A Little Before, a Little After, a New Year

Here's our photo "montage" of the last couple months, starting with Christmas since I never got around to posting any of our Christmas pictures this year.

On Christmas eve my sister and her husband came up to have Christmas dinner and exchange presents. We had a lovely time together!!

We went to bed nice and early (or at least the kids did) to wake up at the crack of dawn and make a disaster of the living room! ;)

No sooner did we clean up that mess, then we celebrated Elizabeth's birthday!!

Oh but the excitement doesnt end there! Shortly after that we invited a new member into the family (no, I didnt have another baby). My sister had her sweet baby boy and we got to go down to meet him and visit a little with Nana and PopPop as well!

We've had quite a busy January with all the snow and ice!!

But the kids found ways to stay warm and busy....

The final news to get you all caught up to date, Abby celebrated her 2nd birthday! Since she loves Sesame Street and is our little "cookie monster" we made it a Cookie Monster theme.

Oh! I cant end this without bragging on little Elizabeth. She has started to learn to read. We are so proud of her!!

Her First Baby!

This weekend was our annual big clean of the church. Everyone met at church on Saturday, grabbed a scrub brush and got the place sparkling clean to get ready for our big Thanksgiving feast. As always, we had a good time (who says cleaning cant be fun?), worked hard and the Pastor treated us to KFC for lunch. :)

While we were there, one of the little girls let Elizabeth hold her precious Annabelle dolly. Elizabeth fell in LOVE!! She has dolls at home but they're all cloth. She never paid them much attention so I thought she was still too young to be interested in dollies. BOY! was I wrong!! She just wanted the 'real' dolls, that's all. So of course, I broke my rule that we dont buy anything for ourselves this close to Christmas and we took a trip to the store and got Elli her very first "real" dolly. She loves her so much.... even holds her properly!


And here she is with her "beebee" waking up from a nappy. :)


The boys have off from school this week. I'm only making them read each day and then they have the rest of the day to themselves. Tomorrow, we're going to work on making their own ornament to put on the Christmas tree. It's going to be our new tradition, they're going to make a new ornament each year. Something for them to look forward too: looking for ornaments in the box from years past, and making new ones.

Thursday is Thanksgiving, I'm sure you're well aware. We are going to spend the day at church with everyone, and missionaries from all over Europe, stuffing our bellies full. The children (including the boys) are going to be giving a "concert" for everyone. I will do my best to remember the camera! HAHA! The boys have been practicing hard. I told them, I want to HEAR them singing and not "mouthing" the words. So keep a look out for updates, I'll post our Thanksgiving pictures here.

PS I volunteered to make a turkey, so pray that I dont mess it up in our itty bitty German oven. Better yet, pray that it fits! LOL

Elizabeth (10mos)

Can you believe it? Elizabeth is 10 months old today! UGH! Time is flying by WAY too fast. She has decided that she is not a crawler, that getting on her belly stuff is just NOT for her. Instead, she sits up (like a lady) and scoots on her bottom everywhere she goes... and BOY does she GO! Her little hands are into everything! If she can reach it, she tries to get it, which also translates to eating it. She likes to keep mommy, daddy and her big brothers busy chasing her around and keeping every little fuzzball out of her mouth. Yuk!!

Elizabeth is a talker! She can babble in complete sentences now. She will tell you the most amazing stories, if you could understand her own secret language. Her favorite animals are doggies. Copper brings her absolute joy, and any other doggie she sees in books, on tv or just out and about in town.

Her favorite TV personality, without a doubt, is Elmo. She just loves Elmo! Why? I havent the foggiest idea, but she does.

She also loves to be read to. She has a favorite book that counts to 5 on each page and she will ask to be read to over and over and over and over and over and... well you get the idea! :)

Here are a few videos of her that I took this weekend. Don't mind the stain on her shirt, she just had her dinners and we were just about to head up for bath time :)




This second video is her playing peek-a-boo with her blankie. haha!