Christmas with Steve's Family

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Polar Express in 3D

Happy Chinese Christmas Eve!

2008 marks the 9th year of our Chinese Christmas Eve dinner! This year we had our family, my sister's family, my step-brother and his girlfriend, Maria, and Randy's parents and sister join us for AAC's 4:00 Christmas service and a Chinese dinner at our house. We had a total of 19 people!! My favorite thing is to decorate the tables all fancy. Here are some photos of this year's table.

Merry Christmas!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Build A Bear Workshop

Caleb wanted to buy Emma a bear at the Build A Bear Workshop for Christmas. So, today she got to make her very own "Emma" the panda....which not so coincidentally, is the exact same bear with the exact same name as Caleb's Build A Bear panda (wonder why she chose that one?)! The trip to the mall wore her out completely. Visiting with Santa, walking around the mall AND making your very own teddy bear is exhausting for a two year old....heck, it's exhausting for a 38 year old!!

Here are some photos of her making her Emma bear.

Visit with Santa

We took Emma to see Santa at the mall today. This is the same Santa that we took Noah to when he was just 3 months old. We only took the boys the first couple of years. The last time we saw him was 2002 when Noah was 4 and Caleb was 2. This Santa is from TN and comes every year to Appleton. He gets paid $55,000 a year to play Old Saint Nick. He stays at a local hotel and stays until Christmas Eve. He's sort of an icon here, in the Fox Valley. He's really nice...very soft spoken and good with the kids.

Emma wasn't scared at all. She walked right up and sat on his lap, gave him a hug and said "Thank you" and "Merry Christmas" to him. What a sweetheart!!

Christmas...or Halloween?

A couple of days ago, Emma started singing a song...and we realized she was singing Trick or Treat Smell My Feet. Her version goes something like this: "Tick or teat, nell my veet, veet, veet....all da way hooome"! I think it's a combination of Trick or Treat and This Little Piggy Went to Market. It's soo funny!!