Christmas with The Hermans

Christmas was pretty fun this year. On Christmas Eve, we went to Matt's Mom's house with his other siblings. It was quite the fight to get Bailey excited after her nap(grumpy). When she was ready she just sat on the couch and waited for Matt and I.

When we got there, we Matt's mom was still cooking dinner, so i put out my mom's famous Cheese ball that I made with some crackers and Celery. It was my first time making it and it was so yummy. My mom would have been proud:)

Then we had a great dinner and of course tons of Christmas cookies for dessert, and Banana pudding. So good!

Finally, we decided to dress the kids up to do the Nativity scene. Now when I was little and we used to go the my grandparents house for Christmas Eve, we had this same tradition. Only, there were tons of us, well Bailey only has 3 cousins here in CO, and 1 was out of town. We decided we would dress the 3 kids up anyway. Aiden(4) was Joseph, Bailey(2) was Mary, and Rowyn(1) was an angel. We wrapped up a cabbage patch in saddling clothes and had him be baby Jesus who Bailey held so proudly. Matt read out of Luke 2 and it was so fun. It was quite crazy trying to get the kids to stand still for a picture.

Christmas day started at about 8 am when Bailey woke up to her lovely presents, and fun stocking. We video taped it so i don't have any pictures.

After that we went to Grammy Herman's for Christmas Breakfast. This is a long standing tradition in the Herman family, that Matt's Aunt Jackie, who passed away in September, used to hold at her house every year. We will miss her. We had a lot of traditional German food, like Shtollin( And Fruit Bread) and they always have Figs too.

It was fun getting the kids dressed up and taking pictures. I can't believe another year has gone by. I am so thankful for my family here in CO. I totally miss my family in MD and UT though too. I hope everyone had a Marry Christmas and that you will have a Happy New Year too.

This is Bailey modeling her new sweater from Grandma Stephenson. Sooo Cute!

Hawaii Trip

So we got back from Hawaii on Sunday, and it was so much fun! We kind of lazied around the first 2 days we were there, cause we were so tired, but that's cool. Monday we went to The Smith Family Luau. First they took us on a trolley around this beautiful garden, then they let us off at this place where they had an earthen oven, with a roasted pig in it. When they unearth it, it is called the emu ceremony. I was convinced that i wasn't going to eat a roasted pig. Next was dinner, a huge buffet of tons of yummy food. I did try the pig, and you know what...it was DELICIOUS! I also tried poi (ground ginger root) That is their starch, and it looks like a purplish gray kind of paste. It tasted like nothing, it was weird. Then there was a show. It was amazing, i don't know how those girls shake their hips like that. bailey also thoroughly enjoyed it.

Bailey loved playing in the sand ans trying very hard to make a sand castle. We went snorkeling and just enjoyed the sunshine since here in Denver a snow storm was going on. It was a great escape.

Next we went on tour of the Nepali Coast, on a catamaran boat. It was amazing, we played with a whole slew of bottle nosed Dolphins, and we say sea turtles, and flying fish. The big finish came a bout 10 minutes before the tour was over. We saw a Hump Back Whale fly out of the water and make a huge splash. It breached the surface about 4 times. It was just a baby they said, but it still looked pretty huge to me. It was awesome!

On one of our lasts days there, we took a drive up to this canyon that wad 3 or maybe 4 amazing views. It was actually a really long drive but totally worth it. It was kind of rainy that day and we saw about 7 rainbows. It was so cool! Bailey loved seeing all the different colors and we just had such a good time.

Here is one last picture to show you ho beautiful this place is. We love Kauai! Thanks for sticking with this post, i know it is so long:)

Decorating Our Charlie Brown Tree

We finally got our tree up and it is pretty cute. bailey had a lot of fun hanging out with her daddy, while i took pictures. She was so thrilled with her work so she smiled in most of the pics. We are headed to Hawaii on Saturday , but we still wanted to get into the Christmas spirit.