A Place to Relax

Chloe chillin' in the kitchen cabinet, waiting for action.

I found this picture from three years ago when Olivia was just about the same age as Chloe is now. She also would sit in the cabinets! I guess Olivia wasn't quite so choosy about which cabinet to choose, judging from the trash can right next to her!

Goin' to the Chapel

We can thank Aunt Sarah for the latest inspiration to Olivia's dressing up.

The blue legs are stylin'!

A Lego Day

Today was our second snow day of the week for the kids. Combine that with Olivia's illness earlier this week, and what you get is a very long week for momma, who is coming down with a strong case of cabin fever. I have had to be quite creative trying to find things to occupy the kiddos. We've done Play-Doh, Moon Sand, baked cookies, had quite a few tea parties...I even tried to put a fun spin on cleaning - "Come on, kids, how fast can you wipe down all the walls???" No takers on that one - they're getting too savvy for me.

So today we had a "Lego Party". Noah's fascination with TinkerToys has morphed into an obsession with Legos, which he received quite a lot of for Christmas and his birthday.


I am usually quite useless when it comes to building cool things with Legos, claiming that Daddy is much better at it (which he is), but this time I can proudly say that I actually put some time and thought into the whole process and put together quite a fine two-story house complete with kitchen, living room, dining room, two bedrooms and a bathroom.
Had to get a close-up since this doesn't happen too often. :)
Eventually the Legos became money, and Noah became the shopkeeper who charged Olivia money just for entering and leaving his store. I'm thinking we got a fine math lesson in today with all the counting she had to do to pay his high fees!

Noah is Six!

Noah turned six years old on Thursday! He was so excited to go to school and get all the special privileges that come with having a birthday. :)

On Friday we had his very first "friends" birthday party. He had nine friends (including his sister!) come to the bowling alley for a few hours of fun. Paul and I had so much fun watching the kids bowl. They got SO excited for each other and were chanting each other's names when it was their turn. It was a great group of kids and LOTS of excitement!

Chloe's First Haircut

My baby is growing up - waaaaahhhhh! She had her first haircut today. She was excited to sit in the Hummer and watch Dora on TV, until the cutting started!

So out came the faithful blanket, and in went the thumb, and everything was fine.
Holding on for dear life during the drying.
The finished product - the curls are still there - yay!


She sought a little solace in her big play box when we got home. Maybe she thought she could hide from me in there. :)

Sarah's Wedding

What a wonderful wedding Sarah and Jonathan had this past weekend! Sarah (Paul's sis) was a beautiful bride and the ceremony was so God-honoring. Paul was honored to sing in the wedding, Noah was a ring-bearer (actually a gift-bearer; he gave a gift to Mom Ice during the ceremony), and Olivia was a flower girl. I was so nervous on Saturday as I wound Olivia's hair on sponge rollers for only the second time ever! She went swimming with them in and, of course, they were completely wet when she was done swimming! So then I spent a frantic hour drying them with a hair dryer. Praise the Lord her hair came out just fine (although I'm sure the wedding would've gone all right if her hair hadn't turned out!).

We thank the Lord for bringing Jonathan to Sarah and to our family!

Happy New Year!

It feels good to put up a new post finally. The month of December has been so busy for us with lots of Christmas programs and piano recitals, etc. And we've been tossing some viruses back and forth in the family, so I haven't felt like blogging much. But I think we're back to normal now!

Noah was a wise man in the school Christmas program and Olivia was an angel. The sleeves on Olivia's costume provided her with constant entertainment throughout the whole program. :)

Olivia helped me make Christmas cookies this year, while Noah was home from school, sick on the couch. So that day was divided between making cookies and cleaning up Noah's sickness. NOT a pleasant day. I didn't eat too many of those cookies!

An area church has an annual "Bethlehem Walk". They give you Jewish names and you walk through the woods on the way to Bethlehem to be counted in the census. Every so often scenes are depicted - the angels singing "Gloria", the wise men on the way to see the baby King, the shepherds. Then you finally come to Bethlehem and the bustling town activities. Later you go to the inn looking for a place to stay, but of course there is none. But the innkeeper does let you go into the stable to see the baby born to Mary and Joseph. The whole evening was a wonderful experience for all of us.

The Friday before Christmas we just wanted to have fun, so we drove to the Navy Pier in Chicago for "Winter Wonderfest". It was a wonderful inside carnival with great activities for the kids. This was a roller coaster Noah and Olivia rode on.

This picture was taken near the indoor skating rink, which we want to try next time!

These are some of the kids' favorite gifts:

MP3 player for Chloe - just a play one, of course!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I look forward to catching up with all of you soon!