More Christmas Fun!

It's so hard for me to write blog posts when so much happens over the course of a week. But, I will give it a try!! :)

Let's see... Monday last week Mads and I spent at home putting away presents from our Christmasing in Monroe and cleaning for the Christmasing that would be happening on Wednesday and Thursday.

Tuesday we did some laundry and finished up the cleaning. I don't know if Maddie was really helping, as she seemed to create more of a mess. Here she is getting into things she shouldn't have been in:

Lily decided it would be best if she stayed out of the way so she didn't poke an eye out! :)

That evening Mads and I cleaned out her closet and started packing some of her six month clothes away. All her jammies that were six month with feet never really fit, she was too long for them. While we were in the closet we came across some duckie slippers that Mads had gotten when she was born from an old coworker of mine. We put the duckies on and Maddie thought they were pretty swell!



Wednesday, Christmas Eve, I had to work and Andrew worked a half-day. Mads went to play with Barby and Caden until Andrew got home since our babysitter was on vacation. Once they got home Andrew started preparing for his family to come over. Grandma Mary came down around 2ish and Eric, Jill and the kids came around 5. I got done with work at 6PM, so they waited until I got home to have dinner. We had a nice dinner and then busted into the presents!! It was absolutely hilarious to watch Claire and Nick open their gifts, they were quite excited! Nick got a sleeping bag that was the best present ever, which prompted lots of screaming of "A BIG BOY SLEEPING BAG!!!!!!" Too funny. Here he is testing it out:

Maddie found it to be quite cozy too!

Since this was Maddie's fourth time opening presents this year, she was getting to be pretty good at opening gifts. You can see that she mastered tissue paper and ripping the wrap!


Her big gift from Grandma Mary was a new wagon!

Checking out the gifts with Grandma Mary:


Christmas Day I worked again until 6PM. Andrew and Mads brought leftover ham and potatoes from Christmas Eve for me and my coworker, Patrick to have for lunch. Then when I got home Andrew had dinner ready and once we were done we did the final Christmas. The Christmas with just our little family. It was a nice little Christmas just the three of us and the pooch.
Mads opening the best gift of the year, the $3.00 cell phone!

Lily opened her presents too

and then Maddie tried to hide them:


Friday we went up to Appleton to do some day-after Christmas shopping. We didn't go many places, just Toys R Us (someone has a birthday in two weeks!) and Sams Club. When we got back to Oshkosh we went to Target so that I could stock up on wrapping paper and tags for next year!

Saturday morning we went over to Barby and Ryan's house. One of their friends had a daughter at the end of November and was staying at their house. Maddie, of course, wanted to go meet another new friend. :)
Madeline, meet Madeline!

Holding hands:

"Hey Caden, tell me about this other Madeline that you know..."


After we got back from the Ames' house we worked on organizing our house and getting it back to normal. We took down the tree and all the Christmas decorations. It's nice to finally have some space back in our living room!

Yesterday, Sunday, was my day to work again. When I got home we had dinner and just relaxed as it has been a busy couple of weeks!!

We hope that everyone had a great Christmas season! We know that we sure did! We hope that everyone has a safe New Year's holiday and we'll see you in 2009!!!

Here are a few more pictures. Thanks for stopping by!!!
Tub Fun:


"I'm so EXCITED!!!!"

CLIPO-CLIPO-CLIPO!

Maddie loves apples!!

Christmas Festivities!

What a busy week!! When we weren't traveling or Christmasing, we were planning and wrapping!!

On Monday we received one of Andrew's Christmas gifts that was shipped in a large box. Maddie quickly found that it was a fun place to play. Her first fort!!



On Wednesday the 17th, Andrew's co-worker's step-daughter welcomed her second child, a son, Alexzander. Maddie begged us to go to the hospital so that she could meet her new friend... ;)


Instead of driving to Monroe on Friday, Andrew and I decided that it would be the best idea if Maddie and I left on Thursday instead. There was a big snow storm predicted and we didn't want to have to worry about driving in the snow with the babe. Then Andrew could take his time and drive slowly through the snow by himself and not worry about the baby in the car. So, Mads and I left Thursday morning and were into Monroe by 11:30. Since we were in town by lunch, Grandma Lucy invited us over to her house for lunch. While we were there she gave Maddie her Christmas presents. Here is Mads inspecting her new bike!


and her new ball!! Mads went right over to the ball and tried to pick it up!


After lunch we went over the house of a friend of mine from High School. Her son, Lane is 9 months old. Mads had a lot of fun showing him how he should walk!


On Saturday we had Christmas with my dad's side of the family. We went to Aunt Barb's house for lunch and gift opening with my grandma Selma, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Where's the baby?

Meeting the Wuebben's new puppy, Cooper:

Trying out her new Rocking Chair from GG. She knew what to do!!

Playing in the wrapping paper from Cousin Kenzie and Cousin Abby's presents!

