Christmas Decorations

And here is my final Christmas post for 2014! I like to document what our house looks like at different times of the year, especially Christmas. I didn't crop or edit any of these pictures at all, so Mattie made it into one or two, but that's okay. :) 

Here's our house at Christmas 2013

Kock Christmases

On Christmas morning, after having breakfast with Trent's parents, we packed up the car and headed to Westside for our holiday stay there.

Our first stop in the afternoon was to Grandma and Grandpa Kock's. We had some snacks and then, after everyone was there, we headed downstairs to open presents. First, though, we all gathered for a family picture!

Jared served as our Santa again this year, a job my dad had always done. I miss the way he used to do things when he was being Santa and handing out presents. It makes me smile every time I think about it! Soon, though, we will all get used to the way Jared plays Santa and all of us and, eventually, his kids will love the way he does it!

Of course, we were all super spoiled with great gifts from each other!

After all the presents were opened, we had an amazing supper that Grandma made for us and played some games and just had a fun time (of course!).

Millie got to come along with us while her big sister stayed with Trent's parents. Here's one of her calmer moments :)

On the day after Christmas, we gathered in Manilla for Christmas with the Jons family.
When we got to town, we took turns going up to the Manor to see Grandma and Grandpa and wishing them a Merry Christmas and then we all got back together for our potluck supper.

Right after supper, the little kids opened their presents. It is so fun to see how excited they get about their things. Austin even got a box of redeemable cans and dollar bills and it was like the greatest thing he has ever gotten. So adorable!

The adults then did our gift card exchange and some of us did a white elephant gift exchange. The gift exchange included a lot of things from Grandma and Grandpa's house like a used box of crayons, mugs with old pictures of Barb and Pat and their kids, an old pajama t-shirt of Doreen's that we all used to wear, and some of Grandpa's old clip on ties. We had fun with that!

There was then one additional present from Doreen to the six of us cousins. There used to be a Keebler Elf cup that we all drank out of at Grandma's (that is now pretty worn out and has a bunch of teeth marks on it) and Doreen found six of them and gave each of us our own to have! So of course we had to take pictures with our cups!

We also had to take pictures of everyone separated by the months of  their birthdays. The best month, JUNE, is below :)

And, of course, Millie got to come, too!!

And last, but not least, we had our immediate family Christmas on the Saturday after Christmas. We got up early and all found our spots in the basement and Santa Jared handed out our presents. We, of course, took our traditional pictures in front of the tree to start off the morning.

And here's a few pictures of what we spoiled each other with!

Trent and Millie and I got to say around for a few more days after all the official parties and get-togethers were done and hung out with family, went to see The Hobbit movie with Dan, Dani, and Alex, and celebrated Jared's birthday! 

At the end of our 10 day Christmas vacation we were happy to get back to home (especially because I was knocked out with a cold and ready to just sleep in my bed for a while) but Christmas break is always the best time of the year! I'm already looking forward to next year!! (Even though it will be just a tad different next year - heehee!!)

Fredericksen Christmases

I told myself that I needed to post about Christmas before the end of January, but for several reasons, that just didn't happen. So here I am in February, finally getting to it... 

First, I never posted this family picture we took on Thanksgiving weekend right after we picked up the puppies. I'd say this was the official kick off to the Christmas season! I'm so happy that we got to include all members of our family - even the newest furry ones! (There's no way I could hold Millie like that anymore! Ahh! She was so tiny!)

Trent and I started our Christmas break on the 19th of December when we took off on our 10 day Christmas vacation trip to see family. We first went to his parents' house for the night and then started our Christmas celebrations on Saturday with a trip to his Grandma's house for lunch and a little gift opening. The girls received some money from their Great Grandma Fredericksen. I'd say Taylor was pretty dumbfounded by the amount that was in her card! She cracks me up!

This year, Christmas was pretty interesting. There were sick kids and sick adults all around, so we were pretty careful with who hung out with who and when. We had to postpone our family Christmas until Christmas Eve when the young girls were feeling better and when Melodie could at least handle sitting upright for a while. Being sick is no fun at all!!

In the days between events, Trent and I got to spend time with his parents watching some Christmas movies, playing games, eating good food, going to look at Christmas lights and Trent's mom and I even found some time to go and get our nails done. It was a nice and relaxing time!

Finally, when Christmas Eve came, some extended family came over for lunch. We were supposed to have our little gift exchange game that we do every year, but with several people being sick, we decided to postpone that until Easter when we'd all be together to cut down on some of the germ sharing!

Later in the evening, we had our gift opening with just immediate family. The girls got quite a few fun gifts and seeing how excited they get for different things is pretty awesome. Here's a few pictures from the evening.

Of course, the little puppies (Not even three months old at this point) got to play together. Never a dull moment with them around!

We ended the night with taking some pictures of each family (whether they wanted to or not!).

And I had to include another one of us because I love how Millie looks like she's smiling in this one! 

Goals for 2015

Here I am on the last day of 2014. It has been quite a year that seemed to just fly by!
We had great times with friends and family and some great times just hanging out by ourselves.

