The 4 Day of Christmas

After celebrating Christmas for 4 consecutive days, we were pleased to have a day at home today, cleaning and relaxing.
Instead of detailing each day of Christmas on my blog, I will just post about a million pictures and you can see for yourself how it went.

It was a great year!
Enjoy the pictures!

Cousins table

Christmas Day Brunch

Blurry, but all 5 of us together :).

Blurry, but so sweet, I had to post...

New mittens and scarves homemade by Nana.

Mickey Mouse! Marshall's favorite.

What a cute little family.

Reading the Christmas story with Great-Grams and Gramps

Do you think he likes it?

Last Christmas...

...we had snow.

Lots of it!
Merry Christmas!

Tis The Season

Tis the season to put your children to work on making Christmas pictures to decorate your house.
A couple weeks ago, or was it last week (they all blend together sometimes), I had Brady and Logan draw pictures of Christmas trees for me.

Here is Brady and his drawing.


Today we'll be making our Christmas countdown paper chain. I know it's a little late, but this way it won't seem to take so long for Christmas to get here.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Merry Christmas to all of our friends and family!
We are thoroughly enjoying our Christmas celebrations this year as a family of 5 now.
We have celebrated 3 times already and we have 1 more day to go.
Here are a few of the highlights we've had so far.


Sitting by the tree in Christmasy pjs.

Daddy's reading the Christmas story.

Marshall's first Christmas gift.

Mommy and my boys.

Logan's Wonder Pets cape.

Look who's ready to shovel snow!

Merry Christmas!

The Story of December

Decenber has been too busy for words.

Here's the story of our December via pictures.

Enjoy.


Marshall learned to sit up.

Logan sat with Grandpa at Brady's basketball game.

I got to go to school with Brady to help him make a gingerbread house.

We baked Christmas cookies with Auntie Laura.

It snowed, snowed, and snowed, and 10 cars got stuck on the road in front of our house that day.

Brady and Logan played in the snow mountain in our front yard.

Since this day, the snow pile has almost doubled in size!

Marshall learned to crawl wherever he wants to go. Life has become more difficult once again :).

Brady was Rudolph (or Ruldolph, as he says) for his school Christmas party.

The boys were excited to celebrate Jesus' birthday!

The Scoop

Here's the Kuznia scoop....

+ I realize that I have not posted many blogs lately. This does not mean that I have nothing to share, but rather that I have so much to share and no time to share it.

+ We have been busy.

+ Brady has been playing basketball on Monday nights. He LOVES it!! Auntie Laura, Uncle Jason, and Grandpa have come to watch him play. He is improving every week and he scored his first points in tonight's game. It has been so fun to watch him grow as a basketball player and to see him really care about the sport.

+ Brady is doing outstanding in Kindergarten, according to his teacher. He has started reading and he's a whiz at math. Last Friday, I got to go to his school to help him build a gingerbread house.

+ Logan is excited for preschool next year and even more excited to ride the bus when he turns 5.

+Logan continues to be my great helper, great napper, and great comedian. His favorite song of the holiday season is "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas."

+ Both Brady and Logan love the near 20 inches of snow we got last weekend. Mommy and Daddy are not so excited about it and have been wondering why we still live in MN :).

+ Marshall is crawling!! He can get anywhere he wants in the house now, so it's definitely time to baby proof once again.

+ Marshall is also sitting (with some help to get up still), eating "crunchy" foods, and waving like crazy. Although he hasn't spoken his first words just yet, he lights up when we say "dada" to him.

+ Brady has his first loose tooth, and Marshall is still showing no signs of a first tooth.

+ Peter shopped until he dropped yesterday and managed to complete our Christmas shopping.

+ My birthday is coming up on Saturday, and Peter and I are hoping to get out of the house for a bit in the evening to celebrate. I'm not sure what our plans will be yet, but just a night out is always great!

+ We are looking forward to our many Christmas celebrations this season while trying hard not to get overwhelmed. On the 24th we are hosting Christmas with my parents and Laura and Jason , on the 25th we'll be heading up to Blaine to see Peter's mom, step-dad, and sister's family, and on the 26th we'll be hosting again with Peter's dad and his brother Mark. We are also hoping to do our own family celebration on the 23rd. What a busy time of year!

+ Peter is on-call for work this week, but we are looking forward to his week+ off around Christmas.

That's the Kuznia scoop for now.

Our family has been sick. All 5 of us. It started with Peter about 3 weeks ago, then Brady 2 weeks ago, then Logan and Marshall last week, and then myself this week. The big boys are feeling much better, except for some runny noses and coughs, but Marshall is still feeling pretty crummy and so are Peter and I. I sure can't wait for this cold to be over and I'm sure glad we all had our flu shots this season--it could definitely be worse, especially for little Marshall.

On Wednesday Marshall we be 9 months old already and we'll also be heading to the doctor to get his new stats. I can't wait to share them.

Christmas Pictures

Here are just a few pictures that I really liked from our Christmas celebrations last week.

Logan and Nana

Grandpa reading the Christmas story to the boys before bed in their new jammies.

All the boys in matching shirts (Peter looks very tired).

The Kuznia boys (again, Peter is looking very tired--possibly because he had to work on call much of the night before).

Brady and his new calendar.

Logan with his new school bus.

Brady's homemade, personalized pillow case from Grams and Gramps.

Auntie Laura and Uncle Jason (and Radcliffe, of course)

"Superman" boys playing with their new train set.

Too Busy

Lately I have been too busy to blog. I'm hoping that life is now beginning to calm down a bit so I can get back here more often.

It's been quite a last 5 days!
Here's what we've been up to in the past week:

- We've been thanking God for the miracle birth of Jesus!
- Peter's been off work since last Wednesday and will continue to be home until next Monday!
- We've celebrated Christmas 3 more times. Christmas Eve with my parents and Laura and Jason, Christmas day at Peter's sister's house with his mom and step-dad, and Saturday, with Peter's dad, Grace, and Mark.
- We've eaten too much food and way too many Christmas cookies!
- It snowed, we shoveled, it snowed again, we shoveled again, etc. We got about a foot of snow!
- We undecorated our house today. I love our Christmas decorations, but I am always thankful for my clean, and uncluttered house back after the holidays.

I have tons of great pictures to share and hopefully I'll have some time to download them to the computer later this week.

Up next this week:
- Going to the BIG indoor playground tomorrow.
- Planning to catch up on some scrapbooking (I'm only a year behind).
- A lot of relaxing with Peter and the boys.
- Going ice skating on New Year's Eve day with Brady.
- Celebrating the New Year with family on Friday.

I'm also planning on finally getting another pregnancy update out, hopefully with some updated belly pictures, since my belly has definitely grown since the last ones! Oh, and if you're wondering, I am now just about 27 weeks along, with another appointment later next week.

Christmas Came Early

Christmas came early for Logan this morning.

Apparently Brady decided during their time together this morning that it was time for Logan to have BOTH of his "Kirby" blankets.

---No wonder Logan was so quiet in there this morning--

We've had the 2 blankets all along, but we've only ever given one at a time to Logan. The purpose of the 2 blankets was so that I could wash one and still have one handy, or sew one, etc.

Since Brady has had his 2 Franklins for awhile now, I guess it was time for Logan as well.

Merry Christmas a little early, Logan.

The First Weekend of Christmas

Well, tonight officially wraps up the first weekend of Christmas fun.

On Friday night we celebrated my birthday (which often also counts as "Christmas" fun). Peter and I went out alone! We ate at Red Robin (my free meal), and then we went next door to the theater to see Blind Side (which was also free!). Blind Side was a GREAT movie and I was very thankful for the recommendation to see it. Thanks, Katie!
Our free babysitter, Uncle Mark, also had a successful night with boys and even managed to get them both to bed by 7.

Saturday was relaxing--that doesn't often happen this time of year. We all slept in and then we let the boys jump in our bed and watch Saturday morning cartoons for awhile. Brady helped me prepare cookie trays for Sunday and he also played cards with Daddy. Then, when Logan woke up from his nap, we all headed out to look at Christmas lights, eat dinner out, and finish up some last-minute Christmas shopping. We were back home just in time for an 8pm bedtime.

Today was Ginn family Christmas. I always look forward to spending time with this side of the family and today was no different. We had a great afternoon of eating pizza, veggies and cookies. The girls got to chat while the guys played basketball, and the boys had fun playing in the gym, eating too many cookies, and just being little boys.
It was a nice change having this Christmas a little early this year. It gave us a lot more time to spend together, a larger area to spread out in, and it also helped to free up some time during the busy week of Christmas coming up.

Back to reality for now. Peter has to work Mon-Wed this week and then he'll be off until Jan. 4. I can't wait! Brady is also on break from school until Jan. 4, so we will not be heading out to preschool in the morning as usual. The plan for this week is basically to wrap some gifts, bake some food for Christmas, clean out my messy closet, and replace some dead batteries in some of our toys. Some might say that this sounds a lot better than working full time, and I would have to whole-heartedly agree! I just love being at home everyday with my boys.

A Few Random Thoughts

I have no new pictures to share. I tried to take a picture of our new snow this morning, but the window kept getting in the way, and there was no way that I was about to open the window for a clearer shot.

It looks gorgeous down here! Today the sun is shining and the snow looks extra white. I am excited for our long drive to the clinic this afternoon, just so we can see the beautiful sights.

Logan has a new fascination with singing bible songs. Some of his current favorites are "Deep and Wide", "Father Abraham", and "Jesus Loves the Little Children". Brady has been working hard on teaching these songs to Logan in the mornings before I make it in to get them for breakfast.

Oh, and just now I took some pictures of the two of them dancing to the CD that was the inspiration for the songs.

Those are my bible-song-dancing boys.

December is getting busy!

In the next week, Peter has his annual work children's Christmas party, a potluck, a team lunch, a team happy hour/appetizer outing, and a day where he is bringing in some homemade Christmas cookies to share. What a week!

I LOVE this time of year!