Family Photo Session

The whole VandenAkker family..All 14 1/2 of us.

Pake & Oma with Noah, Luke, and Andrew

The Pelton family enjoying their first Christmas as a family of three.

The 7 VandenAkker kids from youngest to oldest.

Christmas Day...

The VandenAkker family all came up to our house for Christmas Dinner. It is a rare occasion to have all of us together, so Pake and Oma were very excited to have all their kids and the three grandboys all in one house. We ate a yummy dinner, played with our new cousin Noah, did our annual family gift exchange, and played games. Everyone spent the night and we were able to hang out and celebrate Andy and Luke's birthday the following day.

Christmas Morning

We spent Christmas morning as a family opening gifts and watching the Disneyland parade. The boys were dressed in their Christmas Mickey Mouse PJ's and slippers. Santa left them a play kitchen with a shopping cart and cash register (yes, they did ask for this and we did manage to find a blue one). They also got big "diggers" (excavators) from daddy and mommy. They had been anxiously awaiting to see if they were going to get their diggers and they finally appeared on Christmas morning. Daddy (Santa) also surprised mommy with a special necklace that she had wanted with little charms on it that have my boys names engraved on it. She was very excited!!!

Christmas Eve at Grampie and Grammie's

We spent Christmas Eve day with my family at my parent's house. The kids were full of excitement and loving all their new toys. We spent the day hanging out, opening gifts, eating, going to church, and walking around to look at Christmas lights. It was a great Christmas Eve day.

Brotherly Love

These boys love to hug eachother every now and them. Luke was giving Andrew a backrub when he got up from his nap and then the hugs began. If you notice the last picture Luke got a little carried away with his hug. Andrew said in a very mature manner (it sounded like he could be a 50 year old man), "OK, OK, Luke you are kinda hurting my pee-pee." I love these boys!!

Gingerbread House Making

On the Saturday before Christmas we made gingerbread houses at the neighbors house. The boy's friends Spencer and Abigail invited them over to enjoy one of their family traditions with them. We were definately the rookies because our house could not stay together. The moms tried for a while and then the dads tried, but no one could maser keeping it all stuck together. We ended up with a roofless house and two gingerbread men sleeping inside. The boys didn't care as long as they could keep eating the candy toppings.

Winter Wonderland...

We decided at breakfast this morning that since daddy had the day off of work we should go to the mountains and sled. The boys were very excited. When we said that we had to get our snow suits ready Luke ran to his room and came running out with his bright green Mickey swim suit. "Got my suit," he said, and he insisted that he wear his swim suit over his sweat pants, so he did. We just got a ton of snow, so the mountains were beautiful. The powder was so deep that we had trouble walking through it. You'll read in the post below how our boys enjoyed the snow in two very different ways.