Fun Times Kirsten and Grayden!

Jack and Anna got to spend four days with their cousins Kirsten and Gradyen and they had a blast. Kirsten and Jack are two days apart and Anna and Grayden are four months apart, so while they toys were practically flying at our house, the kids all really enjoyed each other. Christian and I got to spend some good time with Lizanne and Stuart too. We ate Chinese food and peacefully rang in the New Year while the four kids slept upstairs. Here are some pictures and a video of the kids:

These two were almost joined at the hip!

Anna has become quite the climber. Sebastian's face on the TV is a pretty good mirror of my reaction to Anna's climbing exploits.

Merry Christmas!

We had a whole lot of fun during the week before Christmas. Em and Dave drove out on Saturday and we tried fit in as much as we could while they were here. We had a major Gingerbread House building competition. Our next door neighbors, Christin and Colby came over and made one too. The jury is still out on the winner but they all turned out really wonderful.

This one is titled "Mountain Haus", a traditional Swiss ski chalet. Notice the balcony out front which allow for enjoyment of the sweeping mountain vistas and yodeling. The licorice skis in the front kind of fell down, but you get the idea.

Next up we have "Christmas Village", a exact and detail oriented construction. The frosting icicles and individually cut roof tiles show an unmatched eye for detail. Precise indeed.

Lastly, we have the "Love Shack", and architectural accomplishment. Notice the cantilevered second story, pirouette pillars and mosaic necco stonework. The designer has obviously had professional training. Impressive.

We went downtown on one afternoon to a children's museum, and the kids had a fantastically good time.

This is Jack's new smile. Can't get him to smile with his eyes fully open it seems!

The rest of the pictures are from Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Jack took this one which actually turned out pretty well. Em and I spent Christmas day cooking and it turned out pretty nice. I am eating yummy leftovers right now!

More Holiday Goings On

I have realized it is an impossible battle to keep our ornaments evenly placed on our tree with two toddlers running around. It looked nice when we put it up, but as you can see from the bottom right corner, it is slowly getting stripped. Oh well! Jack has been making up for it and decorating it with other things like a dirty sock, my dish towel, and an old stocking.

As I have mentioned before, Jack loves to put on crazy outfits. Here are some fun ones inspired by the cold weather outside:

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!!!

So we decided to upgrade from our 3 ft. tree of former years to a nice bushy 7 and 1/2 ft. fake tree from the wonderful Christmas section at Walmart (seriously- I love that the ornaments are organized by color and packaged in coordinated bundles! It made the process so much quicker. ) The tree was a lot more complicated to put together than our old one, but we really like the way that it turned out. The kids had a blast decorating as you can see from the crazy expressions on their faces in these pictures.

I couldn't resist taking a picture from the sidewalk. I love how cozy our house looks with the tree in the window! The old tree barely went up to the bottom of the first window and it was standing on a wooden chest!

She is our walking-almost talking year old!!!

Our neighbor, Christin, took Anna to a farm for a fun fall photo shoot for her birthday.

She took a cute picture of Jack too, but I'll post that on a different day:) This year really has gone by fast. Anna was pretty cranky for the first few months, but she has turned into the most mellow loving baby. She spends most of her day eating anything she can find and stealing toys from her brother. She really is wonderful and we love her tons!! Happy Birthday Anna!

Anna's First Birthday Party

The crown was a little big and Anna wasn't quite sure about it, but every girl should be a princess at their first birthday party! It is hard to believe she is going to be one on Wednesday!

Making the cake with a little help from Jack

Moving on from the cupcake to the yummy paper plates

Anna snuggling with her first doll. She was really sweet with it! This is the only picture we got of her opening a present because Aunt Jen sent it a few days early, and the power went out right after we finished eating. We managed to open presents by candle light. She had a lot of fun this morning seeing what her toys looked like with the lights on.

Anna is walking!

Anna has been taking a step here and there for the last few weeks, but tonight she finally put it together!

Cute Jack videos

Believe It!

Wow, as long-suffering RSL fans, last night was simply awesome. RSL beat the Chicago Fire in penalty kicks and advance to the MLS Cup next Sunday. It was funny, Mary and I were watching the game through an online stream, and the stream froze up just as the PKs were starting, so we turned on the radio to listen the rest. I think woke up Anna with my screaming/cheering, but wow. After backing into the playoffs they've made quite a run.

After attending last year's conference final with Mikie when we lost, this is some sweet redemption!

Snowy Day

We've been jealous of the pretty snow up in Alaska and finally got some here. Jack had a blast throwing snowballs at our neighbor and eating handfuls of snow. We haven't bought him snow boots yet and so he had to wear his rain boots but that seemed to work just fine. You can just barely see Anna and Christian watching from inside in the picture below. She didn't stay inside for long. She wanted to see what snow tasted like too!

These are a couple weeks late...

Here is Jack all dressed up to go and carve pumpkins with our neighbors the Loves. This kid is crazy about hats and sunglasses. I'll put him in is car seat and he will insist on having both before we can go anywhere. It's pretty cute. He makes me laugh on a daily basis by the crazy outfits he puts together and the wacky things he says. We thought we would share some more funny Jackisms since he rarely stops talking these days. He calls a DVD a deewee deewee, an orange an oodoo, and says supercalwoshush when trying to say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. He also still asks for "fabooie"when he wants soda, and we've started calling it that too since he doesn't seem to want to call it anything else. There are a few movies he loves and he has started saying random lines from them at funny times. Last night he was sipping his soup and said, "Hmm, rum punch!" which is what Mary Poppins says after slurping some medicine. I asked him what he dreamt about the other day and he said, "Noodles," which seemed a bit random until I remembered that it's a line that Po the panda says in Kung Fu Panda. He has also taken to calling people Dragon Warriors which is from Kung Fu Panda too. The kid just cracks us up.

These pictures are a few weeks old but we don't have anything new to post since our camera battery died and we are too lazy to charge it. These were good ones of Jack because he actually looked at the camera almost smiled. Both seem hard for him these days.

Anna is a real sweet pea these days. She is a pretty happy baby now that she can crawl and walk along the furniture. She took a couple of steps about a month ago but hasn't really done much since then. She is starting to jabber and gesture quite a bit and loves to say up, apple, Mama, and Dada. It has really been cool to see her personality grow so much in these past few months.