Christmas Eve Morning (at home)

Playing a new Wii game

Pre-Christmas Activites

 Our little helper...when it's his own idea 

Gingerbread houses the kids made with Abbie (Abbie, you're wonderful). Josie was so proud of hers, she cried when I broke it apart to let her eat part of it.  Who knew she was so attached to her work?

Artwork

Caleb has entitled this work "Traffic Jam", inspired by Dawson and Jamie on the day to the beach. Seems fitting.

Here's Josie's silly pudding face. She's getting sillier all the time.

Christmas Cards

We, like Janet, are planning to use Shutterfly for our Christmas cards this year. Unlike Janet, I am not normally more ahead of the game on this—in fact, reading her blog post reminded me that I should get started on something. So, Shutterfly has a great promotion going that gives Bloggers free holiday cards simply for posting about it as a blog post. Plus I think I saw a free shipping promotional code and maybe even one for ten dollars off. If you have a blog and want to get in on this, click HERE to follow the link and get an email with the directions. I think the promotion goes until Christmas.

This year, we will be making a stationary card ( http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/holiday-cards ) with a picture of the kids we took on a Sunday morning after church. It was the best of many attempts, and both kids are smiling and no visible after-church windmill cookie crumbs, tears, or runny noses! We haven’t settled in on a design, so you’ll just have to wait and see. Here are our cards from last year and 3 years ago. I have no recollection of what we did 2 years ago ???

Lately...

Making forts/piles (daily)

Dressing up in evening wear

The tantrums have begun (this one is because we didn't offer her enough drink choices)

Trick or Treat 2010

Happy little monster

Caleb's ready to collect candy

hanging out with some neighborhood kids: Rowen, Grace, Tate, Josie and Caleb (look closely)

Josie pictures

Nothing like falling asleep with a big bite of turkey sandwich still in your mouth.

Sunday morning and ready to torment the nursery attendants (or the other kids)

'Trunk' or treat at a nearby park

A park near our house had a trunk or treat on October 16. The kids got to wear their costumes, get early candy, balloon animals made by a clown, and a horse drawn wagon ride around the park.

One excited monster, one skeptical monkey.

Happy to be checking out a firetruck

Riding the horse-drawn wagon around the lake

Gymnastics free-for-all

Listening to the rules (sort of)Bouncing with Aunt Katie (By the way, thanks for the great idea, Katie!)

...more gymnastics (at the neighbors)

Cranes Apple Orchard

We visited Cranes a couple of weeks ago...on a beautiful afternoon. The kids had a great time riding in and pushing the wagon, picking apples and climbing around in the pumpkin house (not yet full of pumpkins) while Kyle stood in a really long line to pay for our 56 pounds of apples. I have feeling Cranes won't be using this picture for promotions

Cow train

We tried to get Caleb to ride in the wagon and have us pull them both, but he wanted to push. Turns out he was right--that was a better idea.

Josie, sampling yet another one of her picks.

"Let's go, Tigers xx-xxx!"

Excited to ride the train

Bottom of the 8th and still happy-ish

Doing some cheers with Dawson, Jamie and some really loud guy behind us.

Recent photos

We had some pictures taken recently. Mainly of the kids, but we ended up in a couple as well. Here is a few of our favorites (out of 200 something).

Berries

We picked blueberries with Libby, Nathaniel and Naomi this week. Here are the boys, hard at work. This might be the only moment they were actually picking. If you asked them, they might say we went there to run up and down the rows or roll in the dirt.

Josie would like to show you how much she is enjoying her blueberry pancakes. She did not so much enjoy the head scrub in the bath tub after breakfast to get the blueberry-stain out of her hair.

Just a cute picture from the park this week--she's getting so tall!