A Lot to Update

I would like to start off this epic blog post by wishing everyone a belated Merry Christmas and extend our sincerest wishes for a happy and prosperous 2010. If you were not blessed to receive our annual Christmas card, here is the picture that we used on the card. Check out Kai in his suit...very handsome!There are always so many things to do during the Christmas season that it is easy to spend all of your time focusing on the to-do list and less time spending time with your loved ones (and spend even less thinking about the birth of our savior, Jesus). We spent quite a bit of time making yummy Christmas cookies and some chocolate covered peanut butter balls (some call them buckeyes but they are just too good for a Michigan kid who went to Purdue to give them such an awful name). We made the Christmas cookies for our church's small group Christmas celebration during the day and then had all of the kids in the group decorate them.

Kai loved mixing up the cookies and he was actually pretty helpful!
Here are the kids decorating the cookies. They did a good job decorating. Kai did a good job eating the ones that he was given to decorate...
Here are some of the finished cookies. They were incredible!
The party with our small group was on December 13th. We spent the next week getting ready to head up to Northwest Ohio to do Christmas celebrations with our families. We first went to my parents place in Edon, where we took a stunning Hugh Lesnet family photo.
Grandpa Lesnet helped Kai put together a wooden red tractor. It took longer than we thought it would to put it together and I think that they were both glad when the assembly was over.
The next day we did Christmas with the Kit Eridon family. We had perfect attendance as Stephanie's sister Kimberly joined us via teleconference. There she is seated comfortably on the sofa!
Here is Kai helping pass out the presents. He did a good job but as you can imagine, he got a little distracted when he was to distribute a present to himself.
After opening gifts, we took Kai to the Small (Bowling Green, Ohio's Woodland Mall) to see Santa. It is free to see Santa at the Small, which was good because Kai did not like Santa and would only sit on daddy's lap next to Santa for a photo op. Thank you Santa, you were a great sport!
The next day, December 20th, we woke up and had some breakfast before heading down to Findlay, Ohio to have a Christmas celebration with Stephanie's mom's family. Kai loved sharing his breakfast with his grandpa Eridon!
Here is a group shot of the James and Jean Cornely family members in attendance.
On Christmas eve, the Indiana Lesnets got up early and got on a plane headed for sunny southern California to see my dad's sisters! We landed at Orange County Airport at around 9am California time and were picked up by Aunt Janet in her black convertible. We went and grabbed some casual Mexican at Rubio's which was delicious, then were off to Aunt Nora's townhome for a little rest. That evening, Aunt Janet took us to The Orange County Mining Company for an amazing Christmas eve steak dinner!

Christmas day, we got up and went to the park where Kai enjoyed the sunny skies and the temps in the mid 50's. The temps were about 10 degrees below normal the entire time we were out there but we were fine with that as they were about 30 degrees warmer than the weather here in central Indiana.
After a little time at the park, Aunt Nora took us down to Balboa Island. We changed Kai's diaper on this pier and then he touched the ocean off a pier for the first time.An Indiana Lesnet family picture on Balboa Island.
That evening, we had a fantastic Christmas dinner with Jim and Patty who welcomed us in to their home with open arms. We hadn't met them before but we did have a connection as Jim's sister is married to one of my dad's cousins. Also joining us was Aunt Nora and my cousin Sean (who is Jim and Patty's nephew) and his family.

On December 26th, we went up to Pasadena to Aunt Janet's house. We had a great time up there as we went to see a Rose Bowl Parade float being built and went to the LA Zoo. That evening, Aunt Janet made us a great turkey dinner with all the fixin's. Yummm!!After dinner, Aunt Janet read books to Kai by the fire.


On the 27th, we went to Huntington Beach and had lunch at Ruby's Diner at the end of the pier. The view was amazing and the retro vibe was pretty sweet too. Here are a couple of pictures of us hanging out on the pier.
After lunch on the pier, we took Kai down to the beach to do a little wading in the ocean. Kai is by no means a daredevil so we were a little concerned about how he would like it since the surf was very high that day.

Here are daddy and Kai heading to the water, would he like it?
Wading in for the first time, those are big waves out there and the water is chilly.

Hold on tight to daddy! Those waves are no joke!He loved it and didn't want to leave! We got pretty wet though so we had to go.


We had a fantastic time in Southern California and our days were action packed. We had planned on staying for another day but Kai was having too much fun to sleep and mom and I were getting very tired so we took the redeye flight home last night and got in to Indy this morning at 6. We got home and Kai took a 3 hour nap (so did mom and dad), he's napping again and has been down for nearly 3 hours.

