Birthday Wishes

Last year when we asked Tate what he wanted for his (5th) birthday, he said, "An American Express card". This year I asked him what he wanted, "An XBox 360". I had no idea he even knew what that was! So I said, "Tate, what is that?" He said, "I don't know but Michael (his friend from school) has one and he says it is cool."

Santa

Marissa told Kevin in a very endearing way and she meant this as a total compliment, "Daddy, I love you. Almost as much as Santa."

An early Christmas package!

Drums

If you thought spoons and pots were for toddlers you were wrong. This has become a new old favorite. The only problem is we are much stronger than we were at age 2 and we have broken 2 of Mom's spoons!

Christmas Cards

If you are wondering why your stamp was in the middle of the page or your address was a little crooked, I had lots of help this year with assembling the Christmas cards. We had tons of fun!

My amazing Christmas lights!

Okay- so I had a little help with the evergreen, but all the rest of the lights I succeeded in putting up myself.

3's

Tate passed his 3's today!!! He takes a "Math Minutes" test about every day and has to add 3's to other numbers 25 times in 1 minute in writing. He passed today so now he is on 4's.

Two hundred nineteen

The number of times Garett can jump up and down without stopping.

Happy Juice

Over Thanksgiving we were taking a walk and Marissa was ahead of us on her bike. A car came around the curve and she happened to be in the middle of the street! I screamed "Marissa" and we all started running toward her. She, fortunately, got over in time. When we got up to her she had tears in her eyes. We talked to her for a bit about I screamed at her and how important it was that she keep herself to the side of the street. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and told her dad not to worry, she was just wiping away the juice. So this morning at breakfast I look over at her and see that she has tears in her eyes and asked her about it. She said it was "happy juice" this time.

Tate loves the Rockets

Tricks from the basement

The haircut

Nice hairdo, huh? Garett helped by cutting her hair on top.

Garett says that if we are tired of calling him "Bomb" it would be okay if we called him "Arrow".

Tate's Santas

O Christmas Tree!!!

Fondue Night

If you're wondering what the weather is- we have one in a snowsuit and 2 in underwear- we celebrate all seasons and weather in our home!

Cut-Your-Own-Christmas-Tree

Here we are trudging through the snow to chop down our own Christmas tree. Good thing we had our gun to shoot down anything that got in our way of our all important mission!

Garett's own creation- his hairdo

Garett's name change

Garett told me while we were driving that he wanted me to know that he would prefer if I did not call him Garett anymore. He would rather me call him "Bomb". He said he realized we could not call him that on an airplane so when we were on the airplane, we could call him "Kilroy". But most importantly, no matter what we called him- to not ever call him "Baby" but if I really wanted, I could call him "Pumpkin Pie". These were his words exactly!

Garett's bath

Garett decided to go the unconventional route with his bath- he hopped in the sink!!! When the boys had come in from playing outside their feet were so cold that we had soaked them in the sink in lukewarm water. We turned around and Garett had gone al natural. Bathing in the kitchen sink is not just for babies I guess- it can be a bathing alternative for 4 year olds!

My new chairs

I found these darling chairs at a shop in McHenry but there was one problem- they were RED VELVET. So, with a lot of coaching and help from Linda (she basically did one and then I did the 2nd one) I've got 2 really cute chairs for my living room! I am going to make a little lumbar pillow to sit in the middle of each chair with a stripe pattern and put ball fringe around it.