Friday Night at Home

I know this shouldn't seem like a super exciting occasion, but for us, it seems to be. It has been a really long time since we were all home together on a Friday night. If I'm not working, then we are usually having a rotating date night, which I of course wouldn't ever give up. But this week, we had neither, and enjoyed some fun family time. Most of which consisted of Gavin making up things for all of us to play together. Their favorite game was calling something like "the race to jump on Dad," and there is nothing like a game that explains itself completely in the title.

Henry also spent some time practicing his snowboarding skills with the game that Gavin got for Christmas. He has some pretty impressive balance.

There is always plenty of climbing around and laughing. Not sure what we would do without these two guys to keep us entertained.

The Slide Inside

Well, we are officially tired of winter around here, and even though it has been warmer, it is still too cold to spend much time outside. In an attempt to keep the boys more entertained I brought the slide into the living room last week. It was all orderly and fun for a few days, and then Friday hit and they decided to step it up a notch.

We started the morning with create-your-own-climbing-harness. This involved my canvas belts over their pajamas which they then tried to use to help each other climb the slide... luckily this stopped after they realized that the belts would get tighter to harder they pulled on them.

The next super fun thing they came up with involved one of their favorite pass times- jumping off things. Gavin strategically placed the bean bag chair so that he could throw himself off the top of the slide onto it with a nice thud.

While this was not my favorite thing, I was glad that Henry seemed happy just to watch and laugh, but that didn't last long. At least he wasn't in his most daring mood and decided to jump from only the second step.

"Chocit! Chocit!"

That's what Henry was saying as he greatly enjoyed his bowl of ice cream last night.

"Who you callin' messy?"

Good thing his Mom is a stain-removing genius.

Jesus wants Me for a Sunbeam

Well, today was a big day for us. My little Gavin has now permanently left the nursery at church and moved on to older and more mature things... Sunbeams. This is the first class in Primary (the Sunday school for little kids) and the class that you start in the year that you are turning 4. What a big day it was. Gavin has been looking forward to this for months, and longing to be in Primary with his friend Lexi, who turned 4 last year. It was just yesterday that we told him that his new class would be called Sunbeams, and he was super excited to be able to sing the Sunbeam song, "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam." This song is a kid favorite because at some point long ago someone decided that it would be very rowdy and super fun to shout out "BEAM" and jump out of their chair every time that it comes up in the song. And while Gavin loves things that are both rowdy and fun, he is feeling quite at home in his new class.
My only concern today was that nursery has snacks and Sunbeams do not, and church overlaps lunch time. Luckily I gave him plenty of things to eat this morning and he seemed to make it through just fine.

So, I didn't take this picture today, but about a week before Christmas. I couldn't help posting it. Paili is one of Gavin's good friends and is also in his new Sunbeam class and preschool. I just love how cute they look and how happy they were to let me take a picture of them together.

New Floor

This week, to celebrate our new year, we ripped out the old nasty disgusting linoleum floor in the kitchen (that was so 2008) and finally replaced it with new tile. I bought this tile about 18 months ago when we were building on the laundry room, so that I would have matching tile in the new laundry room and the kitchen, since they are adjoining rooms. I never dreamed that the kitchen tile would sit in the basement for so long waiting for the right time to be put in. We finally decided we could wait no longer, and while I did plenty of complaining about most of the process... the end results seems to make all of the work worth it... or at least it makes it easier for me to forget all of the work. Now that my full body aches and pains from kneeling and crawling on the floor for two solid days have gone away, I am really enjoying the new floor.

Since my kitchen is quite small it is hard to get a picture of the whole thing (and the cupboards are still too hideous for online viewing) so these close-ups will have to do. This is my fourth tile job in our duplex and the first one that Caleb has helped me with. He was pretty nervous to start, but he quickly became my measuring and cutting guy and did a pretty great job of it. The whole thing might have been like a fun date if it wasn't messy and painful and involved our kids screaming the other room since they were locked out of the kitchen for three days.

Christmas Day!

What a Day! We had a nice morning of opening presents. The boys were so excited. Lucky for us they didn't even wake up until 8:15, so we all got plenty of sleep. Henry was almost more excited for Gavin's presents than his own, but he did get quite excited for opening presents. Gavin official decided that Santa is cool and can be counted on to bring a good present. Gotta love Christmas morning. Hope you are all having a great day.

Christmas Eve

We had a great Christmas Eve down in Saratoga Springs at Nathan and Stacy's house. They had gotten a lot of new snow on Monday and it was all still waiting and fresh for the kids (and Dads) to go out and wear themselves out. They had a ton of fun until they were all too tired to walk home from sledding.

We had a great dinner of homemade soup and bread bowls and ate plenty of other treats and snacks on the way. Then the kids decorated sugar cookies to leave out for Santa. Some ate a lot more than others, but they had a great time getting ready.
There was still plenty of time to open Christmas pajamas and then watch the Muppets Christmas Carol. It was a nice and relaxing night.

Merry Christmas from US!

We are so excited for Christmas this year. Gavin has been counting down with a paper chain that he made in preschool and Henry has been testing us by tearing various presents under the tree everyday to see if we will let him open them all the way.

One super fun thing about this year is that we aren't traveling. We are at home and not on the road dealing with weather and crying kids and rushing and all of that fun stuff that we usually do every year. We are sad not to be spending time with all of our extended family, but it just didn't work out for us to make a winter journey to Iowa this year. We are taking advantage of the time at home to make all of the holiday decisions and make things fun.

The boys are super excited and ready for the big day tomorrow.

We hope that you are all having a great day! And enjoy your Christmas.

Just wanted to include this photo of how things went when I tried to take a picture of the boys together for this years Christmas card, I had about 10 that looked something like this... with various amounts of pouting from Gavin, and Henry looking pretty happy and pleasant in all of them. I ended up taking separate pictures of them and using some of my old skills to put them in the right proportion and combine two photos. I thought it would be really obvious to every who got the card, but when I talked to Heidi, she said she had no idea. So now you can all go back and look at it and see if you can see the line where I combined the photos together. I guess my skills are better than I thought since it sounds like most people didn't notice (it is the top picture).

He's makin' a list...

Gav was working pretty hard at the desk today... muttering things like

"I better check this twice..."

"...A lot of people of the world sure are nice..."

"Hmm... some people don't share toys, that sounds naughty."

When I asked what he was doing he just said, "Oh just helping Santa with his list." Good thing Santa has such dilligent help this time of year.

How you know that your hair is too long...

When your awesome shampoo mohawk won't stand up straight anymore... you know it might be time for a hair cut.

Gavin has finally promised me that he will get a haircut for Christmas... he has been begging us to put it off since he doesn't like getting a hair cut with the clippers. Every day, I am looking forward to his hair finally looking nice and less crazy. Henry has just had to endure long hair until it is time for the haircuts, since I don't want to go through it all twice. We are enjoying the chance to have crazy hair dos once in awhile.