Ramos Christmas Eve Party 2009

Once again Christmas Eve was spent at our house with family. It was another fun night of singing for the kids, playing Lola & Lolo's games and opening presents! We even finished playing all the games and opening up presents by 8pm! That has to be a new record! Of course there was tons of food and the good thing was that everyone pretty much took home their food when it was time to go so we were not stuck with a bunch of leftovers! After dinner, the kids got to do their talent for the night! Nicholas sang a song he learned in Preschool, Jon sang & danced to Jingle Bells (he got extra money for singing AND dancing!), and Marisa had to point out animals in a picture! After the kids were done with that we started Lola and Lolo's game. The main game of the evening was Family Feud. It was a little chaotic at first but it ended up being a fun game and Mike and I were part of the team that won big! We ended up winning $90! After that the kids opened their presents and than the adults got to play Mean Santa! It was fun year of Mean Santa and we ended up with what we bought which was the Big Top Cupcake Maker (As Seen on TV!) and a Hot Chocolate thingy! We plan on making Grandma a B-day cake for her with our present! After that Lola had extra money so we played the dice game. Another fun game, but once again chaotic! Here are some pictures from the night. Stay tuned for video of the kids singing from the party and opening presents from Santa!


Our Pretty girl Marisa all dressed up for Christmas!


The three kids!


Lola took this picture of us....It was funny I had to crop us out because she didn't get it very centered. At least we all made the frame!


I bought this dress while we were in OK over Thanksgiving and it came with a matching dress for her baby! She loved it!


Our attempt in getting a picture of all the kids! Yup, that would be Tesa's head! It was the best picture that I had of the kids and her head had to be in it! LOL!


The Dehne Family: Noah(8), Matt, Missy, Gen(6)


The Koch Family: Jon, Mena(2), Eddie(5), Melina, Evie(6)


The Wagner Family: Aiden(5), Andy, Owen(7) & Olivia


The Cardenas': TJ(13), Tom, Marie, Anthony(6)


The Ramos: Maria(8), Paul, Lorenzo(1) Tesa, Bella(5)


Front Row: Marisa, Lolo, Lola, Sylvia, Mena-Li
Back Row: Lyonel, Narding, Mong, & Jas


Our annual picture of all the cousins! Renzo wasn't too happy....


The Ramos Family

Koehn/Ortloff Christmas 2009

This year we celebrated the Koehn/Ortloff Christmas Party at the McGarvey Home in Plymouth. It was a fun afternoon of eating, watching the kids run around and play with Uncle Paul, and playing Mean Santa! It was a great game of Mean Santa this year. A lot of great gifts to choose from! We can home with a mini donut maker and a collapsible cooler! Here are some pics from the party.


Every year Grandma asks me to take a picture of them and the grand kids for their X-mas card. Here is the best pic of them!


Cousins Ashley and Marisa! Every time we ask Marisa to say Papa and Grandma she includes Ashley name right after because she knows that Ashley is with them a lot!


Uncle Paul playing with the Elizabeth, Tommy and Nick.


Uncle Charlie and Andie.


I kept on telling Nick to take it easy on Paul but Paul didn't mind. Apparently the next day he had bruises up and down his arms!


Daddy and Marisa!


Marisa had so much fun playing with Ashley!


Marisa got a Princess Tea Set from Papa and Grandma! She LOVES this Teas set! She plays with it EVERY day!

I wanted to get Family pictures like I did a few years ago, but I forgot. Hopefully I will remember next year!

Christmas Cookie Baking 2009

We had our annual Christmas Baking of cookies at our house with all the kiddos. Since I was home a lone with Marisa I had made a few batches of cookie dough while she was sleeping and the boys were at school. I will have t remember to do that next year because it helped with time. Plus I was able to use my mixer which made it MUCH easier to mix than by hand! We decided to do Chocolate Chip, Sugar Cut Outs, Peanut Blossoms, Ginger Snap, Raisin, and the pretzel with the kiss and M&M on top. We started out with the M&M Pretzel one because last year we did them last and burnt the kisses because the oven was too hot. So the kids all helped with unwrapping the kisses and laying out the pretzel squares.


