Date Night #1

It was time for our first date night and get to enjoy our Christmas present to each other.  Jan and Greg took the kids so we could enjoy the evening and also get some sleep! As you can see, January's Date was ice skating and dinner. We didn't end up going to Crown Center because we realized there was one over by Town Center we had never been too.   It was a pleasant afternoon, we got out before it got too cold, and the rink was not too crowded.  My mom was great and gave us a gift card to Olive Garden to help out with our date nights so we decided to use that. It was a wonderful afternoon.  

Happy 4th Birthday

This year we had Annika's birthday party at a Silver Tree Visual Arts and it was perfect.  We know the owners from church and they made a special project just for her party.  It was a Peter Pan project, of course!  My great friend Jody also made her shirt again.  She had to order special fabric just to match the theme and it turned out perfect!  It was a wonderful party.  Low key and fun and they kids walked away with a great picture!

 

 Her cake was also one of my favorites.  Annika got the Peter Pan figures for Christmas and we used them for the cake.  She was very concerned about setting them on fire and made sure we took them off before we lit the candle and sang Happy Birthday.  I loved how it turned out!

 I took two pictures of her opening presents.  But I got a great one of one of her favorites.  A new Frozen doll!  She LOVES this movie and was thrilled with anything Frozen!

 The finished project!

One Final Christmas

The Saturday after Christmas my family came up to celebrate with us.  I took exactly 4 pictures!  I hate that I didn't take more, however, the couple I got of the cousins are pretty great.  We had a great time opening so many presents then spent the rest of the afternoon at Dave and Busters.  We did this a few years back and it was even more fun this year because Annika was able to play the games.  We had a great day.

Asher and Zeke

Dagan and Annika

Real Pirates

When Asher won the costume contest at Union Station we were given tickets to the Real Pirates exhibit.  We talked about taking Annika before we got the tickets but it was pretty expensive and we were not sure if she would like it so we decided to wait.  So getting these tickets were a very welcome surprise.  I was still unsure if Annika would like it, but since it was free we figured why not?  So we left Asher with Jan and the three of us went on a date!  There were no cameras allowed inside the actual exhibit so all of the pictures were taken before we got in.  As expected, Annika was a little scared at first but the people working the exhibit were amazing!  One "pirate" in particular was so wonderful with her.  The exhibit was about an actual pirate ship and the items collected from it after it sank.  Annika wasn't super interested in all the artifacts but liked some of them.  She noticed right away there was a little pirate about her age and she got very excited when she saw a picture of him.  They told us it took about an hour to get through but I think we were there about 30 minutes!  It was fun and we all enjoyed the time together.