Holiday Recap

Below you will see pictures from many of the activities we participated in during the Holidays with some brief descriptions. :)

First, you have a photo collage of the Phillips' Christmas parties. (We opened stockings on Christmas Eve and presents under the tree Christmas morning.)

• Aren and Leah are holding Christmas cards that feature a Santa that was at a pet store. Joel's parents took their bunny Henry to see Santa. How great is that?!
• Katie and JP got some tent stakes from us. These represented the steak dinner we were going to cook for them when they visited us.
• Kyper got some fun gifts--books, stacking rings and cups.
• Aren made us a beautiful stained glass picture frame.
  

After Christmas morning at the Phillips we headed to Zeeland Christian's gym for the great big Koning clan party. The kids have so much fun there.

After the extended Koning party, we headed to Joel's cousins' house for his extended family's party. We opened some gifts and the guys played some round robin.On Saturday we had the Koning family party.

• Uncle Jeff is very helpful when it comes to putting together new lego sets.
  
• My parents got a Wii a few weeks ago, so we had some fun with that.
• Peyton and Sydney got Kyper a fun polar bear hat.
  

We headed back to Detroit metro on Sunday, Dec. 27. Joel started his next rotation (family medicine.) JP, Katie and their friend Ryan were driving back to Arlington and stopped in to celebrate New Years with us in Detroit. It was fun

• The boys played some ladder ball.
• Joel and I cooked them a nice steak dinner and had fondue for dessert.
• We played some Dutch Blitz.
• We stayed up too late.
  

Other fun things that we did while we were in West Michigan for the week of Christmas:

• Went to Meijer Garden with my mom, brother and Syd and Peyton to see Christmas trees from around the world. (No pictures sorry--forgot to take the camera.)
  
• Joel made sure to hit the beach with his brothers and dad.
• We had a very nice Christmas brunch with our high school friends. Erin was an awesome host. We missed Rebecca, John and Matt. We finally met Bethany's future husband--Justin. I approve. ;)
  
• Kyper now rolls over in his sleep--we found him sleeping on his tummy. It was cute.

Some not so fun things that happened on our break:

• Joel got sick--we think it was strep throat. (Fortunately, no one else got it.)
• Kyper got way off schedule and I think he is still recuperating--we are now going on week three of needing to be fed somewhere between 2:30am and 4:30am after months of not needing this. How do I break this and get back to a full night's sleep?! (Although, I am also thinking that a growth spurt might be occurring and/or teething, or it is a combination of all three things!)
  

Besides those two things our break was awesome. :) Hope you enjoyed our Holiday recap.