Nick and Anthony unwrapping the Kisses


Marisa even helped unwrapped!


Than she liked to eat them!


Gen, TJ, and Noah putting the kisses on the pretzels.


They were all good helpers!

After that was done we turned up the oven and started to bake our cookies! Maria was a great helper with scooping out the dough and putting them on the baking sheets.


This was Maria's favorite part!


The boys started to just watch at this point!


Gen, Missy and Noah.

Mike and Paul were bored so they went out to buy a new PS3 game. They were gone for awhile....They came home with Call of Duty Modern War(I think that it is what it is called). After they came home they set up shop right in front of the TV and didn't move! At least they let the younger boys play too. They were good at taking turns!


Paul and Mike glued to the TV.


By this point we were onto Sugar Cookie Cut Outs. Maria and Anthony helped on this one!


A back view of the Older boys playing PS3.


Maria cutting out her cookies!


Anthony's turn!


Nick, Gen and Bella came up from playing downstairs and they each got a turn rolling out the dough too!




Renzo ready for bed! He loved the boys swords!




I got you!


The kiddos getting ready to decorate the Sugar Cookies!


Some of their finished products!

Marisa's 18 Month Old Stats

Marisa went in for her 18 month check up on November 23rd. Of course I am late posting this but I just found her stat sheet while I was cleaning the kitchen yesterday! So here they are:

Height: 34 inches - 97th Percentile (Still a giant among the girls as Dr. Siefferman says!)

Weight: 26# 3oz. - 75th Percentile

Head Size: 19 1/4 inches - 95th Percentile (another one with a lot of brains!)

She still had a low Hemoglobin and at the appointment I realized I was only giving her Flintstones Complete vitamins and not Flintstones Complete with Iron! So I got her those instead! Bad Mommy! So hopefully at her 2 year that will go up! Other than that she is doing wonderful!

So, of course she is already 19 Months old as of the 9th of Dec! I can't believe how fast time goes by! My Little Angel is growing up too fast!

Stay tuned for pictures on our annual Baking Cookies for X-mas and the Ortloff/Koehn Xmas party!

Christmas Tree 2009

On Sunday we headed out to Stillwater Tree Farm to cut down our first Christmas Tree for our Woodbury Home! For the past few years we have been putting up our fake tree and Mike and I decided that this year we were going to cut down a real tree! So, with the help of Facebook and seeing a friend's Christmas Tree pictures on there we asked where she got it and that is where we went! I should have done a little bit more research on what kind of tree to get since Mike and I didn't really know what to look for. We walked around for awhile. I wanted a nice full tree and the trees we saw were tall and skinny. In in the end we ended up getting a Pine Tree. The boys were pretty happy when I gave the thumbs up because we walked around for a long time! After we cut down the tree we had to drag it back to the main building to get packed up and pay for it. Pine Trees were the least expensive which gave me the idea that it might not have been the best choice! So I asked the guys what the differences were and they explained to me. Pine Trees loses a lot of needles and their branches are not very sturdy. So next year if we get a real tree again we will have to look for a different one! Or maybe even just go to Home Depot! LOL! Here are a few pics...


Heading out to the Tree area!


Pathway to the Trees! I thought it was pretty cool walking through!


Our Christmas Tree!


Dragging it back to the main building...It wasn't too difficult! Ha!


Our Tree up and decorated!


I like how Marisa's belly is hanging out!

So, we got the tree up and decorated! A few hours later while we were watching TV (the kids were in bed already) CRASH! The tree falls over! Broke most of our red and green ornaments, well not most but all of them! Most of our personalized ornaments (I get them every year at the State Fair) for all the kids and Mike and I did not break! I only have to replace 4 of them! Mike and I started to clean up the mess (Lolo heard the crash and came up to help too) and they got the tree back up. We decided to redecorate the tree the next morning.

