Catching Up

I am finally getting caught up (sort of) on here. After taking 3 days to upload these pictures, I will probably only add a couple more to get caught up to date. Our "high speed" internet service is slower than dial up-taking at least 20 minutes to upload 3 pix. Here are pictures from our Christmas's with the Driscoll's and the Froehlich's. Pat and I got moved up to New Ulm the Monday of Christmas week and Tuesday morning went to my parents to beat the big Christmas blizzard. As much of a big welcome back by Mother Nature we got, we'll take it to be back closer to family. We are loving it. My brothers and families didn't make it to Gettysburg until the day after Christmas, but we were all glad to be together. It was so nice to have Olivia running around with her cousins again. The Monday after, we left to go back to New Ulm-we unpacked all day Tuesday, and then went to Algona Wednesday to have Christmas with the Froehlich's over the New Year's weekend. The Driscoll cousins were just a warm-up for Olivia for all her Froehlich cousins! It was a full house-and one more addition will be added soon when Bill and Maegan have the first Froehlich boy in March. We had a wonderful Christmas and rang in the New Year with a little party for all the kids. What a fun tradition! We were also thankful this year to be with everyone-last Christmas we spent the holidays in the hospital in Sioux Falls with Pat's injury/infection. (Although injuries still couldn't be avoided this year-my brother Heath broke his ankle in 3 places and had surgery with a plate and 9 screws just before Christmas. He is in the hospital as I write this with a blood clot in his leg :( but doing ok. And Andy Larew broke his ankle playing basketball with the guys New Year's Eve day and Molly was lucky enough to get to take him to the ER New Years Eve.)

Olivia's new pink chair she got from Pat and I for Christmas. We had it shipped to the Froehlich's so this was her first time with it. She's sits in it like a little Princess-for about 5 seconds and then she's on to the next thing!

Olivia dancing with Grandma Froehich's snowman. Everything Christmas looking Olivia would say ho-ho-ho-it was so cute!

Chloe and Kaden helping Jayna set up the cool table of New Year's decorations for the kids.

8 out of the 10 Grandkids just waiting as patiently as they could to start in on the noise makers.

Pat, Olivia, and I before the big New Year's party begins!

The kids and Olivia having their Mr. Freezes.

Olivia and Chloe-Olivia actually kept her tiara on for half a minute-just long enough to get a picture.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 2010!!!

Confetti time! Chloe and Jason

Olivia

Michaela helping Olivia get decorated.

Kids are in bed-time for some yuker.

Olivia and her cousins Grace and Elizabeth

All 10 of the Grandkids! This is New Year's Day before opening presents.

Olivia is opening up her new billfold asking Daddy for money already!

Olivia and her beanbag from Grandma and Granpa Froehlich. She loves it! After she continously loved to dive into the dog pillow-we decided a beanbag would be a great idea on her Christmas list.

One pooped out little girl!

The little New Year's girl in her cute outfit from Gwen and Kate.

The Froehlichs. We got everyone in the picture and turned out really good!

All the adults

Christmas at my parents. This was after Church Christmas Eve

Grandma and Grandpa Driscoll with Olivia.

Olivia in her pretty Christmas dress (thanks again Nadine & Jerry!)

We made the mistake of letting Olivia touch the ornaments for pictures. By the end of the week, we had the bottom half of the tree empty and I think she managed to pull down the smaller Christmas trees a couple times.

Merry Christmas Olivia! Olivia got to open her presents from Santa Claus Christmas morning.

Olivia helping Grandpa keep score in a game of Phase 10. Justin, Jessica, Caden, and Olivia

Let the fun begin! The Driscoll kids have made it to Grandma and Grandpa's!

Pat, Grandpa, and Ryan (Heath and Kristi's)

Ryan's first Christmas. He is such a happy baby.

The Driscoll Grandkids. Olivia never likes to sit still for a picture.

Grandma and Grandpa Driscoll with the kids.

Heath and Ryan opening gifts

Olivia opening up her gifts from Grandma and Grandpa

Pat, Olivia, and her new baby doll

Of course-she always loves to play with the boxes.

The three of us.

The big blizzard. Olivia's never seen so much snow!

Olivia in the snow-sporting her new snowsuit from the McNeeses-thank you!

Olivia, Izabella, Anna, and Ethan

Olivia and Ryan with their horses from G & G. Olivia loves "going to town" on hers. As I'm typing this, she is on the horse backwards jumping up and down laughing at cartoons.

Ride 'em Cowgirl!

My Angel and me

Moving Day

Kathee, Bill, Pat, and I in the Uhaul after loading. It was a beautiful day-little did we know we'd be moving to a welcome-back blizzard!

Olivia visiting Santa Claus

Pat and I took Olivia to visit Santa Claus at the mall. We had to stand in line for about 10 minutes and she did real well doing that. She waved at Santa and he would wave back, and she waved again at him a few more times. She had a funny expression-didn't know who exactly this big man in a red suit was. We really thought it may work for her to sit on his lap being it really didn't frighten her to see him so close and the 2 kids ahead of us did such a good job. But, no such luck. She screamed I think before her cute little red dress touched his lap. I think she was on there maybe 30 seconds-long enough for the gal to only get 3 pictures taken. But, we never laughed so hard (sorry Olivia-it was at your expense) at how cute the picture turned out! Afterwards we took her to the carousel and she sat on the horse for about as long as she sat on Santa's lap and then Pat had to hold her the rest of the ride. She even threw her Santa hat off right away-I guess she's not too happy with him!

Havin fun!

Olivia's buddy Brayden came over today to play while his dad Chris and Pat are watching football. They have so much fun and play so well together. Here they're in Olivia's favorite place-the empty book shelf . And then the car rides-they laughed and pushed each other into about every piece of furniture and box in the living room!

Day at the Park

Yesterday we took Olivia to the park to feed the ducks and play. It was such a nice day-we had to take advantage of it before we move to the "tundra". I don't think we'll be able to go to the park in just sweaters on December 12th again. She had so much fun. Her favorite was the tornado slide-she even went down by herself. I of course was a little nervous-but she had no fear doing it and absolutely loved it!

No fear

Here's a few pictures of our little Dare Devil. She seems to have no fear of anything and is actually pretty good at it-no bumps or bruises (yet) from falling. The first few pix Olivia is standing on her zebra toy-something she does quite often while watching TV. She also loves to climb on our moving boxes/totes and stand up on them. We have a baby gate blocking the kitchen from the living room that we also use for the dogs and Olivia is bound and determined to climb over it. She can get both feet off the ground and hang on it-pictures to come when she does!

The bottom picture is just a picture of her crib. In the front you can see where the hinges and bar goes across for folding the crib down to be used with infants. Up until last Friday, it looked like this. Friday night we caught her with both feet on this hinged bar ready to climb over! And not a worry in the world (for her). However it scared the crap out of us! Now we have it turned around so the front is now against the wall and the very tall side with no bars across is in front. Makes it hard to get her in and out when we need to, but until she's ready for her big girl bed, I guess this is what we have to do. Obviously the manufacturers weren't thinking of this when they made the crib.