A Wonderful Week

December 26- January 2

I think this is the first year that I actually looked forward to December 26 more than December 25.  What made the 26th more exciting was knowing that my sister-in-law Kerry and our 3 beautiful nieces were coming to visit.  I think Mikayla was the most excited and honestly she asks about Ashley, Emma and Claire at least once a week now :)  We had such an amazing time with them and I took a ridiculous amount of pictures but I will TRY and limit how many I actually put on here plus a small recap of our adventures!

Christmas

Dec. 27

We celebrated Christmas with them that morning.  The kids enjoyed opening more presents from Grandpa and Grandma Bolkema and from Aunt Kerry and the girls.

We received the most amazing gifts from Kerry, the kids each received a teddy bear and we received a quilt all made from Rodney's clothes.  These are simply priceless gifts that I know we will treasure for ever!  We are so thankful that she had these made for us!

A Little Pampering Please!

That afternoon we girls (plus poor Caden:)) decided to go get manicures!  It was so fun to get a little pampered :)

Cake Boss

Dec. 28 

I honestly have only ever seen this show once in my life so when Kerry wrote to me that going to Carlo's Bakery was on the girls' list of activities I had to look it up online to get more info :) We decided to go on Wednesday afternoon since Brian had a funeral to do in the morning.  I knew we would probably have to wait a little while to get in but I don't know if I was expecting 2 1/2 hours of waiting!  Thankfully my dad took off of work to watch Caden and thankfully the kids were all amazing standing in line and thankfully we got in otherwise it could have been a disaster :)   It really turned out to be fun once the feeling in my feet returned from the cold and I can honestly say I've never done anything like this!  We got some super yummy treats and Mikayla LOVED her cookie monster cupcake :)  Oh, we got to see 2 famous people, though I'm not sure of their names.  Not Buddy... Mary?  Mauro?  Not 100% sure!

 Still happy :)

 

We're in!

Hmmmm.... what to get?!?!

Not sure what to say about this except I love this little girl :)

Ms. Liberty

Dec. 29

We made the voyage to Liberty State Park to literally run to catch a ferry to visit The Statue of Liberty!  It was a beautiful, brisk day and such an awesome experience.  We definitely take living so close to the city and all these amazing landmarks for granted and I was so excited to have a good excuse to go there!

We even got to see NJ's World Trade Center memorial which really was beautiful!  

Tintles

Dec 29-31

As if this week wasn't exciting enough we also got to see Brian's other sister Lisa, her husband Nathan and our 2 nephews!  I am still so excited that we got to see many of Brian's family this Christmas!  They, thankfully for us, have family in NY so they always make an extra trip down to see us as well.  They got a hotel room (there was definitely no more room at the Bolkema Inn :)) and the kids got to go swimming there after our Liberty Cruise.  Then they came over for some tacos and play time.  The next day we decided to take the kids swimming again and then bowling.

If you are reading the scores then you are probably realizing that Mikayla didn't just win, she smoked us!  And yes she used a ramp thingy and yes she used bumpers but we all got to use bumpers and we weren't even close!  Maybe we have a professional bowler in our future :)

We also took a little field trip to my dad's firehouse.  My dad LOVES showing kids the fire truck!  

Other Highlights
The puppet show was seriously the best thing to entertain a group of children with a wide array of ages.  This thing was worth every penny and every inch of space that it takes up!  The creativity of the older girls amazed me and I think they really inspired Mikayla to use it more.

 Movie time!

Bubbles!

 Soccer!

 Quality time!

We also had so much fun playing the Wii which we got from Brian's parents for Christmas.  I didn't know how much use we would get out of it since our kids are so little yet, but our nieces got us hooked on Super Mario Bros. (I'll have to blog about our Wii dates some time :))  We also tried a little Wii Zumba and no I did not get any pictures of that!  Just use your imagination :)

I have SO many more pictures that I would love to have shared, but putting 500 pictures on a blog probably isn't the best idea :)  I'm so thankful that we had this time to laugh together, play together, and cry together.  It was always on our minds that Rodney was missing.  We do not take these opportunities for granted anymore and I am so thankful for these memories!

I am sure I missed something but in case you haven't figured it out we had fun and that's all that matters :)