Birthdays in Omaha

So I'm really late on posting this since it occurred almost 10 days ago and I really haven't posted anything for a while but I've been busy with work then just laziness I guess. Since the last post Oliver had his blood work done - hgb was 9.9. We were supposed to go see his hematologist but they cancelled his appointment because he was out of the country. I had a procedure done on my eyes yesterday to remove some encapsulated sty's, 3 of they to be exact, which left me with some nice swollen shiners under my eyes. Shawn has been busy in the garage working on a transmission, engine and all of his toys (tractor, snowmobiles, etc). We're all ready for spring to come and done with all this snow. 

Anyway, to the fun stuff. We went to Omaha for Ian and Annaliese's birthday parties. The parties were a lot of fun, almost more fun for the adults watching the kids than the kids except Ian had. My sister had come up with a lot of fun games, decorations, and food for a Star Wars party for Ian and a Rapunzel party for Annaliese. Here are the highlights in pictures. 

Oliver's favorite toy- a fire station that had a "crane" as he called it on top that he kept twisting 

A grape-saber, part of the Star Wars themed birthday supper we had for Ian. Oliver ate 4 of these full of grapes. 

Oliver playing the guitar for Annaliese who danced along to the music with her baby. 

The 6 year old birthday boy 

One of the games we played at the Star Wars party was a obstacle course where the kids had to go through the Star Wars tent then under the table which Oliver refused to do. He just wanted to play in the tent.

The Jedi's in their capes my sister made with their light-sabers made of pool noodles. My sister said that with all 4 kids together their initials of their first name spelled IOWA. (Ian, Oliver, Walter and Annaliese) Too cute!

The kids had fun hitting the Darth Vader pinata with their light-sabers.

 

The next morning we had a Rapunzel brunch for Annaliese. 

Her 3rd birthday cake tower of doughnuts

It was a short trip out there and a lot of driving, but a lot of fun. Thanks to my sister and Darrin for hosting us. 

Making noodles

Today we went into Grandpa Chuck and Grandma Shirley's house to make noodles. It was the first time making homemade noodles for both Oliver and I. The noodle maker (for lack of a better term) is Great Grandma Peterman's that she gave to them with instructions on its use. And, knowing Grandma Mary, she probably gave the recipe that you have to use too.

He helped Grandpa crank to flatten out the dough.

This was Oliver's favorite part, making the long strings of noodles.

Oliver was only interested in the making the noodles into "strings" and soon lost interest and wanted to play train instead. Hence him sitting in the background of this picture watching his train go around the track. This picture is some of our noodles drying. Shirley said that they dry for a day then she can package them up and put them into the freezer or we can eat them as is. Can't wait to have homemade chicken noodle soup this week. Sounds like it's going to be cold again so it will be great weather for it. 

Great Grandparent Christmas

We all packed up and traveled down to Davenport on the Saturday after Christmas to celebrate with my Grandma and Grandpa Doerscher's house. My Aunt Debbie and cousin Dalton were able to join us all as well as my dad's cousin. My Grandma made some delicious homemade soup, my sister made yummy homemade rolls and I took the easy route with crackers and cheese but did get complements on the deer sausage.

Oliver was adamant about bringing in elephant and couldn't leave him in the van. So, Oliver ran around with it and checked the place out stopping at the statue of the cow where elephant had to kiss it.  

After eating a yummy lunch of homemade soups, the kids checked out the tree while my Dad and I did the dishes. 

Oliver loved the Case IH tractor ornaments on the tree.

It's present time and everyone was really patient by this time and good about taking turns since they had practice earlier in the week.  

Before all the wrapping paper was even off Oliver shouted "firefighter" and started pushing the buttons to make siren go off. He loves his firetruck. We took it with us to my Grandma's in Walcott and all the kids there liked it too. So much so that we had to take it away so that there weren't more tantrums when one of the kids would take it away from the other to play with.  

Later that afternoon we did head in to Walcott where my Grandma along with a lot of my Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and their kids joined us for our last Christmas celebration of the year. We ate first then all of us gathered in the basement. All of a sudden we heard that familiar noise of jingle bells and who should appear but Santa. Oliver was one of the only younger kids that wasn't afraid of him but went right up to him and started looking in Santa's bag. 

Oliver didn't have problem with wanting to sit on his lap. I guess he had plenty of practice this year and after talking about Santa for the past few weeks he wasn't scared at all.

Notice all the stocking hung on the fireplace. There are so many with all my cousins, our significant others, and my cousin's kids that Grandma had to make another row of them below. 

Oliver's first present was a Mickey Mouse laptop computer. He didn't want to open the rest of the presents after he opened this one. Needless to say this came out of the package right away too. 

Before Santa left, we all sang "Jingle Bells" having Oliver and Brady ring the bells on Santa's lap.  

Oliver stole the bells away from Santa but gave them back for the reindeer's sleigh. 

We spent the night at Great Billie's house where Oliver continued to have fun with Ian and Annaliese until we left the next day to come home and clean the house and find a place for all the new presents. 

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.