J.D.'s Show & Tell

J.D. wanted to take Janalynn to his class for show and tell on his show and tell day, so I took her in to his classroom during show and tell time. He had a great time telling his class all about her and answering their questions. He loves his baby sister.

J.D.'s Tooth Pillow

Grandma Campbell came into town for a visit the day before J.D.'s birthday. She brought J.D. a tooth pillow that she had made for him to put the teeth he loses in and for the tooth fairy to put money in. The day she got here, J.D. had a loose tooth, so he made me wiggle it out so he could use his new tooth pillow. He was really excited to use it! The only problem was that the tooth fairy left him four quarters instead of a dollar bill and they slid out of the pillow's pocket in the night. Luckily, we found them in his bed.

Catch-up

We didn't really drop off the face of the earth--we've just been busy (or I have, anyway), which means I have a lot to blog about, so here goes. (I haven't had time to read blogs either. My Google Reader has about 400 posts to catch up on.) Over the next few days there will be a bunch of new posts catching us up. Happy Reading!

The Rest of Christmas Vacation

The day after Christmas was a nice day, so we were outside and we were trying to get Joey to try out his new scooter. He wasn't too interested, but we did get this picture.




Jim was raking some leaves in the yard and made a big pile. The kids were having fun jumping in and I got a couple of good pictures.





We never took our traditional "on the stairs by the tree" Christmas picture on Christmas Day (mostly because most of the family didn't ever get dressed), so we tried to take one after church. Joey and Janalynn weren't too happy, but we did get one with everyone looking at the camera!



Sunday evening we went for a drive around our neighborhood to look at Christmas lights. There was one cul-de-sac that went all out and each house had a pair of candy canes in their yard with "Merry Christmas" in a different language. We took a picture of this one for Aunt Megan since it was in Swedish.

We've enjoyed many Christmas sweets this year and Joey especially has. His standard line when he wants a treat is to tell you he wants the treat, then say, "sit at the table" and then he runs to his chair. (Do you think I've drilled it into his head enough times that we eat food at the table?) Here he is sneaking a cookie in the cute Thomas pajamas that our nanny gave him for Christmas.

We didn't do much to celebrate the new year. Jim, J.D., and Jake went to some friends' to watch and light off fireworks on New Years' Eve. Joey, Janalynn and I stayed home out of the cold. On New Years' Day we rested and relaxed at home (except for the walk that J.D., Jake, and I took to the school to run on the track). Then for the past two days we have been working on putting the house back together after our painting projects and also putting all the Christmas stuff away. We have to get ready for Grandma's visit next week and J.D.'s birthday. We just have to do a few more things in J.D.'s and Jake's new Lego room, then I will post pictures. Joey's room is pretty far from being done, but we hope to get him in it shortly after Grandma's visit ends. We are also redecorating the bathrooms and hope to have that done soon.

Christmas Day 2009

J.D. and Jake were up early on Christmas morning and went down to check out their stockings. (I guess we forgot to remind them the night before to come and get us, but then we still have Janalynn in our room and we get mad at them on regular mornings if they come in and wake us and wake her, so I guess we can't be too mad.) Anyway, they were excited to come tell us what they found when they heard Janalynn awake. (Her Christmas gift to me was to spend lots of time with me in the middle of the night since she woke up several times--I was REALLY tired.) The best part was Jake's comment that "Santa brought me what I asked for even though I made grouchy noises." (We have been threatening him all month because he has been quite grouchy.) Here are Jake, J.D., and Janalynn with the Santa gifts.



When Joey woke up, all the kids came down and started to play with their toys. Janalynn loved eating the play food she got to go with her shopping cart.




Joey got a Thomas the train Lego set and a scooter. He wasn't being very cooperative when I was trying to take pictures. That is why he isn't in the second picture.

J.D. and Jake both got Lego sets (J.D. Star Wars and Jake Lego City) and a Lego Storage Drawer (Can you guess that Mom talked Jake into asking for this. He was really excited about it, though.) The day after Christmas we sorted all the Legos by color and put them in it. (See Chatty Walls for the sticker source.)

