Olson Family Christmas

December 26th we traveled up to Zumbrota to be with the Olson's for a Christmas Celebration!

Cheesy smiles from Nora Jean and Auntie Kris

Cuddles with Aunt Becky

It was great to see the cousins together and Ben, Tommy and Eleanor had so much fun playing together!!  That evening was family time and gift opening...between Ben, Tommy and Eleanor...Grandma and Grandpa's living room turned into a toy zone!!  The boys each got a bike helmet-which Tommy wanted to wear right away...there wasn't even time to take it out of the package!  **Ben was busy wearing his new Peterson VIKINGS jersey** All the boys really got excited (including Jonny) over the remote-controlled digger! 

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve, South Eastern Minnesota was hit with a snow/ice/rain mix of weather- luckily we did not have to travel, instead we played outside-the weather was perfect for digging tunnels! 

After going inside we got ready for Christmas Eve Mass.  Later that night we set out milk and cookies for Santa and had fun watching him cross the globe online.  Then it was off to bed to anxiously fall asleep...Christmas morning we woke up to find that Santa had come to our home during the night!  Not only did he drink all of his milk (for big muscles) and eat all the cookies...but he left a bunch of presents under our tree!  Ben and Tommy were very excited- and had so much fun opening their presents with the directions that all of them were to share (a direction from Santa himself via letter!) It is so much fun watching the excitement of the boys open their presents~and playing all day long with them!  Enjoy the pictures!

Enjoying the tent from Gramma and Grampa Helfer!

Check out this excitement!

Helfer Family Christmas

This year for Christmas with the Helfer's we decided to meet in the Wisconsin Dells at Mt. Olympus. We had so much fun swimming and going down the waterslides at the indoor waterpark

and playing at the indoor theme park!

We also had a special Christmas celebration-

the boys got so many great things, including two giant semis...filled with cars!

Daddy and Ben were very excited when Ben opened his new GB Packers shirt.

We had so much fun spending time with Gramma and Grampa- we can't wait to do it again!

Winter Storm! 12-08-09

Wow! It is snowing like CrAzY outside!! The snow started about 2pm on the 8th and didn't stop until the 9th! Giving us total accumulation of 13 inches!!

John went out last night to start shoveling at about 8:30pm. Ben is SO into shoveling...he had to go out too! It was a snow day the next day for me, and the boys....so we spent the day playing outside, building a fort and doing puzzles.

TIMBER!!!!

When we moved into our home (and up until 12:30 this afternoon) , there were three giant evergreen trees in our backyard, two along our side fence, and one right up against the back fence.

We have a beautiful view behind our house, woodland where deer & turkeys are regularly seen. We had been thinking of making our yard bigger by removing the tree up against the back fence, and when Carrie and Tony mentioned they were going Christmas Tree hunting, we mentioned about taking the one in our back yard. Well... this weekend the big-ol-tree came down! The top 5 feet were given the special honor of Carrie, Tony and Eleanor's 2009 Christmas Tree!

 Now that the tree is gone, our backyard is HUGE!! We are able to look right into the woods and watch the deer walk right up to our fence. It is amazing.