Christmas Day

Christmas Eve Marty gave me one of my presents. It was a new video camera - yeah! I am so happy to have a new HD camera and it is at least half the size and weight of our old camera (and way better quality). But since we were so excited to use it, we didn't take one picture on Christmas day:( But we did have a fun morning. Marty was up before me (well he actually fell asleep downstairs on the floor when he was supposed to be wrapping presents, so he was already down there!) so he let the kids open their stocking when they came down stairs. I came down a short time later and we opened our presents. I love the way we have done presents as a family. We let each person take a turn opening and everyone else watches. I feel like it makes it more special and then we all get to see each other's reactions.

Abbie just got so excited at each and every gift opened. She was usually more excited than whoever was opening the present. It was sweet, a little overwhelming at times, but I sure love her excitement!

Graham was hilarious when he got to open his big present that Marty brought out afterwards. He kept saying "I have no idea what this is" even though it was the one thing he kept telling us he wanted. It was a remote control car, actually a huge off road one. I guess since it was so big he had no idea.

Molly still opened her presents very slowly and carefully, making sure she got all the wrapping paper off it. Abbie kept yelling out what it was before Molly had a chance to realize what it was. She didn't seem to mind though. She just kind of slowly soaked it all in.

Then after presents our friend Chris came over for a huge breakfast with us. His mom was supposed to fly in from Oklahoma on Christmas eve but got snowed in from their huge snow storm.

A funny part of our day was when I super glued a plastic Barbie sword to my finger. Yep, I sure did! Somehow I glued the sword to the top of my middle finger. Chris and Marty sure thought it was funny. Did they offer to help me get it off? Nope they just laughed at me. Graham kept saying "it's not funny. it's superglued to her finger" until I explained I could get it off, then of course he was lauging at me:)

Then after Chris left we packed up and left for Virginia. We didn't end up leaving till about 8:30pm, but made great time and made it there around 6:30am. The kids did amazing in the car. Molly woke up crying around 2 but we just put on a movie for her and she was fine. At one point Marty stopped so I could drive but it wasn't at a gas station so there weren't many lights. Once we told Graham that the huge pile in front of us was snow he was even more excited to get to Grandma Great's house.

Co-op Christmas Program

Thursday, the 17th, was Northland Co-op's Christmas Program. Abbie was part of the big choir but Molly's class sang just right outside her classroom.

Molly was so adorable. She walked out in line with her class and then stopped, turned and then for the rest of the time held onto the chair in front of her.

Of course, she got so excited when she saw me and yelled out "mommy." That always melts my heart when she does that. And she does it almost every time I've been away from her for a little while. She does it when I pick her up at Sunday school, co-op or when I come home. I love it!

The classes then sang "Twinkle, twinkle" and "We wish you a Merry Christmas." She sang only one or two word of each song and I mean whispered not sang. It is so funny to me because at home when she is just playing or singing to the radio, she will sing super loud. But when she sings even just in front of me, it is a whisper that you can barely hear.

I did get a picture of Molly with both of her wonderful teachers. Molly really loves going to class and I am so grateful for both of these women who love on my sweet girl!

Ms. "Mez" as Molly calls her, it's really Tamez, close enough right? Molly will run into class to Mrs. Tamez like she is going to give her a big hug but then usually stops right in front of her like she is shy. It is so funny.

And Molly with Mrs. "Ham" again as Molly calls her. Her name is Mrs. Hale and Molly really does love her but I guess wasn't to sure about taking a picture.

After Molly was done, her and I went over to the auditorium to watch the older kids program. Abbie was hilarious when they were walking to their places, because she would barely walk at all until she found where we were sitting. Once she saw us she yelled out "Mommy, Molly" and then walked quickly to her spot. Then a few minutes later she noticed daddy and got even more excited, it was very sweet.

This was the best picture I could get of her on stage. She is to the left of the boy in the bright green shirt. She did a great job singing and doing the hand motions. The cutest part was when they were supposed to snap in one song. Mrs. Vonk told them if they couldn't snap to just flick your fingers. I didn't notice what anyone else was doing but Abbie was hilarious. It was more like jazz hands and rubbing two fingers together every once in a while. I am just really glad we got video of it!

We did get some pictures of the girls together but once again none with us parents in it. Which always frustrates me. I think that is going to be my new years resolution - to be in at least one picture every month and at big events like this I (and Marty) have to be in one picture:)

The best one of my girls - we are so blessed by our kids!

(even though they can't smile for a picture)

M&K Wedding

Funny Graham comment

This morning when Graham was eating breakfast, he was telling me something and ended it by calling me "little lady." I kind of laughed at his silly name for me and then said to him, "well, at least you called me little" thinking that it was at least sort of nice. Well, his response was "yah, your not big. Big people are tall and skinny!" Nice, thanks for helping me out Graham!

Home Depot Safety Day

Saturday morning all of us went to Home Depot for their Annual "Safety Day." We only knew about it because they postponed there Kid's Workshop this month until then. You are supposed to be 5 to be a part of the kid's workshop but we let Abbie try it out this time. She actually really enjoyed it. Marty said she did great at following the instructions and also at hammering in the nails.

