Sledding

This past Friday my sister and her family were at my parents house, and I had off, so we spent most of the day over there except nap time because we all know that they wouldn't have taken naps otherwise. Grandma had made a "tent" for the kids over the card table  Oliver loves playing tent, it is an everyday occurance at our house to play "tent" as he calls it. He usually has to take a flashlight or his toy lantern into the tent at night time and he just gets so excited in there. Annaliese and Oliver read books in this tent. 

We then went sledding outside, it wasn't too cold and it had just snowed about another inch or so making it perfect for going fast. Oliver didn't know what to think at first when we went down but after a few times he was saying "more sled." Annaliese on the other hand was content to stand by her mom. 

We then went down our neighbors driveway since that was steep which made for a long, fast, and fun ride. 

Oliver and Uncle Darrin became good buds throwing snowballs and going sledding together too. 

After Darrin and Oliver came down - love how the snow just landed on his eyelashes. 

We taught him how to make snow angels. He understood what to do with his legs but just picked his arms up and slammed then down into the snow again. 

After eating some warm soup and taking naps we went out and shoveled the sidewalks. Oliver used his new shovel but wasn't very helpful because he would shovel the snow and put it back onto the sidewalk. 

Christmas 2012

We had quite a few Christmas celebrations this year so here is our Christmas in pictures.

Our Christmas started on the 21st at my in-laws house where we opened our presents for each other. Oliver got a new snow shovel. 

Oliver had fun with Grandpa and his new Leap Frog Jr. reader and DVD player in the background that he also received. These came in handy too for the car ride down to the Quad Cities later on in the week. 

I worked then that weekend before Christmas and Christmas Eve but made it home in time for a short nap before going to Christmas Eve service at church.

On Christmas morning we celebrated our Christmas at home. Oliver didn't really understand the whole Santa thing where he comes into your house and brings you presents. We actually forgot to even set cookies out for him the night before. Good thing he didn't know any different. So we had to tell him that today was the day he could open all those presents under the tree. He didn't even get excited about the 3 new presents including a big wrapped box from Santa under the tree.  Piece by piece the wrapping paper came off the presents. Oliver kept wanting to play with each one he opened so it took some coaxing to keep him moving onto the next present. He got a grill from Santa, a game and some paints. As well as many other gifts from Shawn and I. 

Our stocking hung not by the fire with care but by the TV/stereo system of course  

Santa left Oliver some matchbox cars in his stocking which had to come out of the packaging right away.

Oliver is trying to tell Shawn how to put his grill together. I think Oliver did a better job explaining it to him than I because I was getting nowhere with trying to tell him how to put it together according to the directions. 

He's "baking hot dogs" 

After we opened up our presents and got dressed and ready for the day we headed over across the street for brunch with my family.  We opened presents first because there was a huge stack of them and no way were we going to be able to wait until after we ate to open them. Oliver needed some assistance at first and was shy around his cousins and Aunt Colleen and Uncle Darrin but that shyness soon wore off and they all had a great time playing. 

His new dozer 

My little Santa 

The annual Doerscher family Christmas picture (Oliver has started doing this scrunchy face now when he smiles and it just so happened he was doing it here.)

 We headed into Elkader then in the afternoon to Shawn's parents again to play cards and have snacks with the Peterman side. Shawn's parents had a Mickey Mouse electric train set up there for Oliver to play with, it even had real steam/smoke coming out. Oliver loved watching it go around and around. 

Santa

Santa made a visit to the Guttenberg Hospital for employees so I took Oliver down to see him. We made out a letter to give to Santa which Oliver did a great job scribbling on.

Oliver didn't know about the whole Santa thing and had more fun with the automatic door opening and closing. He would tell it to open, then jump, and it would open. He thought it was hilarious and it was pretty adorable. 

After coaxing Oliver to sit on Oliver's lap and a few screams and him trying to get down off of Santa's lap Oliver did sit for pictures.  

After getting a little treat from Santa and visiting the nurses we went to our nurse anesthetists house and picked up her choo choo train Christmas light set. She didn't want it anymore, it had quite a few lights burned out so we replaced those and Oliver loves looking outside at it now sitting in our front yard. 

Holiday Train with Santa

Friday we dropped Oliver off and Grandpa Chuck and Grandma Shirley's house to spend the night while Shawn and I went down to the Iowa vs. Iowa State game in Iowa City. The Canadian Pacific Railroad's Holiday Train came through Clayton County with stops in Marquette and in Guttenberg. Grandpa and Grandma took Oliver to Marquette to see the train. Shirley said the arrived just in time for Oliver to hear the train blow his whistle and Oliver's face lit up! 

