random stuff

This is a giant gingerbread house we saw!

Our handsome little pirate.

Good friends.

A couple weeks ago we had snow and ice in Florida! Yuck. Here you can see some ice on the ends of the palm fronds!

Christmas #1

This was our first Christmas this year!

Lots of fun!

Nana and Ayrik and Cali.

This was a giant gingerbread house! (actually made of gingerbread!)

Family picture 2009

Christmas 2009

This year we had the joy of having 2 Christmas celebrations! The first one was with Ben's family and the second was with mine. These pics are from the second one where my whole family was together! (it's been 3 years since that has happened!) We had so much fun!
Above is a pic of Grandma reading to the boys.

Just having fun!

Some of the uncles and aunts. =)

Uncle Dan gave the kids puppets for Christmas!

Which one is weirder?

Our sweet little niece, Katelyn.

She was ready to go sledding!

Cali loves her cousin!

Trick-or-treating

We had a clone trooper, Boba Fett, and Thumbalina! They loved all the candy and costumes!

I had fire coming out of my mouth! lol.

On our last trip from the countryside, our car died halfway to the city! Here we are trying to limp to the nearest town!

Cali and Diesel the kitty

Cali turned 4 in July

Back in Florida, Aiden learned to swim in 2 weeks!

Ayrik is still working on it! They all love to be in the water.

random pics

Ben and a friend

This lady wanted her picture taken with Cali but Cali was too shy. I finally convinced her to do it but got a super silly face. Oh well!

Two wrestlers at Naadam.


After seeing the wrestling, Ayrik was dying to try it. During a break he convinced Cali to wrestle with him. (There was no way Aiden was going out there where people could see him!) Everyone thought it was the best thing in the world to see to little foreign kids wrestling. It was so cute!

One of the Naadam races.

Archery is the last of the "three manly sports" that make up Naadam.

Aiden and Ayrik enjoying the local wildlife. =)

Aiden turned 7 in May! (That's his cake he's sitting with)

New House? Definitely!

This is the loft after the men had finished building! See the last post for before pics. I am so excited about all this extra space! (you can only see half of it in this pic.)

This was the kitchen space before...

...and after!

We used to have a closet in this corner of the living room.

Now we have stairs!

This was the bathroom before. Check out the bucket shower! It worked fine but I like the new one MUCH better!

A toilet and sink and hot water heater! Whoopie!!!!

Thank you to everyone who helped with this!