Wheels on the Bus

Here is Dustin doing the actions for the wheels on the bus. It is one of his favorite songs.

Here are a couple more cute pictures of Dustin.

Walking on Water

It might be cold here in Minnesota--and believe me we are feeling this week-- but that the cold weather and the many lakes that we have we get to walk on water!



This is a video from our Sunday walk down to the lake by our house. We found some winter ballerinas and some great slip sliding runs!

We also did some slip sliding!!

And then we decided to float on our backs for awhile on the water! :)

2008 Winter Carnival

So, after having subzero weather for about 10 straight days we finally had a heat wave. Of course that is relatively speaking. The temperature was actually only about 25 degrees, but that seems warm after -14 (that was the air temperature, with windchill it felt like -25). Anyway, I think that half the city of Saint Paul had a little cabin fever because I think they all went to some of the Winter Carnival festivities this weekend. We were included in that group. We all bundled up and went to see the Winter Carnival Parade and the Ice Sculptures. We also walked through the Minnesota "Hot Dish" tent. In Minnesota they call a casserole a "Hot Dish". Todd calls a "Hot Dish", and a casserole for that matter, a pot with a bunch of random stuff thrown in and called food. We got to watch some figure skaters and just enjoy being outside for a little while.

These were our favorite ice sculptures. Above is "And we're off. . ." that is the Emerald City in the background and in front you have the Scarecrow, Tinman, Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion. Below is called "Where's Frank?" it has 2 snowmen sitting by a fire and a third spot where there is just a puddle, a hat and a pair of boots.

Every year they carve an ice throne. It is a little cold on your bottom, but still fun. I think that Todd needs one of these at home.

The highlight of the parade was a man with a dog standing on his shoulders. The funny thing is that he wasn't even in the parade. I guess he wanted his dog to be able to see.

Fun, Fun, Fun

It has been only been 10 days since our last post, but it has been a busy 10 days.

On December 5th Katelyn celebrated her 8th birthday. The following Sunday, December 9th she was baptized and confirmed. We are so proud of Katelyn for choosing to be baptized. Both sets of her grandparents were able to attend and Grandma Nelson and Grandpa Anderson gave great talks. After the baptism we had a big family dinner (something we don't get to do very often) and then had a late/early birthday party for Katelyn and Lauren since their grandparents weren't able to be there on their actual birthdays.
















On December 11th, Lauren celebrated her 4th birthday. She had her first friend birthday party. She chose a Hello Kitty theme and we had fun making kitty ears and face painting whiskers as well as playing pin the bow on Hello Kitty, Where's Hello Kitty, Pass the Hello Kitty and Hello Kitty Bean Bag Toss.















Katelyn and Lauren aren't the only ones who have been busy this past week. On December 6th Whitney sang in the Holiday choir concert at school and then on the 11th participated in the Holiday band concert also at school. It was a lot of fun to go watch.



We also had a lot of fun bowling, nascar racing (at the Mall of America), sledding, exploding diet coke bottles, going to the Children's Museum, making a Gingerbread House, watching soccer games and seeing the Bee Movie while our grandparents were here.

More pictures

Here are some other pictures from the past week. We had so many that it was hard to choose which ones to use.

SNOW DAY!!

Over the weekend we got 6-8 inches of snow. It was the first real snow of the winter. It just about killed the kids that they couldn't go sledding yesterday because it was Sunday. Luckily, Whitney and Katelyn are out of school today. They all got bundled up (except Dustin - he was napping) and off they went into the white wonderland of our backyard with sleds in hand. We had a few face plants and Whitney lost a boot with her sock in it, but they had a blast. I think that the best part of sledding is the hot chocolate afterwards.

Chops of Love (Locks of Love)

After a year of growing her hair out and almost daily pony tails, Whitney finally had enough hair to do Locks of Love. For those of you who don't know what Locks of Love is it is an organization that uses donated hair to make hair pieces for kids that have lost their hair because of illness. Whitney especially wanted to do this because red hair isn't as common as blonde or brown and she thought a little boy or girl with red hair would be excited about having a red wig. You have to have a minimum of 10 inches to donate. Whitney has never liked her hair really long so for the last couple of months she has been asking if her hair is long enough to cut. We finally decided that it was long enough, but she would have to get it cut kind of short. She was okay with that. It looks really cute. Here are some pictures.

Katelyn and Lauren got their hair cut at the same time. It was pretty funny to see all 3 of them lined up getting their hair done. I took a picture. It's kind of blurry, but still fun.