Fashion Sense

My Avery and Huston were playing dress up this morning - putting on different hats and such. Here is Avery's finished ensemble....


and you know what Huston said when he saw this? He said in his most sincere and somewhat envious tone, "Oh Avery, you are so stylish!" My, my that made me smile.

And Auntie B - yes he is wearing the snow boots - almost all. the. time. We'll have to start calling him Napoleon if he keeps it up too much longer. So he says "thank you"

The Room

I have had a lot of people ask me how well we have transitioned with the new room situation. So I thought I would post some pictures. For those of you that aren't aware - for Christmas we gave our oldest (he's now 7!!! how did he get to be 7???) his own room. Ever since we have had Avery around (a little over 3 years) Isaiah and Huston have shared a room. Avery is a terrible sleeper - so we had thought it best to give him his own space so that he doesn't disturb anyone else's sleep patterns (besides his mother's, that is)....but over the past month or so it has become very obvious that Isaiah has been longing for his own space.

We told him about his gift on Christmas morning by giving him a new set of full size sheets. We explained that the sheets were for his new bed that would be in his new room. He was very excited. The day after Christmas we enlisted the help of the grandfathers and had our hide away loveseat switched out with the train table and also rearranged a few bookshelves....and a day and a half of cleaning and organizing later we have two "new" rooms....

This is Isaiah's room - notice the gate at the door - no little siblings allowed at this time. The closet is full of little tiny legos and play mobiles and other tempting little toys that "young" children tend to lose, destroy, throw or eat. Now Isaiah can build and write and listen to music/stories to his heart's content...pretty much without interruption or fear of his masterpieces being destroyed. BUT that does include a lot more responsibility - no more blaming of younger brothers when something is messed up - no more complaining of how someone else made the mess - and he will have to have his area rug cleaned up by the end of the evening so that we can pull out the bed. So far (which has been one night and a smidgen of a day cause he's been hanging out at Grandma's house) I can tell that we will have some new habits to learn. But he's still very excited.

Huston and Avery are also excited about their new area. Everyone told me when I had become pregnant with Avery so soon after having Huston that these two would be sooo very close and play with each other all the time. I never saw this occurring - until the past month or so. We have had almost 3 years of competing for attention, squabbling, yelling, fighting, and overall annoyance but it has magically started to dissipate and these two are genuinely enjoying each others company....FINALLY! Now they still have their rough spots as all siblings do, but for the most part they look to each other when it's time to go play. The other night when Huston had gone to Grandma's house while Avery stayed home, that evening Avery asked, "Where Huston?" We had to call him at Grandma's and tell him hello. Here is their new room.

Now they can do trains and cars and trucks to their heart's content. Hopefully we will have a very happy household! There is no reason why we shouldn't - except for the fact we have a 3 yr. old and a 4 yr. old sharing a room....

Christmas in Review

Ok, there is no other way to do this without creating a whole huge post unless I simply post pictures. So that's what you'll get, a somewhat "wordless wednesday" of photos - except it's not wednesday, and I just posted words too....but only one explanation - in these first few pictures - Huston is "Joseph" in the preschool Christmas program at church - look for the guy in the yellow/brown head covering.

Ok, so I lied...another explanation....making ornaments to give as gifts....

Christmas day at home...

Christmas day at Gran's...

Are you still there....if so, you can quit now - and yes I know I lied again....it turned into a whole huge post even without tons of words.

Making Lillie Giggle

Huston loves to make Lillie laugh. At times he stumbles upon something that just puts her in hysterics....enjoy the baby giggles.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Major Photo Catch-Up

Fasten your seatbelts people....this is quite a ride. A lot of photos of things from the past couple of weeks that I couldn't or didn't do a single blog post about....so the result is a great big blob of a blog post that will skip from that to this and have many pictures to guide you through the whirlwind.

First - a left over picture of Lillie's Christmas photo shoot....just because Lillie isn't featured much in this whirlwind.


Now here is a pic of the boys in the Santa hats that their Gran got them for Christmas - almost a genuine smile/face on every single one of them....now that's rare!


In an attempt to get a good photo of each of the kids, I held a photo shoot with the two younger boys a day or so after Lillie's. Going through this process three times with no clear cut winner just left me frustrated with myself, my children and my camera....so I will leave it to a professional somewhere, at some point in the new year.

Avery -

Huston -

I must admit the little buggers are cute even when they make their mommy crazy.

In this next photo you will find Isaiah braving the wind and the moderately cold to freezing temperatures with his Gran to ring the bell for the Salvation Army in front of one of the stores here in town. He did great and they got quite a few contributors. I must add right here that not only was I kinda glad I wasn't the one standing in the cold for 1 1/2 hours that day, I am also quite glad that I didn't have to listen to the constant very loud ringing of that bell that Isaiah had going there. Yes that is the point, but yes I believe it would have sent me into insanity. Just the 5 minute visit here had me pleading with him to ring the bell more gently. Gotta give that Gran some credit on this task.


Now some more fun in the snow. Isaiah and Huston went out this afternoon to scrape together and play in the last thin remainings of the snow. They decided the biggest fun was to roll down the hill in our side yard, over and over again.

At the top, waiting for mom to give the go...


Going down....


Made it to the bottom of the hill...


That was fun lets do it again....

And finally I will show you this a peek into the crazy dad factor. My husband Steven works at a bank that sponsored a festival here in town. Tonight he grabbed an extra volunteer staff shirt from the festival that was a little large (a triple extra large to be specific). The boys had fun posing for pictures in the shirt. Ok, ok, dad had fun making the boys pose for pictures in the shirt. You can probably tell by Isaiah's face that he was not quite thrilled with the activity. But fun never the less...

There, it's done, the ride is over and I now have these pictures tucked away for memories' sake. I will bore you no longer.