6 years and counting!

6 years ago today Joe and I were beginning our married life together. Hard to believe we have been married for 6 years already! God has blessed us in so many ways, especially by giving us two precious kiddos! I can honestly say that I love Joe more today than I did on this day 6 years ago. He really is the love of my life and my best friend. Thanks, Joe, for being such a wonderful husband, even when I don't often deserve it. I love you!

It's Christmas!

Merry Christmas! We've had a fun-filled, toy-filled, food-filled day here in Kansas at the Manthe house. Presents were overflowing from the tree this morning. The kids had a great time opening presents and playing with new toys. This was the first time everyone in the Manthe family has been together for Christmas for a while. Two grandparents, six sons, four daughter-in-laws, four granddaughters and two grandsons. Crazy, loud and fun!

All six kids before opening presents. Joe was standing behind me jumping up and down and waving his arms, so Mackenzie and Joey thought they should do that too.


How cute are these two in their Bumbo seats! Kylah and Deacon look like they could be twins.


Kylah is looking sweet as ever in her little Christmas outfit that Grammy got for her. Notice the bow in her hair! I was pretty excited that I got a bow in her hair for the first time.

Joe's brother Josh got a Wii for Christmas, so we have all been enjoying that today. Here is Joey getting a turn at bowling. He bowled a strike...and he was so excited (but I don't think he had a clue why he was excited!)

It was so fun to watch Joey open his presents all by himself this year, and watch the look of awe on his face as he realized what each present was. Here he is opening a huge box of Cars loot from Grandpa and Nana.

Kylah got to open some of her presents too. We are realizing that the older the kids get the more expensive the toys get!

I hope everyone had a wonderful day. It was a little wierd not to be able to talk to my parents on Christmas Day (they are in Jamaica), but thankfully we could at least text them. Mom and Dad, if you can read this, we love you and miss you, and can't wait to see you next week.

I wanted everyone to see our stockings. Joe's mom has made a homemade stocking for everyone in the family. The mantle is quite the site to see with 18 stockings hanging on it. Here are our four stockings. Aren't they cute?

Moving on...to a bigger car

We got a new car (well, new to us anyway)!! A 2007 Honda Pilot. Finally something we can all fit in comfortably (my knees don't have to hug the dashboard, and Joe can actually ride in the passenger seat!) We absolutely love it! We got a great deal on it, so we couldn't pass it up.

These aren't the actual pictures of our car, but they are of a Pilot in the same color. Joe can't understand why I don't wait and take pictures of our actual car and put those on here...I say that since it is snowing and about zero degrees outside, I would rather put pictures of a car that looks just like ours!

We'll get lots of time to get to know our car. We drove it to Kansas tonight, and we'll be here through Sunday. And then next Tuesday we'll be driving to Indiana. Needless to say, we are very thankful for our portable DVD player!

I'll post some pictures of the Christmas festivities as soon as I have some. Good thing we had a bigger car to bring our five bags of presents here!

Just so the rest of you can be as jealous as I am...my parents are enjoying 80 degree weather right now in Jamaica!

toys, toys, toys

Josh, Val, Mackenzie, Bella and Deacon came to visit us again for a few days. We always have a great time with them. Joey just loves his cousins, and the adults like going out to dinner sans kids!

Joey and Bella shootin' some hoops. (Notice the gazillion toys scattered on the floor...)

Joey and Mackenzie playing with the toys in the toy box.

An update on the sizes of Kylah and Deacon. They're about the same length, and we think Deacon is starting to surpass Kylah on the weight. Kylah is 6.5 months old, and Deacon is 3 months old.

Look who's sitting up all by herself now!! She loves the new freedom.

Like I said, we love going out the four of us without the kids (even though we do love our kids...) We had a great time out. We ate dinner at Famous Dave's, who informed us as we were ordering that they were out of brisket. Seriously?! How can you be out of your signature dish? It seemed like they were out of everything. We were just waiting for the waitress to tell us they were out of barbeque sauce!! Thanks again to Chris and Brynn for watching all the kids.

It was actually fun saying goodbye, because we could say, "see you next week!" Always nice to be able to say that. We will be spending Christmas in Kansas with Joe's family. Should be crazy, loud and fun (which doesn't sound much different than the Manes family get-together's!) :)

Speaking of Christmas...we still have quite a bit of shopping to do...when will I have the time?? Hopefully early next week after we are all done with the musical at church.