Reading her present, with Grandpa Jeff:


That evening, after leaving Aunt Barb's, we went to Dad & Marie's house for Christmas with them and Sarah & Trevor. While we were missing Josh, Lindsey and the kids, we had a nice little Christmas!
Mads with Auntie Sarah & Uncle Trevor:

Opening presents with Dad:


Sunday was Christmas with my mom's side of the family including, Gramma J, Grandpa Thom, Grandma Honey, Aunt Kim, Jake, Dee and Jerry. We opened presents first and then had lunch.
Mads with her stocking:

Unwrapping with Gramma Jackie:

Helping Dad:

Kim helps Maddie open her new Foofa sweatshirt! SCORE!

Checking out the windchime for Grandma Honey:

Aunt Dee's new colander was pretty neat!!


When we got home from all of our Christmasing in Monroe we were welcomed home to all the snow that we had missed over the weekend. It had drifted in the back yard, creating a wall of snow that Lily wasn't very impressed with...



That's a recap of our first round of Christmasing. This week we have Christmas Eve with Andrew's family and then our tiny family Christmas will be on Christmas Day night. Unfortunately I have to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so our normal plans had to be modified.

We hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas and if you do any travelling, please travel safely!

Merry Christmas from The Josephs Family!!

11 Month Old - Christmas Cookies! :)

Referring to the title of this post - No, we didn't find 11 month old Christmas cookies... we have an 11 month old that HELPED make Christmas cookies! :) Ha! I am so clever! (Don't correct me; just let me keep thinking it!)

This week was a fun week starting with Monday on which the afore mentioned Christmas cookies were made. Maddie and I had lots of fun baking. We made cut-outs and Melting Moments. The Melting Moments were very special as the recipe comes from Maddie's Great-Great Grandmother, Mary Gruetzman. Melting Moments have always been my favorite cookie and it's neat that I can bake them with Maddie. Mads helped with every step of the process, including:
Stirring:

Rolling & Baking:

Frosting with the required pink frosting:

and of course TASTING! :)

She even helped with the cleaning afterwards! What a good kidlet, I've apparently taught her well!!


After cookie baking we took a break to go to Ripon to have lunch with Dad and the ladies at work. We had a small Christmas celebration which included us giving Andrew's Optician's granddaughter a present and them giving one to Mads. It was Maddie's first time with wrapping paper and I think she's gotten the idea. She might just be ready for Christmas after all! :)

Wednesday night Andrew and I had a date night while Grandma Mary watched Mads. We started with dinner at Nakashima of Japan, which I absolutely love but haven't had since the night before I went into labor with Mads, and then went to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert at the Resch Center. The concert was AWESOME! We haven't seen TSO since I lived in Madison and it was so great! They even played my favorite song twice! :) :)
Maddie had a good time with Grandma Mary. I heard reports that they might have made some cookies, but I have no visual proof of that! ;)

Friday was Miss Madeline's ELEVEN month birthday! That's right. In only one short month she will be ONE! It is so sad how fast time goes by! We tried to take Maddie's monthly pictures and again it was hard to get any decent ones. Apparently she is TOO busy to stop for pictures!
Here are the best ones:




While it looks like the 12 month outfit might almost be fitting, it really isn't. The shirt is still quite huge on her and the pants are way too long and so big they might even classify as "parachute pants." One of the gifts that Maddie got on Monday was a 6-9 outfit and those pants are almost falling off. Thank heaven for diapers! Without a diaper the pants would for sure be on the ground!

I think most of her problem is that she has become so mobile that she's just burning off the tiny tush that she did have and it is now an almost non-existent tush! Speaking of mobile, Maddie's preferred method of transportation is now simply walking. If she's sitting on the ground and sees something that she wants she won't crawl. That's for babies. She will bend over, but her hands on the ground, shimmy her feet underneath and do a bear walk to stand herself up. Then she will go walk to whatever it is she wanted. She's getting pretty speedy too. You can see her in one spot, look away for a second, look back and she's gone. Luckily she hasn't found anything that she shouldn't be into yet!

On Saturday while I was at work Mads and Dad went to Appleton to have lunch with Grandma Mary, Aunt Jill, Claire and Nick. Look at these cute cousins!

That evening when I was done with work we went over to have dinner with the Ames Family. It was nice to spend time with them as they've been busy with Caden (who is already seven weeks old if you can believe that) and out-of-town visitors.

Sunday I also worked, but was able to bust out a little early. I headed home to help Andrew start getting dinner ready as we had some new friends come over for dinner. Erin and Dave came over with their 6 month old daughter and we had a nice time. It's so hard to meet new friends when you're "old!" I wish for the days when you could meet someone new and ask them "Want to be my friend?" and you were good to go! We had a very nice time getting to know Erin, Dave and Miss Alice. Lily gave them the stamp of approval as she rolled over for a belly rub from Dave within 10 minutes of their arrival!!
After dinner we played a little bit of Wii, Maddie even tried to get in on it:


So that's our week in a nutshell. This week we are looking forward to heading to Monroe this weekend for Christmas with my family there. I can't wait. It's going to be fun and Maddie is going to have a blast!!

Hope everyone has a good week. Here are a few more pictures:

Trying to look out the window to see the...... LOWES truck!!!

Playing with the gumball machine, but the balls wouldn't go down...

Oh, that's why!!

Playing with the door stopper. I'll admit that I loved those as a kid too!


Thanks for stopping by! STAY WARM!