Rachel and the Princess Tent

Rachel got a Princess Tent from her Grandma and Pop Pop (Oppelaar) for Christmas. This video is a month or so old, but as you've all realized I'm not very good at keeping this thing up to date. In any case, I finally got the video loaded to youtube. Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/CGRG8nHxtDU

Exploration Place

Well, I've finally caught back up. The day after New Years, Isaiah and I took Rachel to Exploration Place. EP is located here in Wichita and is a children's museum. The best part is the huge toddler area where Rachel can play with toys and explore water, kitchen, trains, etc.

Rachel checking out the wooden boat and big stuffed animals.
The theme they had was "Creatures of the Deep". Rachel thought the coral was really neat.

They had a Midevil themed Castle with lots of props. Here's Rachel on a toy horse.

This was my favorite part of the museum. They had a diarama Kansas in miniature. There were trains, and other moving people doing things from 1900-1950 throughout the state of Kansas.

You can see the "Keeper of the Plains" statue in the background. This is like the tourist attraction for people visiting Wichita. Behind Rachel is also part of the Ar-Kansas River.

By the way, she was pointing at the turtles in the case across from us.

Christmas Morning 2011

We spent the holidays in Wichita this year.

We are so blessed that Isaiah could be home again and share these moments.

Merry Christmas! Santa came.

Wow! Santa must have forgiven Rachel for being bad, she got such a great spread. A new indoor trampoline, tent, plus lots of goodies in her stocking.

Polie got a cow's leg for Christmas. He was very happy about it.

Here's Rachel's response Christmas Morning:

http://youtu.be/aXdnhMoD-bQ

Opening her stocking:

http://youtu.be/rzHjU1k0jzU

Daddy's present from Rachel:

http://youtu.be/Q4TSb_YOZXM

Cutting the Christmas Tree

We have always had a real tree, but this was the first year we decided to go cut our own. We learned from a neighbor that there was a farm just a few miles away, so we decided to make this a fun new thing this Christmas.

This was the farm we went to.

Isaiah and Rachel in front of "our" tree.
Isaiah cutting the tree down with a hand saw. Lesson learned: bring the electric saws-all next time.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving. We spent this year at home in Wichita. Here's some photos:

Here's Rachel with the turkey pumpkin on the front porch.

Our spread. It was just Isaiah and I, but we had turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, canned yams, and green bean casserold. It was super yummy but WAY too much food for just the 2 of us.

The pumpkin pie I made for dessert. I'm a Semi-Homemade girl. The crust is Pillsbury Pie Crust and the Pie filling is the canned Pumpkin directions. The embelishments on top use Pampered Chef small cookie cutters with the left over crust.

Our Visit to Colorado Springs

At the early part of November we decided to go visit Isaiah's sister in Colorado Springs. Their daughter Eden is one month younger than Rachel and we had not met her yet. We were very excited to get to see them all play together.

The pictures below were taken at an indoor playground, because it was pretty cold while we were in Colorado Springs.

Daddy and Rachel making our way up the very steep bridge.

Eden and Sarah playing.

We tried really hard to get a good picture of the 3 of them playing, but this was the only shot I could actually get them all in the frame. Oh well...

Here, Rachel, Eden and David are having fun in the tub.

Happy Halloween

Well, I did a really bad job post for the last 3 months, but here's some pictures for memories' sake: