New Years

New Year's Eve morning we drove up to Dad and Mom Wiese's.  We spent some time with them and then left the kiddos there and headed over to Marcus and Alisa's.  They are friends from Ames that we see about twice a year along with some other friends that were there.  It was so fun to catch up with them and just hang out.  Andrew had been growing out his beard all fall for a contest and was waiting shave a mustache for the occasion.  All the ladies were a little creeped out but the guys had fun with it.  Our friend, Joel, just happened to have a straight edge he was restoring and wanted to try it on Andrew...

 It was so weird to see Andrew clean shaven!  I think it had been about 7 years!
We also celebrated Pat and Liz's anniversary...

I'm so sad that I didn't get a picture of the whole group :(  We did make it until midnight and then headed back to Dad and Mom's.  Spending time with wonderful friends was the perfect way to welcome in the new year!  Thanks Marcus and Alisa for everything!

Christmas 2013

We got to celebrate Jesus's birthday 6 times this Christmas season!  It was busy but so wonderful to spend time with family....

December 21st, we celebrated with the BIG Massner family first, and then the smaller Massner family.  We had so much fun catching up and playing games...

Sunday was a snow day and that evening we had our families "Christmas Eve".  We let the kids open their stockings...

And then Monday morning they got to open presents and we had donuts for breakfast.  It was so fun to see how excited Ollie was about Christmas this year.  My dad and mom got Emmie a kitchen for Christmas. Since it is so big, Andrew set it up at our house and they got to see it "Christmas Morning". Emmerson was SO excited!...

Monday evening we went up to my parents for a Christmas dinner and to spend the night.  We had a delicious meal and then my sister read the kids a Christmas book before bed.  I think it might be new tradition!  After the kids were in bed we played games...

Christmas Eve morning we got woke up and did our annual picture on the stairs before opening stockings and presents....

After gifts we ate breakfast, played with some new toys, and played games...

After naps we headed out to celebrate Christmas with Andrew's family.  Christmas was a little different for the Wiese's this year because we all stayed at a hotel.  It was perfect though and so much fun!  We went to a Christmas Eve service on Tuesday and then Christmas day we went out for lunch and came back to open gifts, hang out and play more games.  We all ended up staying until Friday.  The kids had so much fun in the pool and we even got to do some after Christmas shopping.  It was so fun spending quality time with family, especially Ben, Sherry, and Elliott because we don't get to see them very much.  We missed you AJ and Abby!....  

So we got back on Friday evening and then Andrew headed to church for a youth group lock-in.  He didn't stay all night because Saturday we headed over to IL to celebrate with my Mom's side of the family.  It was so great to see my Grandma and family but so different because my parents weren't there! We had fun anyway, playing games and doing the ladies $5 gift exchange.  I sent mom the picture of Nichole and I with Grandma so she knew what she was missing out on ;)....

We feel so blessed to be able to spend time with so much family.  We love our family and we love our Father!