Santa

Last weekend Mikey cleaned and rearranged the pantry.  The next day, the kids were awful quiet, and here's where I found them...

Emmery is painting some craft sticks here.  I didn't take a picture of the final product because it turned out pretty bad.  Not Emmery's fault, mine.

She got ahold of the glow sticks and decided to crack them all at the same time.

Marc is so proud of himself!

I don't know what it is about kids and cleaning, but she loves to sweep and mop the floors, wipe down the tables and chairs...

Marc loves yogurt!  He's a mess here but he actually does a good job of keeping himself clean most of the time.  This morning after he was done eating I noticed there was not one drop of yogurt on his bib!  Pretty impressive for 14 months!

Lazy Sunday morning blowing bubbles on the back porch.  Em insisted on wearing her sunglasses.

Giving daddy some sugar...

On Sunday evening we went to a Christmas party put on by my playgroup.  It was really nice, Santa made an appearance!

Coloring at the party

Emmery was timid at first, but she warmed up and went right up to him...

Even posed for a picture on his lap!

Marc, however, was having none of it!

Even tried one with me holding him...

Finally some cool weather!

Last weekend we took advantage of the cold front and went to the zoo on a Sunday.  Like we suspected, not many Houstonians would venture out in the cold.

A friend of mine gave me this idea to work with counting.  Emmery can count to ten very easily.  I'd like to start working on counting from 11 to 20.  So I introduced this activity with the numbers she knew already.  I was actually surprised to see that she had some trouble putting them in order.  I guess just counting out loud is different than being able to visually put the numbers in order.  So we will definitely be doing this again.  Her attention span is so short though.  She probably put them in order about 3 times and was ready to play with the play dough.

With Christmas approaching we've been receiving lots of packages.  There were a few sitting by the front door, so Emmery started playing with them.  Finally I walked up there to see what she was doing.  She built a ramp!  She ran into the living room and grabbed a ball, put it at the top and watched it roll down again and again.

Marc had to get in on the action...

These flameless candles were on sale at Costco.  When we got home Em was dying to play with them, so Mikey lit each one.  I grabbed the camera thinking it might look like we're letting the kids play with fire.  They look pretty fake though...

Thanksgiving

This year it was just the four of us.  We had a great mini-vacation at home!  We decided to skip the turkey and just do a roasted chicken since I don't really like turkey anyway.  It turned out great, an Alton Brown recipe that we've done a few times before.I have been seriously slacking on doing crafts with Emmery so since I had some time with Mikey being home, I did this simple turkey printable.  She painted all the parts of the turkey, then I cut it out and let her glue them where she wanted them.

We're still working on smiling for the camera.  She's getting a little better ;-)

We shipped our stuff back from Boston, along with some big stuffed animals that Marc and Kathy gave to us.  You know the saying about the cardboard box being better than the toy inside?  Yep, here are the pictures to prove it.

She always takes time to give Marc a hug.  I love to see her show affection towards him, and he gives it right back (when he's not pulling her hair or pinching her ;-)

Where'd Emmery go???

Our evening walk.  Emmery decided to use Marc's knees as a footrest.

These pictures are from a play date last week.  She rented a bouncy house, the kids had a great time.  Marc was a little timid at first so I had to climb in there with him.  He loved it!

Another random object that provided hours of entertainment.  I finished off the cinnamon and before throwing it away I gave it to Marc.  He loves to open and close things... doors, cabinets, containers.  I think he loved the smell of the cinnamon too.  He would open it, smell it, close it, and do it all over again...

And when the magic of the cinnamon wore off, he decided to climb the oven!  Again!

With all this climbing, he does hurt himself often.  Nothing too crazy.  But this week he managed to get a fat lip and scrape his forehead pretty good.  Here's a shot of the fat lip.

He was trying to walk while carrying one of Mikey's steel-toes.  He dropped the boot and smacked his face on the hard wood floor.

On Friday we decided to start the Christmas decor.  We made some room here for the tree and began to set it up.

It seemed to be going good but it was all downhill from here.  The lights weren't working throughout the whole tree.  Thank GOD we bought it at Costco!!  The next day Mikey brought it back.

While Mikey was at Costco, Emmery asked to go to the playground.  I knew that it was an 80% chance of rain that day, but it wasn't raining at the moment.  And I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to put Em in her raincoat and boots and try to get some cute pictures.  So I suited her up and put a hooded sweatshirt on Marc and out we went!

Raincoat and boots courtesy of Auntie Karen!!

So far so good, grey skies but no rain!

She had to stop to play in the puddle.

This is where she stopped to point out that the pool was DEFINITELY open.  For some reason they had the fountains turned on at the pool.  So Emmery remembered from the summer that when the fountains were on the pool was open.

We got to the playground and her hand touched the swing.  The rest was kind of a blur.  Huge, fat raindrops started to fall so I grabbed Em and said, "let's go!"  Marc and I did not have the luxury of a raincoat so we got soaked.  Emmery enjoyed the whole fiasco but was sad she didn't get to play..

When Mikey got home we (okay HE) put up our new tree.  It looks gorgeous!

Emmery woke up just in time to help us finish putting up the ornaments.

Then Marc woke up and decided he should "help" by pulling down any and all ornaments within his reach.

You can see the scrape on his forehead in this picture.

Final touches... the STAR...

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!