Early Christmas with the Wille's

This year we were going to be in La Crosse for Christmas, so we celebrated early with Grr and Grr Mom and the Carpenter's. Trudy always does a great job of making it actually feel like Christmas Day. We ate, drank, exchanged gifts and played some games...we had a great day. Rylie LOVED her gifts. And she did some unwrapping of her own this year which was fun to watch.

Petting her new rocking horse from Carpenter's

Rocking away

Dan showing off his new snowmobile helmet

Rylie loves playing piano. Auntie Beth has a piano at her house (where Rylie is 3 days a week) and Auntie Leslie has one too that Rylie and Sophie "play" as well. So for Christmas, Grr and Grr Mom got Rylie something that mommy has always wanted (only in a bigger version)- a baby grand piano. She was thrilled (see video below). She even got right back to it the next morning.

One tuckered out little toddler

Turkey Day 2010

We spent Thanksgiving Day with the Wille side this year. All the kids had a blast playing together...so much so that Rylie decided to skip her afternoon nap...grreeeaaat. She actually held together pretty well and didn't have any major meltdowns.

Auntie Leslie captured the best possible shots with this many kiddos!

Brady, Rylie, Sophie and Michael

All the kids: Krause's, Carpenter's and one Wille :-)

Family pic

We ended up leaving for La Crosse at about 7:30 that night, which is Rylie's bedtime and she didn't make a peep the entire 3 hour trip! So it ended up working out well for the most part. She did, however, stay up until midnight or so once we arrived, but we got things back on track the next day. We celebrated with the Kearns side on Friday. We decided not to do our usual black Friday shopping. Something about having a child just makes it a little more difficult to drag ourselves out of bed at 4 am. We'll take all the sleep we can get! So we opted for a little more online shopping this year.

Rocking in her favorite chair...it was Great Grandpa's when he was little

She also made the rounds with her books. Rylie LOVES being read to. She will pick up a book, plop down on your lap and start turning pages...this could go on for hours.

Great Grandma

Grandpa or "papa" as Rylie calls him

Carving up the bird- for the first time!

Checking out grandpa and grandma's tree

The weekend after Thanksgiving was the first snowfall of the year, so we went out to take a few "winter" pictures for the Christmas card. Rylie helped us decorate the tree that weekend too!

What is this stuff??