Vernon Volumes text

Vernon Volumes text

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Herrick Christmas 2013


Today we got together with the Herrick family for a Christmas celebration and get-together.


Connor has been enjoying ping pong while he was in town and I took a video playing with him today. He has improved quite a bit and tends to get the ball on the table most of the time.


I finally got a video of Connor talking about Coca Cola. He's been saying it in such a cute way, I have been wanting to get a video of him saying it before he started saying it correctly.


We snapped a number of pictures of everyone during the day.

Friday, December 27, 2013

Paintball with Drew and Rudolphs


The day after Christmas I met Drew, Nate, Ryan, and two of Nate's brothers (Aaron and Brian) for paintball. Drew got a new paintball mask, gloves, gun, and pants for Christmas and was eager to try it out. There were a bunch of people in the caves playing paintball. At one point I asked one of the guys working how many there were and he said there were over 100. We played a bunch of rounds of team deathmatch, and we did pretty well. We all ended up getting pretty beat up and bruised except for Drew. Somehow he managed to dodge most incoming fire and still managed to shoot up the other team pretty well. We had an awesome time and I'm glad I was able to play with everyone while we were in town.


Thursday, December 26, 2013

Christmas day 2013


On Christmas day, we woke up at Grandma Genie and Grandpa Garry's house. The kids were excited to open presents, so once everyone came over we got right to it.


Connor's always loved Drew's "Coonie" raccoon, so Abby and Nate tracked down the exact same stuffed animal for him for Christmas. It was neat to see what Drew's old coon looked like when it was new, he's had it so long it's pretty worn out and flat now.



Paige loved opening her presents this year and did a good job being patient and waiting her turn.





Andrea got the girls some cute bags, gloves and scarves. We snapped some pics of them modeling their gear.



Aunt Abby's the most exciting model for sure.



After we were done with presents we went out to the nursing home to spend some time with Buddy and Renie. He's supposed to be released to go home next week on New Year's. We are hopeful that he can go home again soon.


Buddy's never too interested in pictures and unfortunately he hid for this one.



When we got home, we went out to play in the snow. The kids have been wanting to play in the snow since it fell on Saturday. It's been bitterly cold though, so we kept putting it off until it warmed up a little. We're glad we did since it was a perfect day to play on Christmas. It was a little bit warmer than freezing out and the snow was melting slightly so it packed well for snowballs and a snowman.







After we threw snowballs for a bit, we started rolling the snow for a snowman.


Grandma Genie supplied some grapes for eyes, a carrot for the nose, and homemade hat and scarf too!



The kids had a blast playing out in the snow, we're glad we were able to enjoy some cold weather fun while we were in town.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Liberty Visit


On Monday, we went out to lunch and then drove up to Liberty to visit our friends the Brasels. We'd just seen them at Disney and it was fun to see them while we were in town. Connor went upstairs and played with the kids the entire time. Paige was a little less social, but she had fun too. I snapped a pic of the kids eating fruit snacks.

While we were outside, the kids wanted to catch snowflakes in their mouths.


Connor and his guitar


Connor found a guitar toy while we were at Grandma and Grandpa's house and I snapped a pic of him playing with it. He didn't remember it, but it was one of his favorite toys when he was a baby. Grandma Genie kept it after he outgrew it and Graydon plays with it now. I went through the blog and found a pic of him rocking out on it.

http://babyvernon.blogspot.com/2010/02/rock-and-roll-connor.html

Odessa Pre-Christmas and Anders Christmas celebration


On Friday, December 20th, we flew to Kansas City to visit for Christmas. The kids were both great on both flights. We flew with Airtran this time around and brought 4 iPads so we all had movies to watch and things to play with. We flew in to Atlanta first and then to Kansas City.

We were pretty cold when we arrived. We had our coats on right away, but it was still a shock for us since it'd been so warm and nice in Jacksonville. The temperature dropped and it snowed quite a bit too after we arrived. The kids have been excited to play in the snow, but with the wind chill it's been around or below zero outside. It's going to warm up soon and we'll play outside sometime later in the week. The snow's not going anywhere soon.




The kids have really enjoyed playing with family. We got some cute pics of them decorating cupcakes and watching movies in their jammies with Nate and Allison.


On Sunday, the extended Anders family came to visit so we got out the camera to get some pics of everyone together.

















Just as everyone was leaving we got a nice surprise when Renie stopped in for a visit!