Happy 2010!

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas! Our Christmas was a little different this year but still fun! We moved into our new house on Dec. 18 (Mike's birthday!). We absolutely love it!! The girls love having their own rooms again, and I can already tell that I am a much better cook in our new kitchen! Ha ha.

The girls were a huge help in packing up the house (in case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic. We probably packed everything at least twice because as soon as I'd get things in a box, the girls would take them out!)

They had fun climbing in the empty tupperwares and boxes.
Elsie is pretty petite for her age, and the biggest problem with that is that some of her pants won't stay up! She came walking down the hall towards me, and her pants fell down to her ankles! It was pretty funny!


Spaghetti night at the Rabus household (don't worry...Mike and I kept our shirts on!)


Even though we had just moved, we still put our Christmas decorations up! Sophie was very excited about decorating the tree this year. She tended to put her ornaments all on the same branch. It was pretty cute.

Sophie with some of her Christmas presents.

We got to see something we don't usually get to see on Christmas in Oklahoma: snow!! We had the Blizzard of '09 on Christmas Eve. I was scheduled to work that night, and Mike was going to drive me because the roads were really bad. They actually closed down every highway in the metro area because of snow. We packed up the car with water, food, extra clothes and were headed to a neighbors' house to drop the kids off. That was the plan, but we got stuck in a snow drift about 2 houses down from our house. That's how bad the roads were!! 45 minutes later, Mike finally managed to dig us out and we returned home. So, I didn't make it in to work (along with most of the night shift) and those poor day nurses had to stay all night! I felt really bad for them! We took some pictures of the snow from our house.

You can see the snow drifts on our back porch.

The next morning...

Elsie was not fond of the fort that Mike dug in our front yard.

More random pictures..

My Grandma Ellie turned 80, so the girls and I flew out to Michigan to celebrate with her. My sister and her boys and my parents also came out. We crashed at my Uncle Dave's house (sorry again for the mess, Unc!).

Sophie and Micah had so much fun playing together!

Caleb and Elsie

Uncle Dave and the kids

The birthday party was at a really neat hotel in Holland, MI. We got rooms in the hotel so we could spend the night there after the party. This bed had a flat screen tv mounted on the wall right in front of it, so the kids watched some cartoons before bed.

Grandma Ellie and the kids

My cousin Chris with Micah and Sophie (Sophie told me that she liked Chris' long hair!)

We got back to OK on Jan.1 and Mike's parents were there to greet us! They were supposed to come over Christmas, but they got the stomach flu and decided to come out later instead.

The kids at the banjo museum.

Mike making lefse, a Christmas family tradition. It is a Swedish flatbread made from potatoes and cooked on a special lefse gridle. You eat it with butter and sugar. It is very yummy!

Sophie and Elsie liked the lefse too, Elsie especially.

We also had potato sausage, another Swedish dish. We used our sausage grinder to mix the meat and potatoes and then put it into casings.

As you can tell, Elsie's favorite part of Christmas dinner was the sweet potatoes!

Happy new year!!