Christmas cookies!

Joey and I (and Kylah too!) made some Christmas cookies yesterday. I told Joey that we would make them after he woke up from his nap, so he was pretty excited all day to make them. He got to crack an egg into the batter all by himself, stir, and then help me roll out the dough and cut out shapes. There were definitely a few times that I had to stop him before he destroyed the shape that he had just made (I think he thought it was play-dough at first.) We had a fun time. Kylah sat in her bumbo chair watching and desprately trying to grab anything she could reach.

After making the cookies, I decided Joey's attention span wasn't long enough to decorate them last night too, so we decorated them today with a group of his little friends. Every one of them ate more of the frosting than they actually put on their cookies, but, hey, I wanted to do the same thing!

Joey especially likes the sprinkles and sugars. As you can see, I didn't realize this one didn't have a shaker cap on it until after he had dumped all the contents out onto the table. (which he is about to do...)

Here's a sweet one of Kylah to make up for the disgusting picture in the last post. :)

A foreshadowing of things to come???? "Out of my way, Joey; mommy's trying to take a picture of me!"

I think I just ate one too many of the Christmas cookies we decorated... :)

a little of this and that

Joe sang a song in church this morning. The song was a duet originally done by David Phelps (which those of you close to Joe know that he is Joe's idol.) It was a song that he's been wanting to sing for over a year, but had to wait until now because it is a Christmas song. It was fun because he got to sing it with our good friend Amy. They did a great job.

Just because we all need a smile today...

This next one is not for those with weak stomachs...well, it's really not that bad, so go ahead and look. Yep, I caught Kylah in the middle of spitting up! A fraction of a second later, this white stuff was all over the front of her. :)

Tonight we had rehearsal for our Christmas musical. It was actually a dress rehearsal, so when we got home tonight, I was still in my dress that I wear in the musical. When I walked in the door, Joey came up to me and said, "Mommy, you're a princess!" How sweet is that?! My first thought was, oh, he thinks I look beautiful like a princess. But after a second I realized that I hardly ever wear dresses, especially one that twirls out at the bottom, so he thought I must be a princess if I was wearing a dress! Either way, I thought it was pretty sweet. And he kept saying it over and over.

Deck the Halls

Last night we decorated the tree when Joe got home from work. Kylah had already given in and gone to bed, but we let Joey stay up late to help us. He was SO excited. He literally could not stop himself from grabbing the ornaments, even though he was supposed to wait for mommy to hand them to him. He has to have the tree lights on anytime we are home.

He was taking his job very seriously.

His favorite thing was putting together his own little nativity set. Joey's friend Connor gave this to Joey for Christmas last year. It is fun to see him play with it this year. When he first got the pieces out, he started rocking the little baby Jesus!

As I'm posting this, I realize I never took a picture of the finished product. Well, maybe next post I'll show you the fully decorated tree.

Unfortunately, my wonderful husband refuses to put Christmas lights up on the outside of our house. I don't know exactly why, but apparently it's not one of his things. (I'm hoping to keep trying to persuade him as the kids get older, though!) But I do want to thank those of you who do put lights up on your house, because both Joey and I love driving around and looking at all the fun lights in the neighborhood.

Manes Thanksgiving 2008

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. We all were at my Aunt and Uncle's house in Fremont, NE. My parents, Joe and I and the kids drove up there every day and then drove back to Omaha at night to sleep. The kids were troopers, being put to bed there and then being woken up and brought home again. I'm thinking Kylah is going to need some re-training in the sleep department since she's been getting a midnight feeding when we got home! Oh well, it was worth it! :)

Kylah looks like she is very much in love with her daddy.

Did I mention that we had around 35 people at Thanksgiving dinner?! Here is my brother Tony mashing the potatoes. There were so many that a normal mixer just wouldn't cut it.

Joe taking a turn carving the turkey. My favorite turkey is the one my uncle smokes on the grill...yummy!

Papa got in lots of play time with his two favorite grandsons.

This is the annual post-Thanksgiving meal football game. We play against the family next door. Needless to say, with all of our tall and athletic guys we won quite nicely!

