Merry Christmas from The Manor!

Daryl and Carson showing off their guns! 

 We have finished two full days of family Christmas celebrations. We are all kind of worn out but it has been worth it. We started Christmas Eve in Holton. It was fun having all of the cousins together, we were so excited to see Ashtin! He has been working for Ohio State since around August. It was nice to have him back!

Henry and Alex playing store! 

Christmas day was spent at home with Mom and the Stiles' gang. They came from South Dakota and we loved having them. The boys loved all of their presents,

Santa brought Daryl a football and Alex a cash register like the one at the library. Santa did good this year! We got the boys a swing set, but once they opened it the weather turned bad. Who knows when we will get it set up for them! LOL

Since we didn't leave the house on Friday we did have some time for crafts and Uno! Lots of Uno was played. I also failed to win a game of chutes and ladders after playing all afternoon. I wasn't even letting them win!

Painting! 

Just in time for Christmas I finished my dress Lisa helped me make. She made on too but it's not done yet. Get on it Lisa, I want to be twins! Kelly was all sneaky and posted a picture of me trying it on for the first time on Facebook. Then he was just blown away that it got over 100 likes. He underestimated the powers of an awesome dress!

Asa took his project very seriously, it turned out really good! 

Today for Henry's birthday we went to the Trampoline park in Topeka. It has been open for awhile now but we haven't had the chance to check it out. It was a little pricey because you have to pay for each separate thing. But, for a special occasion it was a lot of fun. The pizza was also really good, and I don't even like pizza! We are going to check it out again on a Tuesday, they have specials on everything on Tuesday nights. We also got Orange Leaf afterwards to celebrate the birthday boy! Happy Sixth Birthday Henry, you are always out of town on your special day and you are a very good sport about it!

I hope you all had a Happy Holiday too, stay safe and warm everyone!

I turned this into a dress! 

I really did!

Trampoline park! $4 for 15 min, $2 on Tuesdays. 

Daryl and Alex shooting some dinosaurs! 

Happy Blogaversary!

It has been seven years since I started Meerpohl Manor with this post. A lot has changed including the boy in my first picture ever to the blog. He looks a little older and what do you know, I do too!

One thing hasn't changed I still get a lot of writing material from my little family and my crazy ideas. I'm happy to announce that Mega tree is still standing! We haven't had a good wind yet but hopefully it won't end up on our neighbor's car. 

Daryl had his first Christmas Concert yesterday, he did a really good job! He was so worried about his dance moves he forgot to sing some times, but he rocked his speaking part! With the help of Jolly Ranchers Alex did pretty good during the whole 30 minute performance! 

I didn't mention it in my first blog but today is also Kelly's birthday. I think he had a pretty good day today. I got him donuts after my morning run and the boys and I delivered him one with a candle in it. We sang to him and everything! He turned 37 today, so he only has 30 years that haven't been documented on the internet. I'm sure he is glad I took care of that. Maybe that was my present to him seven years ago, oversharing! 

Christmas Card 2015

So it was going to be impossible to top last year's Christmas Card. So early October I decided I wasn't even going to try. We sent a Birthday card this year! We never get those out and I always feel guilty about it. But we've already had two birthdays come and go since they went out and guess what, we are covered! I just think to myself, I hope they still have their Birthday card around.
All photo credit goes to Jaime again this year, she was really hoping we would go with the dozen pictures we had of Daryl frowning instead of the one he was smiling in! We have enough pictures of him frowning so we went with this one. :-)
The story behind the frown was Kelly snapped Daryl's chin when he put the birthday hat on. I'm not sure if we ever take a family picture without someone crying.

This weekend was crazy productive. We got all of our inside and outside Christmas decorations up! I love Christmas lights. Against all of Kelly's instincts we have been adding to our Christmas lights every year, and this year we added a MEGA tree! Like all my great ideas I had the vision and Kelly figured out how to make it. I only envisioned an 8 ft tall tree but the pipe we found was 10 ft tall so what the heck, we went for it! I thought the MEGA tree would be enough, our yard would not need anything else. But now that it is done I know next year we need to put a Santa by the tree and presents under it. :-) Don't tell Kelly!