So cute

I found Jacob sucking his thumb the other day. It was so cute!! I didn't have the heart to pull it out, but since then I have found him doing it a few more times and have replaced his thumb with the binki. Even though thumb sucking is quite adorable in babies, I know it's a habit that is harder to break than the binki. At least you can take the binki away at some point. :) Isn't this cubby little guy the cutest thing ever!!

First Tooth

On Tuesday Christopher lost his first tooth. We weren't even expecting it. A few weeks earlier I had checked his teeth because I told him that he was getting to the age where he might lose a tooth. On Tuesday morning Christopher and Jeff were just about to leave for school and Christopher was eating an apple. He asked me what the hard thing on the table was. I just said it was a piece of apple and picked it up. Then I realized it was his tooth and yelled, "Oh! It's your tooth!" That, of course, scared him and he started crying and the little bit of blood made him cry too. But after he settled down and I told him it was all okay, he thought it was cool. So, he was kind of late for school, but he had fun showing off his empty space to his friends.

That night we put his tooth in the cute little tooth fairy bag we have (thanks to our very creative friend Becca). Then Christopher got kind of concerned about the tooth fairy coming into his room through the window. He was really worried and I didn't want him to be so upset so I just told him that the tooth fairy was just pretend and that I just did it. But he said, "No mom, she is real!!!" So I said okay and that if it would make him feel better she would knock on the front door and I would let her in and come upstairs with her. That made it all better and he went to bed. At about 2 am he came into my room. I was kind of awake because Jacob has a cold and was in bed with me. He asked me if she had come yet and I said he could go check. He ran back in his room and was so excited that he got $1 and a few pieces of candy. I had the video camera ready upstairs so I got it on tape. He is so sweet and said that he would share his candy with Michael and Annie. It was a fun experience and I think we'll get to do it all over again soon because he has a few others that feel a little bit loose.

Annie gave him a funny look when he showed her the missing tooth.

5 Year Old with a Saw

Jeff cut up our Christmas tree again this year. Let me explain. Last year we didn't know what to do with our Christmas tree because we couldn't figure out when the city picked them up and the condo association frowned on any unsightly objects being placed outside where others can see them. So Jeff decided to cut it up and put it in a box for the garbage. He said they did it when he was younger a few times and used it for fire wood. (I wish we had a fireplace to do that). Anyway, I thought it was kind of sad to watch our pretty tree get cut up. Well, this year he wanted to do it again and again I protested, but I lost and the tree got cut up. I thought it would make the kids sad so they went to the basement to play (we've turned it into a fun playroom...I'll have to post pictures). But Christopher came up and actually thought it was so cool and wanted to help. Jeff is really good about letting the kids help him with anything. As a mother I was reluctant about letting my 5 year old use a saw, but turns out he was really good at it and didn't even saw off any fingers. :) Jeff supervised carefully, but Christopher has some real sawing skills and didn't need much help. Michael was actually asleep during it all or I'm sure he would have helped also. :)
And here is our New Years snowman. He's kind of dirty and leafy because it took all the snow in our little yard to make him...right down to the dirt and leaves. He's even got spiky hair and a carrot nose, if you can tell. We were going to do a Calvin and Hobbes and make him look like a crazy snowman trying to escape from the fence, but we decided to let the kids decorate him instead. ;) You can see Michael holding a little baby snowman he made. He later made our whole family in baby snowmen.

Merry Christmas

Our Christmas was very fun. The kids really got into this year and we left out cookies and milk as well as some food for the reindeer that Christopher got in his kindergarten class. Here's a funny and sad story. After we put out the cookies and milk I heard Annie crying in the dining room. I went in there and she had one of the cookies in her hand and she had taken a bite of it. She was so upset she actually kind of choked on it and spit it out. I just thought she was choking on it, but soon realized that she was upset that she had eaten Santa's cookie. I think she wanted the cookie, but had second thoughts after she took the bite and was really upset that Santa would be upset with her. She said, "I ate Santa's cookie, he'll be sad." I assured her that he was nice and wouldn't care at all. But she wanted to put a new cookie on the plate. It was so cute.

On Christmas morning when they went downstairs and found their stockings on the stairs Christopher was so excited and said, "He is real!!! He did come!!!" It was so cute. I'm so glad I caught it on tape. We read Luke 2 and opened presents and just had a day full of fun and eating way too much candy, which we are still recovering from. :)

We were up till 2am finishing up the last wrapping. Jeff got quite creative when we were running out of paper. He had to use a bunch of small pieces.Annie and I beading her new necklaces.

The boys love their new basketball stand that Aunt Tatia gave them.

Our cute little Christmas baby.

First trip to the ER

I guess I was about due for a trip to the ER, but I always thought it would be one of the boys. But no, it was Annie. Long story short, her finger got shut in a door by a brother, who didn't do it on purpose, but felt bad about it. :) It bled really bad and I thought the nail was ripped off and might be broken. But turns out it wasn't broken and it wasn't the nail, just all the skin. It was pretty swollen and still looks kind of bad, but she'll be okay. This is my bandage job because the one they put on didn't even last a whole day with Active Annie. But she got a ton a gifts at the hospital...get well bags and then Santa showed up with his friends (Winnie the Pooh, Elmo, Big Bird and Rudolph) to hand out gifts. I tried to only take one but she ended up with a huge My Little Pony stuffed animal, a doll and coloring stuff. It was kind of crazy. But I guess at least she had a good time. She also enjoyed the blood pressure cuff. :)

Do not open until Christmas...

First snow of the year was a big hit!!! My mom is visitng and enjoying lots of kids time.

It's hard to wait for cookies to finish baking.

It's also hard to wait till Christmas to open presents. So far, nothing has been opened though. :)

Jeff, the photographer

I usually take most of the pictures, but sometimes I turn on the camera and find pictures I don't know about that Jeff has taken. These are the ones I found most recently. It looks like we were mostly asleep during this photo session.

Annie is going through a typical band-aid phase. She likes to put them on her face though. Note to anyone who's child has not done this yet. Don't let them stay on overnight...or it might leave two nice little red marks where the sticky stuff is. :) Or maybe that just happens on really fair skin like Annie's.

I guess Michael must have been really tired, or figured out the perfect way to get out of eating his dinner.

Lunch with Christopher

On Friday they had a Holiday Bazaar at Christopher's school so I got to go have lunch with him. I think it's so silly how everything is called "holiday" now. It's like you can't even say the word Christmas without offending someone. The boys started saying, "Happy Holidays" to people and I told them that we should say "Merry Christmas"....okay, I'll quickly get off my soap box and get on with the story. It was really fun to spend some one on one time with Christopher (plus Jacob cause he goes everywhere I go). We ate pizza and ice cream and he got to buy a few little toys from all the stuff they were selling. He is always so nice and wants to get something for Michael and Annie also. He was so excited to show me more of his friends and the library and his class. This first picture is him sitting at his table. He is such a cute kid and I'm glad he enjoys school so much. They got to see Santa and give him the Christmas letter they had written. I was bummed I wasn't there for that to take a picture, but oh well.

Here is his first letter to Santa. It's hard to read in this picture. It says; Dear Santa, How are you? I like you and your elves. I was good. I will be nice to my family. Please can I have a Mack truck. Love, Christopher

He had to take it to school but I wish I could have kept it. But it's in good hands now....Santa's hands. :)

Joy....

....Is laying on the floor staring at the Christmas lights. Jacob has already discovered this joy.

Family Visit

Some of our family came to visit the week after Thanksgiving. Jeff's sister Karen and her husband and kids, Rhett, Sage, Henry and Wilford got in to town first. It is so nice to see family since we don't get to very often and the kids really had a blast playing with their cousins. They keep asking if we can go to their house. Jeff's mom and dad came into town a few days later to see us all and meet baby Jacob before they leave on a mission to Arizona where they will be working on the Navajo Indian reservation. We are so excited for them.

We went to the Natural History Museum and the kids really loved it, especially Michael. There is so much to see there that it is impossible to see it all in one day...or even a week. But we hit the highlights. I need to take Michael back by himself some time because he was the most fascinated by everything. He loved all the animals and for some reason he kept calling all the animals that looked like a deer or gazelle a "snow harnbark". I have no idea where he got that, but I must have told him the name of some animal and that's what he thought I said. It was so cute and funny.

The kids had to see Gum Gum (if you've seen Night at the Museum you'll get that).

The dinosaur in the entrance was a big hit as well.

Here are the cousins. Karen and Rhett's kids are so cute and I missed them all when they left.

Crazy kids!!!

Aunt Karen was a big hit with Annie. She gave her a candy princess wand and then Annie was her best friend. :)