When the boys woke up and came downstairs, they were wondering why the tree didn't have the decorations and I told them what happened. So after the boys went off to school the next morning I redecorated the tree! Looks a little bare but we will have to wait for the end of the season sales to buy more ornaments!

Thanksgiving in Oklahoma!

This year was our year to go to Oklahoma for Thanksgiving! We have SO much fun when we visit our family down there and the boys just LOVE their Oklahoma cousins! We left Tuesday after the boys school and drove as far as we could which was right outside of Joplin, MO. Mike could have driven the whole way but Nicholas was waking up and he was having a minor fit. Surprisingly Marisa did really well on the way down! So when we got our Motel room it was about midnight and we all went to sleep. Our alarm clock woke us up at 6:30 by yelling out, "Mommy! Da Da!" There was no sleeping in on Wednesday morning! So we all got up and got ready to get back on the road! We arrived at the Evan's residence around 10am. We hung out for awhile and than had lunch. For dinner we went to the McBride's house and had dinner. The Koch's had driven through the night so they were already there and we were just waiting for the Dehne family to arrive. Unfortunately they ran into traffic in Iowa and Kansas City so they didn't arrive until 11pm that night.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at the McBride' house and it was great food as always! The Dehne's brought their Wiffle Ball set so after awhile we all walked out to an open field to play. Once again just like in MN it was adults vs. the kids. Anyone that was still in High School was considered a kid so Kayla and Colton got to play with the adults! It was a great game!

The next morning we all just kind of hung out. We didn't really need anything during Black Friday so none of us got up early to shop. We did go shopping later on but not on Friday. Any way, Friday night Brennen and Jordan had a football game that was 3 hours away. Mike, myself and Jon drove out with Mena, Maita, Rianne, Ashlyn and a friend of Rianne's. Marisa and Nicholas stayed with their Tita Missy (we are going to start saying Tita and Tito now since it is really what the kids should be calling their Aunties and Uncles!) On the way we stopped at a place called Pops on Hwy 66. It was really good food but not that great of service! We were a party of 8 and when they brought us to our table, there were 3 chairs missing and no one brought us chairs for like 10 minutes! We had to ask someone to bring us chairs! After dinner we headed out and made it there at around 6:30pm. The game didn't start until 7:30 and the stands were already packed! We were lucky enough to find seats by the 50 yard line in the front. I hadn't been to a HS football game in SO long! It was SO much fun especially since they won! It was a close one. We won with a Field Goal with the final score being 21 to 24. Lincoln has their Semi-final game this Friday against a team that they already beat in during the season so we wish them luck!

Saturday was another day of relaxing and getting some last minute shopping done and watching the OU vs. OSU football game. Our cousins are HUGE fans of OU so every time we go down there we buy OU apparel. So that is what we bought and I actually bought Marisa's X-mas dress. Lola Auring took us out to dinner that night and after that we went back to finish up packing and said our goodbyes!

I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked but I did manage to take a few.


All the Oklahoma cousins with Marisa and Mena. Haylee is missing in the picture.


A better shot. For some reason my flash didn't go off on the first one!


Tita Ta Ta has a trampoline in their back yard and the boys loved jumping on it!


My two handsome boys!


Group pic of the kids! The temp in Oklahoma was awesome! It was like 75 degrees on Saturday! Us MN folk didn'tneed jackets!


On our way to the field for Wiffle ball.


Picture of the Oklahoma cousins behind!


Waiting their turn to hit.


Colton and Kayla are on the Adult team!


The little ones joined us after awhile!


Kids on the field!


Nicholas being a ham!


Jon looks like he is modeling or something!


Tita Ta Ta and Gen Gen.


Marisa hitting Daddy with a Wiffle Ball.


Jon was pitcher one inning.


Group phot of the ladies!

Thanks again to all of you in OKLAHOMA! Hope to see you guys this summer!

OH! I just looked at the pictures that I received from Ramil (Thanks Ramil for the copies!) I will have to post ome of those pics too! Much better than mine!