J.D. and Jake spent most of the day at the kitchen table putting Legos together.

Jim let me take a little nap on the couch while he baked the Christmas Carol roll for breakfast, then we had a yummy breakfast of Christmas Carol roll, bacon, and fruit. Before we put Janalynn down for a nap, we let everyone open one gift. Mine was a new camera. It is another point and shoot, but 7 megapixels better and great features. I was excited since my old one was 5 years old. (J.D. will be taking the old one over for some new and improved YouTube videos.) Here's Janalynn opening her gift.

After Janalynn's nap was over (and eating a little lunch), we opened the rest of our gifts. Janalynn's favorite part was the ribbon on the gifts.

We spent the rest of the afternoon playing and relaxing. None of the boys even got out of their pajamas! Joey was not too happy when Janalynn wanted to share his train set with him.

I did catch this priceless moment when all three boys were playing with the Matchbox sets they got from their Arizona cousins. No fighting for a whole 15 minutes or so!

We also spent several hours on Skype with the grandparents. The boys loved showing them their gifts. (J.D. especially enjoyed showing them the calendar he made at school for us.)

I was going to make a somewhat fancy (but easy) Christmas dinner, but in the end I just made an omelet to go with the leftover Christmas Carol roll and that had been our Christmas breakfast.

We even ate in the dining room (mostly because the kitchen table was covered with Legos). We had a wonderful Christmas and hope all of you did too!

Christmas Eve 2009

We spent the few days before Christmas painting J.D.'s and Jake's bedroom and Joey's new bedroom (well Jim did and the rest of us tried to stay out of his way). Finally, the afternoon of Christmas Eve we were able to move the furniture back in. After we did that, we found Joey "nesting" in the treadmill. Jim took the camera up there to take a picture.

After he took the picture, he set the camera down on the bookcase. Right before our friends, the Strongs, were going to be coming over for Christmas Eve dinner and nativity play, we tried to find it and could not. So, we had to rely on Lauree's picture-taking once again. See her post here for pictures of our play. The boys decided that the Jedi robes that Grandma made them for their birthdays would be great Joseph and shepherd costumes. Janalynn was a very cute angel.

After our friends left, we found the camera on J.D.'s top bunk bed (we think Joey took it there.) Then, we opened our traditional Christmas Eve pajamas. Here is Janalynn opening her first Christmas gift ever.

The boys were very excited to open their first gift.

After we all had our new pajamas on, we took a family photo where the stockings were hung by the chimney with care.

We then set out our cookies and milk for Santa and the boys quickly went upstairs for bed. They were also excited to be back in their room after almost a week while it was being painted and they had to sleep on the futon in the playroom.

Sweet dreams . . .

Pre-Christmas Activities

The Monday before Christmas, we were able to do some fun family activities together. We went to the art school where J.D. took his art camp this past summer for a breakfast and drawing with Santa. Here we are drawing our pictures of Santa. (Blogger messed up the centering of some of these pictures and I don't know how to fix it.)



Janalynn was enjoying herself.



Jake had his favorite Christmas character painted on his face: Olive the Other Reindeer.



Jake and J.D. enjoyed sitting on Santa's lap to tell him what they wanted for Christmas.



Janalynn did well on her first visit with Santa.



Joey, on the other hand didn't want much to do with Santa.

We all enjoyed eating, drawing, and visiting with Santa. Then later that night we walked to our neighbor's house around the corner where they were having a live nativity in their front yard. Joey loved the sheep and goats and kept trying to sneak into the pen to play with them.

They really did a great job of re-enacting the Christmas story and it was fun for us to just be able to walk around the corner to see it.

Photo Shoot Outtakes

Last weekend, Katrina came over and took some pictures of the kids so I could update my frames and give some to the grandparents. They were all dressed in their Christmas Sunday clothes. She got some great ones, but there were also some funny ones (outtakes) that I wanted to share.

I just love the look on Jake's face and Joey and Jake both have classic looks for them.


This is a typical pose by Joey in photo shoots. He always looks mad.

Janalynn is very photogenic. Here are a couple of funny faces she pulled.

