Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas celebrating our Savior's birth and enjoying fellowship with family and friends! Our Christmas was great. We had a quiet night on Christmas eve opening presents. On Christmas morning we enjoyed a nice Christmas service and then got together with the big Hol family. It was a lot of fun. The excitement and wonder of all that was happening was so fun to watch through Madison and Taylors little eyes! It brought back a little magic to our holiday! :)
Heres a little peek into our holiday:

Digging out

This morning Eric finished digging us out. What a lot of snow!! When he finished, he headed over to his brothers with the back hoe to help dig him out too.
Taylor got to help this morning too!! She was so happy!! While I was bundling Madi up Taylor kept bringing me her hat and coat and boots. I knew that Eric wasnt going to be able to leave the house without taking her too!!

Oh shucks! Cant clear all the snow from the comfort of a heated back hoe, gotta put some muscle into it!

Snow!!

We got our fair share of the blizzard snow!! You can see how high it is by looking at the chairs and table behind Eric and the girls.

I didnt want to bundle up and face the cold so I just took this one through the window:
Our porch- who needs fake window snow?!:
In the afternoon, Eric decided to venture out and pick up his back hoe that was in another town so he could clear off our driveway. He got stuck with his truck in the field where the back hoe was, luckily he only had about a 100 yd. walk! Madi got to help him!! She wa grinning from ear to ear when she came in:

Sinterklaas Day

Today we celebrated Sinterklaas day with cousins this year!! We made specualaas (windmill cookies), drank hot apple cider and went on a scavenger hunt!! It was a fun day!

Emily, doing a good job of rolling some dough out:
Trenton, working hard to smooth it out:

Andrew's keeping everything in place while mom does the hard work:

Madi cutting in some christmas designs:

Taylor trying out one of her prizes from her scavenger hunt goody bag (eye, nose, close enough!:):
The finished cookies:
Taylor likes the cookies:

You can find a recipe for the cookies on my baking blog, sweet baker babes. There's a link to it on the left under blogs I follow.

Madison's 3rd Birthday

I didn't do so hot on the pictures this year for Madi's birthday! Oh well, we were too busy having fun to bother with the camera! Madi had a few cousins over in the morning to play and have cake. Her one request for her birthday was a Dora cake. She wanted it for her birthday breakfast, lunch and dinner!! And it had to be pink!! We went out for a pizza dinner when Eric came home.

The Birds

We were visited by the cast of the Alfred Hitchcock movie this morning. Literally hundreds of blacks birds swooped down onto the trees that line the house. It sounded like rushing water or wind. I know these pictures dont do it justice, but the trees are virtually leaf-free, so everything that resembles a leaf is actually a bird.

They stayed about 10 minutes and then left as quickly as they had come in one mass flock! This picture only captured maybe half of them. Madi thought it was pretty cool, but then again, so did I!

Fall Fun

This past weekend we enjoyed some wonderful crisp fall days!! What better activity to do in the fall than play in the leaves!!

On Saturday we went to a pumpkin patch. They had a corn "sand box", which the girls loved. And I loved that it was so clean.

Madi loved the big slide and wanted to go again and again!

We had met Dan and Dee and the kids there also. Madi and Erika are in the front barrell. Andrew is in the next one. Emily is holding Taylor in the last one.

Our new home

Before the farmers did a lot of harvesting last week, we were surrounded by nothing but corn. Now we don't even have that!! :) Us girls really enjoyed watching all the tractors while we sat at our kitchen table and ate our meals. Madi had a lot of questions, like, "what's that?" and "what are they doing?". My typical response was, "I don't know, let's ask daddy when he gets home". Yeah, I so don't know my tractors or harvesting process!! :)
Here's a couple of pictures of our view. The clusters of trees in both pictures are where there are other homes. The closest neighbor we have is about 1/4 mile away. The area we live in is a plain, so its very flat and very windy!!

Country life is quiet, beautiful and very different from the life I've always known. This next year is going to be an adventure!!

We are Moving!!

We're packing up and moving out!!:

This is the house we will be living in for the next year. Its in a tiny town in IA called Cedar. Yep, Eric is turning me into a country girl!

Family Time

My parents and brothers came out to visit last week. They came out to help Dan and Dee move and meet their newest grandson. We had a lot of fun.
One day we went on a paddle boat up the Mississippi River. It was a Perfect day for a boat ride.

Madi and Brian watching the water, waiting for the boat to take off:

Watching the paddles:

Jason, chillin' on the boat:
Reading stories with grandma and dressing up in the new princess game she gave Madi:

Eric took the guys out on the river in his boat for an afternoon of fishing. Brian caught 3!! And Dad caught one big one! We ate them the next night for our 2nd annual fish fry!

I have a new nephew! His name is Zachary John. He is number 4 in Dan and Dees family! What a cutie! Thats him snoozing by Auntie Kari:
A week after he was born in Chicago he moved to Iowa! Now Dan and Dee are only 2 hrs. away- Woo-hoo!! Kari came out for a few days to help with their other three kids and help get them settle in the house. So the girls and I went down to add to the chaos! :)

We helped unpack a bunch of boxes and grocery shop and such but we also had some fun. We went to the waterpark one day and had a hot dog roast another day:

My niece, Erika seems to be enjoying her s'more!! Isnt she a cutie!!