Here Abbie and Graham are getting started:

Abbie intently hammering in some of her nails:

Graham just knows exactly what to do after doing so many of the kid's workshops. I think he has done somewhere around 14 now.

After they finished there firehouse banks and Molly and I got some free popcorn they were handing out, we went and looked inside the firetruck and ambulance. It was the Casselberry Fire Department and they were so nice and showed the kids around the trucks and answered lots of questions.

Abbie, Graham and Molly

All smiles on this cold (yeah!) Saturday morning. It's hard to believe the night before we were wearing shorts to the Fall Festival, it was really chilly especially since this was all in the shade.

Graham just loves to make weird faces for the camera. I don't mind, at least he still let's me take his picture!

The fireman was telling them all about the truck:

and showing them some things inside of it.

It was so nice to have a cold day in Florida. The kids and I played outside for pretty much the whole day. We had to enjoy it while it lasted!

Northland Fall Festival

Friday night we went to Northland's Fall Festival. That afternoon it was sort of rainy and humid so they moved a few moon bounces inside and all the games into the classrooms. It was so nice to not be outside the whole time because it was super humid!

We started out eating some burgers and as Graham said "the best hotdog he'd ever eaten." Then Abbie and Molly had some cotton candy and Graham had a snow cone.

Abbie eating her cotton candy. She ate the whole bag, which wasn't that much, all by herself. Molly wasn't super interested and only ate a little of her cotton candy.

Graham and his snow cone. He had a really loose tooth and had a hard time eating his because it kept moving his tooth around:)

Then after all that junk food, we went and did a little line dancing. Abbie and Molly really tried to follow what he was teaching, and Graham just really wanted to dance to rock music so he mostly just stood there. We got a cute video of the girls trying to dance.

This must have been right at the beginning because Graham is still out on the dance floor.

After the dancing we made our way through lots of different games they had set up in the classrooms. The kids played mini golf, bean bag toss, ring toss, a fun game where you tried to knock the floating balls down and a few others. Then Graham was eating some of his York patty and his tooth bent all the way back and was bleeding a lot! He was really upset because it was bleeding and he said it hurt. He said to me "I can't eat anything tonight. I really want to eat some of my candy." Well, we got his tooth to stop bleeding at least so we could go on the moon bounces and go to the petting zoo. And while we were getting it to stop bleeding someone pointed out that now he will look like a Jack-O-Lantern:)

Abbie bouncing on the moon bounce.

Molly and Abbie jumping. It was nice they had one for 4 and under and one for 5 and up.

Graham petting a duck and Molly loving all the animals!

Molly petting two ducks at once. Graham is petting one also.

They had little sections fenced in where the kids could go in and pet the animals and Abbie wouldn't go in the first one she would only reach in and pet them. We were so proud of her for going in the second one though. Abbie can be pretty fearful of new situations and also of animals so we thought that was a pretty big deal!

Graham kept saying how soft the ducks were, this duck kept running away when you would pet it so he had fun chasing it around a little.

Molly absolutely loves animals but she seems to especially love goats. I know she loved them also when we went to Green Meadows last year.

Molly so happy after all the animals. They also had pony rides but the line was crazy long! When we were waiting in line for the moon bounce outside you could see the ponies going by and Molly just kept running over closer to them saying, "look ponies, ponies Mommy." She sure loves animals.

All of us had a great time at Northland's Fall Festival. Then when we got home Marty pulled out Graham's tooth, the first one that he actually let us pull. He was glad about getting some money for his tooth.

Ace Gymnastics

I am so far behind in my blog, but want to go back and do a few that I missed. Last month, on September 9 Abbie, Molly and I got to go to Ace Gymnastics with our Moms4Moms group. Graham was very disappointed that he didn't get to go. He keeps asking if he can take gymnastics lessons! We will eventually let him take a few we just haven't gotten around to it yet:)

Abbie and Molly had a great time running around the huge gym space. I have so many more pictures but they are mostly of there back:) Ace had a few instructors around the gym and one that was doing different activities as a group. The girls weren't interested in doing the group things pretty much at all. They just wanted to explore and do it on there time, which was fun and lots of others did the same thing.

The girls loved this it is a really long trampoline that goes into the foam pit. They would bounce all the way down it but I never could get them to jump into the foam pit.

Jumping on a big piece of foam!

Abbie really liked the balance beams. They had quite a few at different heights.

Molly had to take a turn then.

There were these huge fans that kept us all cool while we ran around.

The one group activity that Molly did was swing on the rope, she loved it! She had a huge smile on her face while she was swinging and then when she got down yelled, "I did it." She was proud of herself.

Then Molly tried out one of the big balls on the trampoline.

And Abbie rolled this around for a long time.

The other thing the girls really loved were the bars. They loved just hanging on them. They have low ones that they could reach and they just really like swinging themselves and hanging.

Molly was tired out! She never takes naps anymore but I had her rest afterwards and this was how I found her, almost curled into a ball with her feet up on the floor.

Such a fun time we had at Ace Gymnastics, we were so thankful that the Moms4Moms scheduled the playdate. And we found out about an Open House that they had not long after this so Graham got to go also. I have a few pictures from that day that I will post in my catching up:)