this month. One week they were "Food Fairies", shopping and bringing food to the local food bank, and then next they were "Toy Fairies" for Toys for Tots. She understands that a lot of people don't have as much as we do and that we can share what we have to help them have a merry Christmas too. Her day care class was collecting items for the Humane League and even though she is scared of dogs, she was very adamant about bringing in things to donate. She even said she didn't need one of her favorite blankets and wanted to give it to them. (We compromised and bought some fleece and made a couple blankets instead.) Mommy is constantly out of change because Jillian makes sure to empty her wallet at every Salvation Army kettle!
• And then there's Santa. This she seems to be picking up on her own! :) On a related note, she's picking up all kinds of Christmas songs from a CD we bought this year. Her favorites are Rudolph, All I Want for Christmas is You, and Run, Run, Rudolph.

Some Natalie notes:

• Her new thing is to get down out of her chair at the dinner table, put her little pointed finger near her face and tell us "I be wight bach." And then she proceeds to run through the house until eventually we chase her and bring her back to the table. Its a truly lovely game.
• She's begun helping herself to the bread drawer. To encourage her independence we allow her to do this, but we've had some close calls with her trying to hold up the wrong end of the bag!
• She's obsessed with Dr. Seuss (and this is one thing Mommy and Daddy don't seem to mind!). We taped a special from ABCFamily and now "Eggysam" trumps the old standard of Blues Clues as the preferred TV program. The only books she'll have read to her the past couple of weeks have been Green Eggs, The Sneetches, "Cat'n a Hat" and of course, the Grinch.
• Her favorite song continues to be Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Besides the fact that she'll always ask for us to sing that at bed time, they took a poll in her class the other day and that's what she answered! But Jingle Bells is coming in a close second...

No place like home...

We spent most of Saturday doing Christmas stuff around the house.  Except of course when Mommy sent Daddy on a little scavenger hunt which ended with him and TOF at the movies to see Christmas Vacation!  Fun!

Santa's helpers

Daddy had loads of fun with the tangled garland beads.

Jilly putting the angel on top.

The big tree in the living room.

Top of the Hoosier.  

Daddy collects nutcrackers and these are just some of the ones we put out this year.

Mommy's special, four foot M&M tree in the basement.

A little table top tree in the dining room.  

Jillian and Natalie's gingerbread creations found a home here this year.

Jillian's decorations

Jillian turned our dining room light into a Christmas mobile.

The artist handing the installation of her latest art project all by herself.

That's a reindeer in the front (no antlers, but some nice ears!) and behind it, a star.

Weekend randomness

Nonna & TOF had their annual Christmas drop-in party Friday night.  How cute is this kid? :)  And how cute is this dress?  Jill has a matching one but was moving way to quick to get a picture of her.

While patiently waiting for the lights and garland to untwisted and put onto the tree, the M&M guys lined up at Strawberry Shortcakes house for a party.

Daddy's practically perfect J pancake!

Someone's been eating my house!

Trains...

Keeping another Christmas tradition alive, we visited the model train display downtown again this year. It is truly wonderful to see Daddy pass along his love of trains to the girls!

It is a huge display and we are thankful for the people who put it on every year. 

It is certainly on our must do list each Christmas season.

TOF and Jillian relaxing by the fire at Annie Bailey's after a yummy dinner.

Baby Ben's Baptism

Our cousin/nephew was baptized Sunday morning. He's such a cutie! Daddy took lots of good pictures with us and Baby Ben, but they are all on Aunt Kristen's camera :( Hopefully we'll get some of them soon!

The little man of the hour...
(told ya he was cute!)

The big moment!

As is the custom, he didn't like it much!

A Winter Wonderland

Saturday evening we braved the cold (and SNOW!) and went to see the lights at Dutch Wonderland. One of Jill's friends had her birthday party there so she rode the rides with them for a while and then we had some family time.

Jill and her friends. She's in the middle holding the purse.

Yes, she'd hand to us to hold while she rode a ride and wanted it back immediately after finishing.

Mommy and Natalie in front of the lights.
There is a similar picture somewhere of Mommy and Jillian at Hershey with the same hat, jacket and sweet smile (and binky?!?)

Mommy's girl on the carousel!

While Jilly and Daddy played with her friends, Mommy took Natalie on the sky ride. Yes, it was quite chilly up there, but beautiful! Halfway across Natalie starts singing Jingle Bells. Mommy then realizes, that she's singing along to the light show music. It was so sweet. Natalie wasn't prepared for the horses to move up and down on the carousel. While she didn't cry or get upset on the ride, she informed Mommy afterward that "I not like the horsies".

Gingerbread!

Sunday we tried something new... we made gingerbread houses for the first time.  And of course, we couldn't use some pre-fab kit from the grocery store, because that would be just too simple!  

Last January, Mommy bought some special gingerbread house cookie cutters on clearance and since then she had been patiently awaiting the arrival of the Christmas season to put them into use.  (It may have been all worth it just to have the house smell soooo good!)  We picked up some random candies in the bulk food section of the grocery store and to work we went.

The freshly baked house parts. The cutters made interlocking pieces. 

Here's Chris assembling our first house.  He was our official contractor of the gingerbread house experiment, and was awesome at it!  Because of expanding in the oven, the pieces didn't fit together like legos or anything, but Super Daddy was able to make it work.

We used royal icing in a squeeze bottle for the "glue", though we found out later that melted white chocolate works pretty well too! 

Daddy's finished house.  

Featuring a gumdrop shrub line, peppermint walkway and mini candy cane on the roof as a flag.

Natalie's "boys".  She called all her gingerbread people "boy-ze".  Not sure why...

...unless it had something to do with Jillian's gingerbread GIRLS.  

All of Jill's were female and a stern correction was issued to anyone who slipped and called them men!  (Check out the licorice hair on the right one!)

Mommy's house front view.

Rear view of Mommy's house.  Pretzel decking!