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.

More Pictures

Here's some more pictures from this weekend when we went to Gardner Village to look at the Halloween decorations. Jack had a hard time looking at the camera, but Anna was a doll as usual.

It's been rainy lately, and Jack loves putting on his boots and splashing in the puddles.

Ah, the mood swings of a 2 year old. He can go from this...

...to this is 30 seconds, easy.

Anna and Christian have matching blue eyes.

Halloween Preview

Tonight we had our ward Halloween party, and the kids looked so cute we couldn't wait to post the pictures. Mary had the great idea of using some of the clothes that were already in Jack's closet to make a great "Bobby Jones" type golf outfit. Grandma and Grandpa got him the sweet set of clubs and the hat while they were here to complete the outfit. Anna went with a black cat theme, with a homemade tutu and no tail since Mary forgot that part.

Sunday Best

Here are some pictures of the kids dressed up for Sunday. We got Jack his own tie since he has been obsessed with Christian's and it made him like such a big boy. Anna's cute outfit was from Aunt Carly and I have been waiting for it to cool down enough for her to wear it!

Jack and Anna also got a visit from Grandma and Grandpa over the weekend and we had a really wonderful time together.

Elephants on Parade

The circus came to town last week and they had an elephant parade right by Christian's work. We headed down there and met him on his lunch break. Jack thought the elephants were pretty cool until he smelled them and that is all he had to talk about the rest of the afternoon. He kept saying, "Elephants stinky!"

We headed over to the Gateway fountain after the parade since it only lasted about two minutes. Jack snuck out of the stroller and got a little wet. I should have have known that two year olds don't understand the concept of look but don't touch.