It is free to go and see the train with the cars all lit up and the band playing Christmas music and of course Santa with only a donation of a food item for the local food pantry. Oliver wouldn't look at Santa or take the candy cane from him even though we had been practicing with Oliver and showing him Santa. Shirley took the candy cane from Santa then gave it to Oliver who then threw it because Santa was watching him.  

Chuck took him to see the Engine and touch it. Oliver touched it briefly so excited they said his eyes were so big the entire time with his love of choo choos. 

Thank you to Grandma and Grandpa for taking Oliver here and taking pictures!

Snow!!!

Good thing we came back from Iowa City yesterday because the pager is going crazy with all these accidents around and cars stuck in the snow. It definitely is a wet snow which makes for perfect snowman! It is about 34 degrees and snowing so it's not too cold out.

Oliver didn't know what to think about the snow this AM. He looked out the window and kept calling it rain and he argued with me that it was rain when I told him it was snow. So, we had to go outside to play in it. It took him awhile to "warm" up to the snow and still didn't like to sit in it or when he fell down he would scream his head off til we picked him up. I think part of it was that he couldn't stand up on his own with all the layers he had on. 

We started making a snowman, he liked the rolling around part and then started throwing snow at "the man" as he called it instead of a snowman. 

Right after this picture I told Oliver to go pose by the snowman and put his hand on "the man's" head. Well he pushed him over so we started over again and made another snowman.  

We came in the garage then, took our wet snow gear off and warmed by the fire. The hot cocoa helped warm us too.

Oliver was very excited about the chocolate milk as he called it. He didn't care for the marshmallows though. 

Helping Papa

This past Saturday, while I was working and Shawn putting up the snow fence in the backyard, Oliver had a fun time with Papa and Grandma cutting down their Christmas tree. They went earlier this Fall to tag it as theirs and found it again today among all the trees.  

Oliver had to get down and see how Papa was cutting this tree down

And help him carry it out 

All loaded up in the back of Shawn's truck to take to Grandma and Papa's house to help decorate. My dad said that Oliver helped some with the decorations but mostly played with his toys over there. 

Decorating for Christmas

We celebrated Thanksgiving this past Thursday at Shawn's parents with the Peterman side then with my parents and sister and her family Friday night after I got done with work. Saturday we headed down to Walcott to my Grandma's to celebrate with the Warnecke's. After stuffing ourselves with the usuals and making the hard decision between Grandma's apple pie and pumpkin torte we started decorating for Christmas. Last year we Oliver was too young to even care about the tree or decorations but that is different this year. He helped decorate the tree at Great Billie's but soon we had to make him stop because he kept taking the decorations off again and then throwing them into the tree. I don't think he understood or could manage to hang the hanger on the tree branch.

Sunday we ate breakfast and started decorating our house. We have a fake tree so Shawn and I put it up while Oliver danced with his Mickey and puppy to the Christmas music. 

After stringing the lights Oliver then "helped" if you could call it that hang the ornaments. 

We put all the breakable ornaments up higher and Oliver helped hang some of the non-breakable ones lower down with the help of Shawn and I.  

Our Christmas tree 

After all that hard work and eating for the past 3 days it was nap time for all of us. 

Later that evening after coming back into the house from the garage, it was dark out and Oliver walked into the living room and stopped suddenly by the tree and said "Mommy, it's beautiful" as if he forgot we had put it up that morning. Now each evening he tells us to turn the lights on the tree and sits under the tree looking at the lights.  

Gingerbread men

This coming Saturday is the Holiday Open House and cookie walk at work so Oliver and I made some gingerbread cookies to take in tomorrow. The good thing about this is that I can take in these and bring home more delicious treats! I found the recipe on Kraft Foods website and it calls for butterscotch pudding to make them soft. I liked it because they made the house smell AMAZING!

My little assistant helped with cutting them out with the cookie cutter but he thought it was playdough so he just kept pressing the cutter in in random spots and over top of others. It made the process longer, but was fun to have him help. When mixing the dough in the mixer, he now knows how to turn the speed knob so he had put that on high and we had a flour shower.  

I baked them on parchment but the recipe didn't call for it, I just like no mess clean up. 

They didn't turn out too bad for never making them before even though some look like aliens and not gingerbread men. They taste much better than they look and I guess that is what matters. 

I plan on getting Oliver's lab work done tomorrow since we'll be heading to the hospital anyway so I'll keep you all posted on how that comes out. I don't expect it to be low but the hematologist wanted us to check it in 3 months so it's due.