That's what we'll be doing tonight to ring in the new year. Last year, Trent wasn't feeling the best, so we partied at home by ourselves, and this year, it's me that is sick. We were supposed to make a quick trip up to Minneapolis to party through the night with friends, but we will be having pizza, little smokies, and some Sierra Mist while watching the ball drop and maybe putting a puzzle together here at home by ourselves!! Call us old, but that doesn't sound so bad to me! Then we'll have one more relaxing day before it's back to work for me! (Boo!)

This year, the only documented goal that I had this year was to read the whole Bible in chronological order. Trent and I both made that same goal and I finished mine today. I am going to do something similar next year, but I haven't quite decided what it's going to be. If it's going to be the whole thing or just parts of it so I can focus more on certain parts or something like that. I guess I probably should decide soon!

So as we look forward to the new year, there are just a couple goals that have been on my mind that I wanted to write down and accomplish this year. 

1. Take a course on how to better use my camera
I bought my Canon T5i early in 2014 and I haven't adequately learned how to use all its functions. So this year, hopefully sooner rather than later, I am going to take a class, probably online, on how to make the most of it! So if you have any suggestions, feel free to pass them along!

2. Knit something (Hopefully more than one thing, but I'm shooting low)
My Grandma Kock passed along some of my Great Grandma's knitting needles and some yarn to me this past week. My plans are to learn how to use them and knit something! Easy enough, right?! Now I just need a rocking chair to sit and rock in while I watch my Wheel of Fortune and knit... and I need my puppy to learn to not try to eat all the yarn!

3. Finish my 2011-2014 Photo Year Books
This year, I finished the first of the photo year books that I wanted to do. I did one for 2009-2010, the first year and a half of Trent and I's relationship. My goal for this year is to get all caught up and then hopefully just do them as the years go on and stay up-to-date from now on.
I know I can hear you all laughing right now at my wishful thinking!!

4. Go hiking at Dayton Oaks where we got engaged
This is something that I have had on my mind to do for a while now, but I have never made it a point to find time to go and do it. I would love to go back to where we got engaged and go hiking again and hopefully it would be on a day that is less rainy.

If I get those things accomplished among all the other great things that I know will happen in 2015, I will be one happy girl!

Have a happy and safe New Year's Eve, everyone!
Here's to an AMAZING 2015!!!
I know it's going to be a great year!

Merry Christmas from the Fredericksens!!!

Millie and Mattie Monday!

OK, so maybe Millie and Mattie Monday isn't a real thing, but it is today. 

Since I just finally posted yesterday about when we picked Millie up on the last weekend of November, I wanted to post a few of the many random pictures we have of Millie and of Millie and Mattie together from the past two weeks.

ONE.

I had said in the last post about Millie, that Mattie didn't like her so much when we first brought her home. Mattie seemed quite stressed for those first days. Now though, Mattie will play and at least entertain Millie's puppiness! 

This video was taken on the Monday after we brought Millie home. I had taken the day off work, so I spent the day with the dogs. We spent some time in the backyard and this just shows Mattie's aversion to Millie. 

We've made quite a bit of progress since then...

TWO.

Millie loves to hide under our chairs. She crawls under there quite often to nap... She'd better savor it while she can though, because soon enough, she won't be able to fit!

In this instance below, Millie took advantage of being able to fit under the chair to torture Mattie.  At least Mattie is wanting to play now and isn't wanting ignoring Millie completely!

THREE.

 Millie can't get up on the furniture because 1) she's not big enough and can't jump that high yet and 2) we are trying to make it so she doesn't ever think that's okay for her to do (we'll see how that goes since Mattie is allowed on the furniture). So for now, that is Mattie's refuge from Millie. When Mattie's had enough of Millie, she'll jump on the couch or the chair and Millie tries her best to get her until we tell her to get down. Hopefully we can keep up the fight of making her stay off the furniture when she's big enough to make that leap!

FOUR.
My mom's turtle, Bill, was nice enough to send Millie a card welcoming her to the family. I read her the card and then let her see the picture on the card so Millie could see what Bill looked like. I don't think Bill would fare very well if he really was on the floor with Millie.

Here's Millie in action meeting Bill (or a look alike of him)

FIVE.
Trent let Mattie run around outside last weekend and Millie took advantage of that opportunity to dig. So that meant Millie got her first bath at our house.

SIX.

And now there's these pictures which makes it look like we're hosting dog fights at our house - but I promise it's friendly playing, no matter how mean they look.

And then they calm down and just play with their toys next to each other and all is calm for a short while!

SEVEN.
We took advantage of the nice weather yesterday to grill and play with the dogs outside. It was really the first time we were able to let them both run around and play outside and have them both be civil with each other. I'm sure it was just a glimpse of the fun to come!

EIGHT.

I wanted to take a picture of them each week sitting next to each other to gauge Millie's growth... but since Mattie wanted nothing to do with Millie for the first week and because it's just pretty impossible to get a picture of them both sitting still, that's been pretty hopeless... I did get a picture of them kind of sitting by each other on Sunday, though. So I'll take it.

NINE.

I also got them laying by each other... one on the inside of the patio door and one on the outside! :)