We are looking forward to our week off work this week (Kai's daycare is closed) and will definitely blog about our adventures.

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about." - Luke 2:15

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

It has been a pretty quiet week here for the Indiana Lesnets and next week will hopefully be quiet as well.

Stephanie will be flying out to Washington DC tomorrow afternoon and is supposed to return on Wednesday evening. Kai, Kiki, and I will be holding down the fort in her absence. Us dudes and Kiki do pretty well while mom is away but if anyone out there would like to take pity on us and have us over for dinner...

Here is some highlights from our last few days:

Kai is still completely in love with his Legos. He runs to them as soon as he wakes up, gets home, finishes eating...well, you get the idea.
Kai refused to wear a hat for most of his life thus far. There are times when we could trick him in to wearing one and he would keep it on if it was cold enough that the hat was helpful. That has changed now and he loves to wear his hats. Here he is in his high chair with his hat on. He's also playing with one of his Lego people.
We went to the lights at the Indianapolis Zoo on tonight with Master P and his folks. It was about 30 degrees. The lights were sweet but Kai was mostly disappointed as most of the animals were inside and couldn't be seen.


Since we don't scrapbook, or have a "brag book", I have to brag up my kid here so that I can read up on it later to remember what he was able to do at what age. Kai's language and physical development is so fun. He puts together many 3 and 4 word sentences. He can count to 10 in English, Spanish, and Sign Language. He can jump. He knows several songs the hand motions to Itsy Bitsy Spider, Wheels on the Bus, Row Row Row Your Boat, Who's the King of the Jungle, Jesus Loves Me, Baa Baa Black Sheep.

At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. - Matthew 11:25

Los Lonely Boys

The Lesnet boys are running the show around here for the next 2 weeks as momma is doing some traveling for work.
Here is a picture of Kai with one of his best gifts ever! A family from our small group at church gave these Lego's and table to Kai as their children are too big for these little kid blocks. Thank you Westbergs!!
Then everyone deserted him and fled. - Mark 14:50

The Void Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Happy Holidays!! It's official, we are past Thanksgiving, survived Black Friday, tomorrow is Cyber Monday, and the countdown to Christmas and the end of the year is on!

This past week we only had to go to work for 3 days! Although we are very thankful for our jobs it is very nice to have a 4 day weekend and not come back to work feeling like you missed a lot. We even got home while it was still light out one evening and raked some leaves.

We had a great Thanksgiving with our families up in Northwest Ohio. We left Thanksgiving morning to spend time with Chad's family. We have a big dinner each year at the First Presbyterian Church in Montpelier with all of the Briner cousins. Our turnout was smaller than usual with only 45 or so but it was still a great time. After dinner, we went back to Grandpa and Grandma Lesnet's for a while.

Here is Kai playing with the bomber airplane that he got Grandpa for his birthday while Grandma looks on.
I did not pack very well so I had to brave the Black Friday crowds at Wal-Mart of Bowling Green early Friday morning. It was completely dead, I saw a couple of folks buying TV's and there was a crowd around the DVD displays but other than that it was pretty quiet. I believe that this is my first Black Friday morning experience and although it wasn't that crowded, I would have rather packed better and stayed in.

On Friday we did another Thanksgiving meal with Stephanie's folks, Auntie Jessica, and Grandpa Eridon's twin brother's family. We forgot to take pictures as Kai napped through much of the hanging out time after dinner.

On Saturday, we dressed Kai in this awesome dress shirt with sweater vest. It is hard to get a picture of Kai without his fingers in his mouth...its also hard to get a picture of Kai with Grandpa Eridon without proud Grandpa Eridon smiling from ear to ear!
Two handsome Lesnet men getting ready for their 3rd turkey dinner in 3 days.
On Saturday we had yet another awesome turkey dinner with Grandma Eridon's sister's family. We always have a great time hanging out with them and Kai loves playing with his cousins. We didn't do a very good job getting pictures of this gathering either but we did score a family shot before leaving.
We left Ohio with full bellies but we also left with various ailments. Kai picked up the croup, Stephanie a head cold, and I have sinusitis. We had to call in sick to church this morning since Stephanie and I were scheduled to work in the children's ministry this Sunday. We spent the morning at the urgent care instead.