Jake was having a hard time posing and had to take a break for some pensive thoughts.

J.D. really wanted to do some funny faces, so Katrina finally let him.

Thanks, Katrina for taking such cute pictures! I'll share the really good ones later.

Update

Here is an update on a couple of things that have happened the past week or so. Janalynn is on the move. She is now pulling herself up to things (furniture, the fire place, etc.). Here she is so proud of herself for pulling up to the fireplace to get some paper she wasn't supposed to have.



Yesterday we did our annual gingerbread house decorating. I bought a kit that required mixing the frosting and putting it in the bag. It was really annoying for me, but the boys still had fun decorating. J.D. and Jake each got a side of the house to decorate. Here is Jake's side:

Here is J.D.'s side:

J.D. also made another video and posted it on YouTube. Here it is for your viewing pleasure.

We are trying to do a few last minute Christmas preparations this week and then we are also going to do some painting, decorating, and re-arranging of the kids' rooms over the holidays. So even though we won't have any company for Christmas this year, it will be busy.

J.D.'s YouTube Debut

J.D. has been a fan of YouTube for the past year. Recently, he began seeing videos made by other kids of Star Wars Legos and Thomas trains. So, he kept bugging me to let him make a video and post it on YouTube. He used my little FlipVideo camera to make some Thomas videos, but I haven't had time to edit and post them yet. A couple of days ago he asked me how people made the Star Wars Lego movies and made the characters move without using their hands. I told him that the people making the videos made them by taking a picture with a camera, then moving the character a little bit, then taking another picture, etc. until the movie was over. He decided to try it out. So he set up his scene with his Legos and used his digital camera that he got for his birthday a couple of years ago and took about 50 pictures. Then he wanted to know how he could add sound, so Jim and I found some free software that we could use to make a slideslow animation and add sound (his narration). So, without further ado, here is J.D.'s first film. He calls it Star Wars Lego-The Snow Buddy.

He is so excited that he can now go on YouTube and see his own video. He even started talking about getting ratings and comments. And to think that my family didn't even have a computer when I was his age. Times have changed!!!

How We Celebrated the First Snow of the Season

We have some great neighbors that live on either side of us that have become great friends over the past three years since we moved here. We had been planning a couples night at The Melting Pot for this past Friday with them and another couple, that also lives nearby, for over a month because it was the first time we could all fit it in our schedules. Then I heard the weather forecast earlier in the week and they kept predicting snow and ice for Friday, so I wasn't sure if we would make it. Well, we did get some snow (a few flurries for about 10 minutes that didn't stick to anything) and it was cold (in the thirties all day--not used to that here!), but there was no ice and we were still able to go. (For you non-Texans--the place shuts down if there is ice or snow on the roads. You would think the world is coming to an end, but I guess they just aren't used to it or prepared to deal with it.)

We had a wonderful time. I forgot to take my camera, but Jeannie took some great pictures and blogged about it here. I haven't laughed so hard in a while and it was a great break and fun night out. Thanks, guys!

Janalynn is on the Move

Janalynn turned seven months old on Thanksgiving. She decided to celebrate the occasion by starting to crawl. Here is some video for the grandparents.

She is really motivated to crawl because the boys leave stuff all over the floor that she wants to get. I had to get the baby gates out and she is just in time to get the ornaments off the tree and open presents early! One good thing is that she is really happy to play on the floor for a long time now because she gets where she wants to go. I'm just not quite ready for her to be so grown up yet. It doesn't seem like she should be able to do all these things yet.

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving and it was pretty relaxing. Nana (Jim's mom) came from Utah to spend it with us. The boys loved having her here and spent two long mornings at the park with her so that we could get all of our Christmas decorations up. We had Thanksgiving at our house with our good friends, the Strongs. Lauree took many more pictures than I did and did a great job of blogging about it, so go here to see the fun we had. I did get this picture of Janalynn watching football with her dad.

Also, here is an attempt at a Thanksgiving family picture, but as you can see, the boys did not want to cooperate. Oh well, we tried!

Anyway, we are grateful for all we have and were glad to celebrate the holiday with Nana and great friends.