Christmas 2010

This past Christmas we spent 2 weeks with Maeby's Nana & Grandpa Eskelsen in North Carolina!

Maeby was VERY excited to fly on airplanes - she LOVES airplanes and airports and is an awesome little traveler!

While at Nana & Grandpa's house we did all kinds of fun things!

Decorated cookies & a gingerbread house with Tommy & Ilse.

She shared all of her food with the dogs - Muffin & Dutches.

Rarely napped - but found ways to catch a few zzzz's.

Had lots of fun with the horses!

While we were there we headed down to Charleston, South Carolina. On the way we stopped for lunch and Maeby had her first hamburger:

We saw a lot in Charleston and went to lots of cool places (too many to include in this post) It was fun to get to spend some one on one time with Amy & Josh who met us in Charleston and then came back to Nana & Grandpa's house with us afterwards.

Maeby also discovered her LOVE of cannons. She calls them "candles" but she can tell you exactly what they do. She thinks there the greatest thing ever!

Looking at where the Civil War started.

Seeing if Buzz & Woody are in there (no joke)

After the weekend in Charleston we spent an afternoon at a wildlife park called The Lazy 5 ranch. We drove through the park and saw, fed & pet many cool animals from all over the world. Maeby is now afraid of large birds after one poked its head in her window looking for food.

Just before Christmas Unlce Jon, Aunt Emily, Tommy & Ilse joined the party. We had a really fun Christmas Eve which included the nativity, a poetry reading by Ilse, an original song from Ilse & Jon and of course Santa Mouse!

Christmas Morning:

On Christmas Night it started to snow and we got a huge dump of snow the next day. It was so fun to play in - and was a nice payoff for how freezing cold the weather had been the whole time we'd been there.

Maeby getting in on the snowball fight.

The day after the snow hit we flew home. It took us two days, six flights and a lot of screaming and yelling at incompetent airline workers who are as unhelpful as possible.

Nonetheless, Maeby was a trooper and had fun in all the different airports and on all the different airplanes. She did AWESOME - her Mama & Papa, not so much.

view of Chicago from the airplane - we ended up spending the night here and much of the next day.

What a wonderful and memorable Christmas trip. We were so thankful that we were able to go and have some special time with Maeby's Nana & Grandpa. We don't get to see them nearly often enough. For a slideshow of ALL of our pictures & videos of this trip you can CLICK HERE.

Oregon Coast Aquarium Lights

In early December we went to the Aquarium Lights to see the place lit up and see all the fish!

At the end Maeby saw Santa (who she didn't know existed until then) but had fun trying to give him high 5's.

O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!

The past two years we've gone to a local Christmas Tree farm called Donnovan's Farms for our tree. Its big enough to have a lot of trees but small enough that we don't get lost!

Maeby didn't get the idea of decorating so much or that things need to STAY on the tree, but she LOVED the lights!

And she got to put the star on top (with a little help from Papa)

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving - The Jurgens Family's FAVORITE holiday!

We spent it up in Washington with my sister, brother, grandma and my sister's in-laws + a few additional kind of family members, but not really, but that's ok because we still like 'em!

Maeby dug right in - mostly she just wanted desert!

She had tons of fun playing with her Tia and her cousins!

And giving lots of Love to her Great - Grandma Eskelsen!

The next day she trooped out with her Aunt Karen and two of her cousins to do some black friday shopping!

Big November Snow

Yup, we're behind but we're catching up!

Here are a few pictures of Maeby playing in the snow back in November when we got a random huge dump.

She LOVES the snow!!!