After some afternoon naps, we got up feeling a little better and did some decorating for Christmas. Kai was a big help putting ornaments on the tree this year and is soooo excited about having a tree in the house.
This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. - Matthew 1:18

CONTEST!!

The Indiana Lesnets are big winners and now you all have a chance to be big winners too!

Stephanie won a contest that was sponsored by one of our friend's blogs and we have been tasked to "pay it forward" and have a contest with prizes for ourselves. In the spirit of the Thanksgiving season, we would like everyone to comment on our blog with something (or somethings) that you are most thankful for. Prizes will be awesome and will be based on the things we are most thankful for!

Below is a picture of the plunder that Stephanie won from our friends contest...the prizes for our contest will be awesomer than these but these are pretty nice.
Kai has now been twice bitten at school. This week Kai was minding his own business eating his lunch when one of his "friends" decided that they wanted Kai's milk. Kai used his words and politely told his "friend" "no" that they could not have his milk. His "friend" did not like that answer so they bit him on the arm! The last time Kai was bit, we were able to get him to snitch on the perpetrator, but this time he would just giggle and list each of his friends and say that they bit him. That jerk...er, I mean "friend" left a pretty good mark, I wonder if we could use the dental records to solve this case?

This weekend, we got on a jet plane and headed up to the Twin Cities for a little family get away.

Kai was very excited about the trip and spent his entire morning at school telling everyone that he was going to fly in an airplane. Stephanie and I worked half days on Thursday and picked him up right before his nap time to go down to the airport. He had a great time at the airport looking at airplanes and all of the other trucks and equipment that airlines use at the terminal. He also really enjoyed the flight!
We arrived in Minneapolis at about 4:30 Minnesota time, had dinner at Boston Market (they've closed down most of them here in Central Indiana), and got to our hotel at around 6 or so. The hotel had a pack-and-play for Kai to sleep in but he hated it and refused to sleep in it...yeah, it was a rough night.

We were up super early on Friday morning so we decided to crash the hotel swimming pool. The pool didn't officially open until 7:00 but it was 7:00 somewhere and we had a wide awake kid so we ignored the rules and went for a very early morning swim. We had a nice time in the pool but Stephanie and I would have preferred sleeping a little longer.

There is a free zoo in The Cities! It is called The Como Zoo and it is incredible! It's not very big, but you can get extremely close to the animals. I mean, have you ever stood less than a foot from a tiger?
This baby giraffe tried to get Kai to pet him by putting his head under the horizontal cables that made up his cage. Kai wasn't so sure though and dad was too slow with the camera to get the picture. Great memory for mom and dad though.

Here's Stephanie with the sign for the zoo. We tried to get a family photo but Kai wanted to run in the big grass field instead of taking a family picture.After a fantastic day at the zoo, we all met up with Aunt Kimberly who lives up in there in a suburb called Little Canada. Aunt Kimberly's birthday is today (Nov 21) so we took her to Outback for dinner.Then we went back to her apartment so that her and Kai could have a little hang time. They played with stickers, which is one of Kai's favorite things to do.
Also at Aunt Kimberly's apartment, we were able to get our only family photo while we were in Minnesota.
Friday night was a very long night as Kai was still not interested in sleeping in his pack-and-play (I should also mention that the pack-and-play did have a faint urine odor). We were up super early again but this time Kai was not interested in going swimming so we watched some cartoons and hung out until the hotels breakfast bar opened.

On Saturday (today) morning, we got around and swung by the Mall of America to check stuff out before our flight this afternoon. We had a great time watching all of the rides and attractions at the Nickelodeon area and playing with blocks at Lego Land.


The long nights had caught up with Kai and Stephanie as they slept on the flight home. Aren't they cute?

In closing, please be sure to comment this post telling us something that you are thankful for so that you can be entered in to the contest and maybe win some sweet swag from the Indiana Lesnets. We hope that this is an easy exercise for you because your life is awesome and you have so many things to list that you would run out of room and would have to cut your list short. For those of you who may need some ideas, I have decided to suggest a few to help you get your mind pointed in the right direction:

1. I'm thankful that most of the photos on the Indiana Lesnet Blog are of Kai because he is really handsome
2. I'm thankful that Chad writes his blog at a 5th grade reading level so that I can read it.
3. I'm thankful for people who don't text or talk on their cell phones while driving.
4. I'm thankful for God's Love and all of His gifts.
5. I'm thankful for donuts...mmmmm donuts!

Odd of winning some sweet stuff is 1:10, so enter early and enter often!

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. - Philippians 3:14