Reading

During our Michigan trip, I did some reading for fun (which has become a rare activity, sad to say). A lot of the reading I did was children's literature, but the books were all new to me, so that was still nice. There was one book that I was just getting started by the time we left. It was about HeLa, a lady who unwittingly "donated" some of her cancer cells and ended up getting those cells duplicated over and over, long past when the donor herself was alive. Mom, can you remind me of the title and author of that book so I can track it down here? It was from the library.

This book about people from different parts of the world kept Eli's attention, but Joes was distracted. No big deal.

Oma has the full attention of Eli and Joes.

David is a pro- he can get all three boys to listen. (Although, they all look pretty tired, so that might help.)

This was their favorite part of this Winnie the Pooh book. Can you tell what the picture shows? It is pretty funny.

Knuffle-bunny!

See other blog

I have not been feeling inspired to post pictures lately, since David has been posting a lot of the pictures I took over on his and Rachel's blog. So if you are interested in pics, please use the link to the left to navigate over there and check it out.

Seriously though, I will try to get some new ones up in the next couple days. :)

A few outside shots

We are spending some time in Holland this week. We have gone out into the snow a couple times. My parents got some snowshoes recently, and Brian and I tried them out. They took a little getting used to, but they were a lot of fun. My mom also got some gaters, which are apparently used to keep your legs dry when you go snowshoeing in deep snow. I had never heard of them before, but David was more familiar.

Dad and Mom, showing off the gaters:

Brian and I took the snowshoes all the way to the lake, which was very beautiful. We got there at dusk, so we had to hurry back to make it to the car before it got too dark.
Brian at Lake Michigan:

Han at Lake Michigan:

Dad on skis (left) and Brian on snowshoes (right):

More visit and mini-Christmas

Dave and Amy have headed back to South Carolina now. We really enjoyed spending time with them over the last week. Here are a few more pictures from their visit.

We played a couple different games together:


We met with Tammy and Jim for lunch:

We had a mini-Christmas, giving some gifts to each other, on Saturday afternoon.

Karen with 2010 ornament:

Rick with specialty foods:

Dave and Amy with matching mugs:

Karen and Brian:

Brian, hiding from the camera:

Wildlights

The Columbus Zoo has a special program every December called Wildlights. They cover the zoo with (energy-efficient LED) Christmas lights and extend the zoo hours into the evening to allow people to enjoy the light displays. The lights always look fantastic, but it is always chilly. We went to Wildlights this evening, and it was frigid. To make the temperatures more bareable, the zoo sells hot chocolate and has several of the indoor displays open, so you can sip a hot drink and/or got inside a building to thaw out a bit.

First, some of the beautiful light displays:
See the hippo?

Moose!

The polar bears were outside, but there is a nice display indoors about polar bears and global warming/climate change. We warmed up in this building, and took a few silly pictures too.

Making a friend?

Dave & Amy pet the bear; Brian and I observe but do not offer our hands to the wild animals.

Another popular indoor display is the manatee tank. Today I saw 2 manatees. The smaller one had some boat motor damage on its side. The stuff floating on the top of the water is lettuce.

Dave & Amy:

Rick, Dave, and Brian, posing in the manatee building:

Han with a tall toy soldier:

Dave & Amy visit

This week, Dave and Amy have been visiting from South Carolina. It has been great! We started the visit by having some Christmas cake. (Okay, so the visit was really just a good excuse to make a cake, but I did color the cake to make it more Christmasy.) I wanted to try out a new chocolate frosting recipe, which is delicious.

We met Grandma Sites and cousin Amy for lunch on Thursday at Der Dutchmann (an Amish family-style restaurant). L to R: Han, Rick, Gma, Karen, Brian, Amy, Dave

Here is a pic with only Grandma, Dave, and Amy.

Amy and Dave stopped by our place briefly to meet the ferrets. Chewbacca especially liked Amy.

So far, the visit has been a fun one. We are all happy Dave and Amy could get some time off to come see us.

Happy Holidays

Today we had our first real snow. It looks lovely. In the past couple weeks, we've decorated the house for Christmas. The lights on our tree make crazy patterns on the floor and walls. We put the tree in the living room by the large window, with the other plants.
Sinterklaas ornament:

Rain last night transitioned into snow, which led to some decent-sized icicles.

Brian brushing snow off the car:

Our outside lights, covered in snow: