a little of this...a little of that: Visit with D Greggs

Before I start blogging about more current events, I wanted to do a quick recap of our visit to our family up north.

We went back in December for 1 week and had a great time. Mike's twin brother is friends with a veterinarian. Their last name is McDonald. And they live on a farm. I'm not kidding!

They had some animals so we thought it would be fun to go check it out.

I normally don't post pictures of my boys looking sad because it makes me sad to look at them. But this kind of cracks me up. Matthew LOVED every moment of this little visit to a small farm. He loved the horses, the goats, the chickens, all of it. Peter HATED it. He wanted to stay in the car, he didn't want to come and look at the horses at all.

I carried Peter over to this little pen where the goats were and he was doing better. But then when I took their picture, he saw a horse--100 feet away mind you--and he freaked out again. I found it fascinating that the 2 of them could have such different reactions. I will be interested to see how much of it has to do with Matthew's age and how much of it is his personality. Peter told us later that he had thought the horses were going to eat him. I reassured him that horses only eat hay and apples. Poor guy.

My nieces had fun riding around.....

Matthew and Auntie KP enjoying a horse....


Doing what Gregg men do best....

We enjoyed 2 Christmases while we were there--one with Mike's twin and one with his older brother

Not a lot to do in Oakdale (no offense)...this is an abandoned paper mill.

I got a new camera for Christmas....Here I am testing my panoramic setting...

Here I am being artsy:

Our 2nd Christmas with the Mike's older brother's family

So cute. Hannah wanted to put on a "circus" for the boys. They sat and watched....

One of the many fun meals around the table

Here is another fun moment. It was a lot of fun to have all the cousins together!

So much so, that we thought it important to take a picture! It is pretty difficult to get 8 kids to look at a camera, but our friend Mallory did an excellent job!


last minute primping

Here are some of my favorite shots:

Everytime we go visit I make my nieces and nephews sit on a couch in the D Greggs place....Needless to say, after having to take pictures for an hour they weren't really into it, but they humored me. It is fun to compare pictures from past visits!

We had a very mellow New Year's Eve. The kids tried to watch Tangled but my boys got too scared so they settled for Toy Story 2. Always a favorite. I had seen these silly little marshmallow things on Pinterest, so I whipped those up for a fun New Year's treat.