On Friday night we took all the little kids to the Christmas walk in downtown Fremont. They were all so cute dressed up in their warm outfits. Joey and Michael liked the little train the best. I liked looking at all the gingerbread houses.

Joey and Michael shared the stroller together. They are quite the good buds.

Kylah also enjoyed the Christmas walk. (Well, until I had to carry her for a while because she was screaming.)

Hanging out together on Saturday. That was a nice relaxing day.

Rock band was a hit. Here's my cousin Tommy taking a turn at the drums.

Gina, Andy and Nicole.

We had a great weekend, but as usual it went way too fast. We consumed way too much food. Did I mention that my Uncle Pete is a phenomenal cook? Joe and I stole his recipes for his Italian beef subs and his enchiladas. Now I'm going to have to work on getting back into shape before the next holiday comes! :)

Breakfast of Champions

Here is our little man and his big man's breakfast. Two packets of oatmeal? Check. One banana? Check. A bowl of yogurt? Check. One scrambled egg? Check. One cup of milk? Check. Four spoons and one fork (all of which were necessary according to his highness)? Check, check.

Amazing, isn't it? He actually ate most of this, minus maybe half of the banana.
This is what he asks for every morning that we are home. He doesn't usually get all of it, but I was feeling generous this morning. He actually talks about it at night before he goes to bed, as if he's afraid maybe he won't get to eat all of his favorite things for breakfast. :) How he doesn't weigh 100 pounds I don't know. I guess he's a growing boy!

We love weekends

We've had a fun and relaxing weekend so far. We hung out with some friends last night, hung out today, I worked out, took a little nap, and got my hair cut today. Now Jody and Jennifer are here. Joey has been talking about Grandpa and Nana coming all day long, so he was so excited when they got here. I think he was a little confused that he was going to Grandpa's house, so I had to keep reminding him that Grandpa and Nana were coming to Joey's house. He's already been playing cars with Grandpa.





I thought this was a pretty cute picture of Joey and Kylah I took this morning.

Joey being tickled by daddy.

Playing the "throw" game with daddy. Let's see...we have the blanket game, the 'go' game...we're pretty creative on names of the games we make up.

Kylah is also ticklish. She's my sweet little girl.

I don't know about you, but I think Kylah looks so old in this picture.

I had to throw this picture in here. Joe took it on Tuesday because Joey likes Kylah to be in her exersaucer when he is playing in the jumperoo. But what I think is funny is that they're in their jammies....again. :)

I'll post some more pictures of Grandpa and Nana's visit later!

Getting ready for bed

I shot some pictures of the kids getting ready for bed tonight. They were pretty cute.

Kylah loves bath time these days. She kicks and splashes like crazy. Have I mentioned lately what an easy-going baby she is? She just goes with the flow, only barely crying when she's hungry or tired. And then she just puts her fingers in her mouth and seems to be fine again. Everyone tells me she's the typical second child. We're loving it. And she thinks Joey is the best person in the world...I love watching them interact together.

Cuddly, cute and clean in her towel after her bath. I'm loving how her eyes match the deep blue of the towel. I'm not sure where my children got their wonderful eye lashes, but I'm so glad they did!

Not sure he's getting many teeth clean here...

That's better. (and look at those lashes!)

Reading one of his favorite books with daddy. Daddy uses cool voices to make the book so fun.

One of Joey's favorite new things to do is to read his own little Bible. He kept wanting to take mine and pretend to read it, so we got out his little Bible that he got when he was dedicated. (Joe's pastor from his church in Kansas sent it for Joey.) I wonder what's going through his mind when he's "reading" it. But he can't go to bed without having his Bible with him in bed.

We went to visit my grandma today for her birthday. (Of course, I don't have any pictures because I forgot my camera!) She made eggs and bacon for us, which was a hit with Joey. She is known as "Nona" to all of her great-grandchildren. Every time I called her "Grandma" Joey corrected me by saying "no grandma, Nona!" Oh, yeah, I forgot! We had a wonderful morning. And what a cool great-grandma that lets her 2 year old great-grandson play with her lift chair by himself for 30 minutes! Needless to say, Joey hasn't stopped talking about Nona! Happy Birthday, Grandma...we love you!