Christmas Vacation Part I: Kansas

After traveling all day Thursday (and the kids were great!), we left Jer with the grandparents and woke up very early Friday morning to fly to Wichita, Kansas.

Here's an overview in pictures (there are more pictures in the album below):

Leah and Regan met us at the airport; then we waited for Erin and her newborn

There we are in the back; Erin, baby, and our family all stayed together with a wonderful family that Leah knew

Wedding rehearsal

The proud groom

The beautiful bride

Reading scripture

D.R. Group

Taylor Group

Eating with friends we met in the D.R.

For even more pictures, see our online album here:

Kansas Visit

Jeremiah's Jingle Bells Video

Here it is. He's not actually singing (though he'll attempt to sing Jingle Bells on his own or with us). Each child has a bell in each hand and a paper cut-out bell that they're wearing over their shirts. Unfortunately, the video missed the very end when the audience applauded; Jeremiah had a huge smile and looked so proud of himself. It also missed the children bow after that.

Back to normal life- almost

The past few weeks has been a whirlwind (have you noticed it from my absence of posts?). The week or two before vacation was filled with Christmas events, Jeremiah's Christmas program, Christmas caroling, packing, etc. And then our vacation was very full, but also lots of fun. I have videos and pictures I've been meaning to post, but, alas, blogging has not been my priority. So, I hope to post those pictures and videos soon. And now I should get back to supper before the boys come back from their walk to fetch a free squash.

Our house, before and after

I finally have some before/after pictures of the new house. I'll post them in parts (as I haven't taken all the "after" pictures yet. For now, we have pictures of our kitcha-dina-living room. A note on colors- all the walls that are painted in the kitcha-dina-living room were originally yellow. I wanted sage and cranberry, but you can't find those colors here (unless we wanted to spend lots of money to have them mix it and hope it turned out well. Which we didn't. Especially because we would get free paint otherwise. So, I chose to go with an avacadoy-sage green and a country rose. We've learned to do a lot of "making-do" living here!
Now for the "Before" pictures:

View from the back of the house to the front door

View to the kitchen (there's not a lot of cabinet space, so we have a lot on shelves

View of the kitchen

View from the door towards the living room (yes, it's a very small house)

Now for the "After" pictures (I took them at different times, so don't think I have up Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations at the same time!)

We put a dresser against the wall to have drawers in the kitchen; both it and our deep freeze (between dresser and door) act as extra counter space. :) Our table just fits between the counter and our large handmade shelf.

Looking into our bedroom and the bathroom

View of the kitchen with spice rack (on far wall next to the stove)

Check out my full-size stove!!! And we plan to change out the faucet as it's very low and hard to use (and I prefer the type of kitchen sink with a lever to bump on when my hands are raw-meaty instead of turning the knobs)We added a lot of decor to the living area

Shelves for decor, books, and DVDs (and a messy computer desk...)

The carpet helps to "set apart" the are as the living room (and Chiste likes to sleep on it) This table we actually bought for a Jer-play table, but since we don't have room, we turned our cheap-white coffee table into a shelf in the bedroom closet, and use this as our coffee table

So there you have it, more pics to come later!

Peterson Photo Albums: November

Here's what we've been doing lately, in pictures. Each picture below links to a web album in picasa containing many more pictures (it takes me less time to upload pictures to picasa than to put them on the blog).

Trip to Santo Domingo:

In an attempt to amuse myself, I took pictures of the drive home (though I missed the "cashew and jelly" zone, as well as the "giant wooden spoon" zone. Near the end we have pictures of driving into Jarabacoa.

SantoDomingoTrip

Dedication/Picnic/Visit to La Arca:

Two Sundays ago we had Timmy dedicated at our church down in town. Afterward, we went on a picnic along with Brian, a fellow Gerig-ite from Taylor. Then we took him back to la Arca, where he is living (he is serving with Kids Alive) and we visited with friends there.

Dedication/Picnic/LaArca

Thanksgiving Day/Day After:

We had a wonderful thanksgiving day filled with friends, food, and fun. :) The highlights:
-Daniel smoked the turkey and built a fence while I cooked
-Friends came and brought wonderful food
-We celebrated Wendi's birthday
-We relaxed
-The next day I took the boys swimming in the pool here on campus, along with some friends

Thanksgiving

Random pics of the boys:
And, of course, here are some pics of the boys. These include:
-Jer's first time trimming a Christmas tree
-My little teddy bear

Theboys

Enjoy!