Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - A Sneak Peak

I wanted to provide some quick pictures for our family members who were not able to be around this Christmas. We leave for Door County today to spend with Jeff's family and won't be back to late Sunday night.

Christmas Eve was spent at Jeff's parents house. The big gift for the boys (Will, Ryan, and EJ):

Evidence that Santa came to our house!! And daddy reading Santa's letter to Will while Will finished Santa's leftovers:

Santa delivered an indoor bouncy house!Opening presents from Santa - Will got some cool accessories for his wooden trainset.And the showstealer - Santa set up a Lionel train under the tree complete with a headlight and whistle on the steam engine.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Happy 80th Birthday Tom and ME!

December marks milestone birthdays for my brother, Tom and sister in law, Mary Esther. They both turned 40!

We were lucky enough to join Tom on his birthday at his favorite local Kenosha Cantonese restaurant.

We then went back to his house and had some yummy cupcakes that Elizabeth made for Tom's bday. Needless to say, Will had a great time - he loves this birthday thing. And he turned into a sugar machine that night cracking us all up with his high. Elizabeth graciously provided him with a tiara...

Tom, Mary Esther and Elizabeth:

Then, on the Winter Solstice, Mary Esther celebrated her 40th. She invited us, Jeff and Annie's family, and some close neighbor friends over for dinner and cake to celebrate both the solstice and her 40th. It was a very nice time, despite the smell of burning cat hair when Kenosha Girl accidentally dipped her tail TWICE into the candles from the Solstice Tree!

Happy 40th Tom and M.E. and may there be another 40 plus to spend together!

The Mall Santa

The Mall Santa - I'm sure you all have stories of him...

We took Will to the outlet mall on Sat to see Santa. I guess they also get "outlet" price Santas there, too! All morning we prepped Will that we were going to see Santa and discussed all the questions Santa might ask him: What is your name, How old are you, Have you been a good boy this year, and the most important: What do you want for Christmas this year?

So, we race to the mall and get there right at noon when Santa is supposed to arrive. We brave the below zero temperatures and the crowds of frantic Christmas shoppers. We arrive to the food court area and found Santa mingling with a few customers. He walked past us and reached into his bag to give Will a small stuffed reindeer and was about to walk away - no HO HO HO, no Holly Jolly laugh, no Merry Christmas, no questions...until I stepped in front of him and said, WAIT, can I at least get a quick picture of you and my son? So he posed, and then kept walking. The look on Will's face was heartbreaking. He just stared at him as he walked away, as if wondering why Santa didn't care about his name, age, how good he's been, what he wants. So, it starts...mom and dad have to start making up stories about why Santa didn't have to ask him those questions...Santa has already been watching him through the windows and making sure he's been a good boy, and he's heard him say that he wants a choo choo train for Christmas.

Since then, Will, surprisingly must have been impressed with Santa because that night all he wanted to do was wear a Santa hat around the house, to the grocery store, and out to eat. He puts his Santa hat on and says in his deepest voice with his lips in a perfect circle, "HO HO HO Merry Christmas, What do YOU want for Christmas?"

And, if you could only see how fast his head whips around to the nearest window anytime he's misbehaving and we say, I hope Santa isn't watching!

Christmas Cookies and Snow Day!

Last Friday was a snow day and an opportunity for me to learn how to make Christmas sugar cookies as I assume this will be an annual tradition for, well, probably the rest of my life!

After reviewing several scratch recipes online, hunting down some Christmas cookie cutters, and consulting my mom on how she made her frosting, we started the long process...

Will loved helping make the dough and getting full of flour!

While we waited for the dough to chill in the fridge for a few hours, Will helped daddy shovel snow.



After the snow was shoveled and Will had a nap, Will decorated the cookies with mommy and daddy and of course, had to taste his creation!

Now we are ready for Santa to come!

No More Charlie Brown Christmas Trees!

For years living at mom and dad's house, dad would choose our Christmas tree based on business needs. Meaning, which trees do I need to thin out to allow the better trees more room to grow? So, our Christmas tree would be a tree that was crowding a better tree and we would have a skinny tree with only a few limbs or a fat unshapely tree with many open gaps. You would think living on a tree farm, we would have only the best trees cut for our Christmas, but, you need to know how practical and resourceful my father was!

Now that dad is winding down the tree farm in his retirement, he has allowed us our choice of Christmas trees for the last few years. Two years ago, we took advantage of our vaulted ceilings and got a 15 foot Christmas tree. It was beautiful but painful. Jeff could not lift it by himself, and we had to set it up next to the balcony in order to get it straight, decorate the top, etc and then scoot it to it's position by the window. We then spent the next few weeks paranoid it was going to come crashing down, breaking all ornaments and catching fire from the fireplace. Last year, we settled for a 12 footer and this year about the same. We drove to the farm on a snowy day a couple weeks ago with Tom and picked our trees. Tom's is definitely a "nubby," fat tree and we are excited to see how it fills his entire living room tomorrow when we celebrate Mary Esther's 40th Birthday on the Winter Solstace.

Will's first ornament from Auntie Kristin in 2006:



Thanks mom and dad for the beautiful tree!!! Merry Christmas to all!

Close your eyes if you don't want to see Big Belly!

Will is a budding photographer. He loves to take pictures of mommy and daddy. For a 2 year old, I'd say he's pretty good at it! He likes to take pictures of his mommy's big belly with baby brother or baby sister inside. Here are a couple. I'm slouching in the first pic underestimating his aim, I should have known better!

These are from Dec 1, 2008 - 32 weeks along...

I'm thankful for Schnaubelt Thanksgivings

Thanksgiving is a holiday I've come to treasure as it's a 4 day get together with the Schnaubelt side of the family. It is almost mandatory attendance for everyone. We used to always have it at mom and dad's house. As the family grew bigger with marriages, we shared the responsibility among siblings rotating from home to home. As the family continues to get bigger with the additional grandchildren, we decided to try something different. We rented a big house and designated a "host" for the weekend to delegate out responsibilities and meal preparations. This year's chosen house was in Two Rivers WI, http://www.vrbo.com/51361, right on Lake Michigan. It was plenty big for the 24 of us and there was even quite a bit of unused space. Here are a few pics of the view from the windows of the house:

The house bordered the Point Beach State Park property and is perfect for trail hikes, however, it was hunting season and none of us brought blaze orange to protect us from the eager and hungry hunters. We walked the beach each day to burn off the Tday weekend calories instead, not too bad of a walk! Here's a pic of Mary Esther and Annie.


Will liked playing games (Chase is his favorite now) on the beach, too!
One of the best things about renting a house is that the hosting duties did not fall on one family. I think this was the most relaxed Thanksgiving meal preparations we've had. Everyone was responsible for something. Mom cooked the turkey the day before and made the stuffing that morning, Jennifer made the salad and green beans, Mary Esther made her famous mashed potatoes, Mike made homemade cranberry sauce (overachiever), Annie made the pies, and I made the sweet potatoes. Everything was delicious!!!

Cooking the Thanksgiving meal:

Will is always excited to see any of his cousins. This was a very exciting weekend for him as all of his Schnaubelt cousins (except for Amanda) were there. Every morning he would wake up and ask to go see his cousins. And if we were out on a day excursion and came back to an empty house, he'd ask where all his cousins went. As everyone gathered around the table for meals, he would look around with happiness, saying "Mom, these are all my cousins!"

There was lots of time to play with his cousins and here's a picture of Uncle Ed giving blanket rides to Sophie, Sawyer and Will:

Two Rivers is only 10 minutes from Manitowoc and there was lots to do. We visited the local zoo, went on a wild GPS ride to find a local model train exhibit, went to the Maritime Museum and took a tour of the submarine. Here's a picture Popper took of Will at the Maritime Museum:

Noreen and John were missed terribly as they had to cancel their trip a few hours before their flight left. However, we still continued with Noreen's idea of the girls exchanging gifts of their "favorite things." Mom made everyone some of the prized Grandma Donahue "Best Chocolate Sauce Ever" and shared the recipe. Noreen sent everyone her and John's favorite spice rub for pork and steak. Annie gave everyone some pricey chocolate and some chocolate chap stick from a friend's shop in Barrington. Annie also brought her birthday present to share with everyone in the house, a heated seat massager...hopefully we didn't all wear it out! It was quite the hit! Mary Esther made ornaments out of her favorite beach glass from the beach near her house and also chose a poem from a book that reminded her of each of us. Renee gave everyone a box of her favorite treats from a local store near Green Bay. Jennifer made everyone a CD of her favorite tunes and samples of some seasonal scented bath wash. I gave everyone seeds for my favorite garden flower, the Purple Coneflower. Here's a picture of us sampling some of Annie's chocolates she brought to share:

The Leitings took the beautiful Thanksgiving day and landscape opportunity for some family photos:It was a wonderful weekend spent with family and we hope we can do future Thanksgivings this way!!

Happy 32nd Birthday, Daddy!

It was Jeff's birthday Nov 26th, but since we would be traveling to the Thanksgiving vacation house after work that day, Will, Jeff and I celebrated Tuesday night with some yummy ribs and a small cheesecake with fresh strawberries.

Of course, after Daddy opened some presents, Willy wanted to show how much he loved his daddy by begging him to play:Didn't everybody have a daddy that turned into a motorcyle when they were little? Just a slight twist of the nose, and the motorcycle revs up!

On Daddy's actual bday, Will wanted to do something special, so we broke out his new shovel and Will shoveled the deck for Daddy while Daddy went to work.


On the way up to the Vacation Rental, we stopped for a Birthday Dinner where I had to embarrass Jeff (no matter how much he begged me not to) with the singing waitresses and personalized chef hat:

When we got to the vacation house around 9pm, Mary Esther and all the nieces and nephews were waiting with a surprise ice cream birthday cake! Nothing like loading all the kids with sugar past their bedtime! But hey, we were on vacation!