Thanksgiving, Christmas --and a Rampaging Moose!

One of my friends regularly sends out a "Valentine's Letter" rather than a "Christmas Letter," simply because the holidays are always such a rush. -- Maybe this is the start of a new tradition for us too. . . .

Sadie's birthday (these pictures have been hanging out on Matt's phone for a while) was a huge success --as she considers it. We had six little girls all dressed up as princesses dancing, playing, and eating together. We even did a pinata (homemade!!! It was so much fun, we're going to have another go at it for Michael's birthday) 

I have to admit to being proud of the way the castle cake turned out. It was probably more fun to make than to eat.

Here's Michael at his school's Thanksgiving Feast. . . . We celebrated Thanksgiving dinner the following week at my parent's house. (Sorry, no pictures.)

Happy Birthday, dear Matt!  Thirty-five is a beautiful age to be.

The day before our first freeze of the winter, my dad and I picked all the tangerines and lemons off of our trees. There were four buckets this size. We enjoyed fresh squeezed orange juice every morning for weeks! YUM!

One of Sadie's birthday presents was a little cash register.  Here, the girls were playing grocery shopping when they got an even better idea --food castles!

The night we decorated our Christmas tree, Joseph was really fussy, so I had to hold him the entire time. (I didn't even have a spare hand to put a shirt back on Adelaide.)  I let the kids do all the decorating, and they loved it! --And did a pretty good job, I must say.

Like Daddy, like daughter!

For playgroup, we invited everyone over to build graham cracker "gingerbread" houses. It was good, messy, sugary fun!

Michael build his after school.

Adelaide has recently taken an interest in making funny faces. This was her first -and most gruesome.

Christmas Eve, we enjoyed having my good friend Ellen over. Ellen was our neighbor for the three years Matt was going to law school, and I'm so glad we have kept in touch!

Christmas morning . . . stockings always come first,

This was our room before  . . .

and after!

After all the presents were opened, we headed to Grandma's house in San Antonio . . . where we got to open more presents!  We stayed with Grandma for a few days, then on Fri
day went over to Great-Grandma Lamm's house for a backyard picnic. What fun!

We got to play with cousins,

swing with aunts,

play pin-ball,

and, best of all, have time with family.

We got to meet John's son, Tristan, for the first time this trip. What a cutie!

Much later, back at home, we had fun while making vegetable soup . . .

maybe a little too much fun.

Cabbage hats could come into fashion --you never know.

I took Michael to get his hair cut after school one day, and Sadie said she wanted to get hers cut too, sooooo

we did it. You can see her in the background of the picture above. I think it came out adorable.

I found some cute children's yoga shows online, and the girls love them.  Here, they are making a pyrimid.

A nice, docile solitary moose . . .

becomes a terrifying, rampaging creature of destruction, bent on the annihilation of her rival.

What a handsome boy he's growing into!

Just a funny picture we took at the zoo.--The frogs were sitting so still, giving us a perfect front and back view.

This girl loves her brother!

It has been unusually dry here lately (and cold, for Houston) so static is something of an anomaly for the kids. They had lots of fun seeing what they could get their balloons to stick to.

Like I said, it has been unusually cold here lately.  A few days ago, we had freezing rain and ice on the streets, so school was cancelled and Matt worked from home. (Go ahead and laugh, all you folks in the frigid north. --Yes, that includes Utah and D.C.) The downstairs was freezing, so we had a breakfast picnic upstairs in Michael's room.

Michael is crazy about food. Sometimes it seems like his whole world revolves around food. If I serve him things he likes, he is the happiest little kid in the world. If I serve him things he doesn't like, he throws a fit and tells me he's having "the worst day ever." This night, I earned "Best Mom in the World" by serving pizza, hold the sauce and cheese.

Joseph Update

Today was Joseph's 2-month check-up with the pediatrician.  It seems incredible that two months can go by so quickly! And yet at the same time, it's as if little Joseph has always been a part of the family. (I know I say that with each of my kids, but it's so true!)

Stats:
22.75 inches long
12 lbs. 15 oz.
(about average)

He has started social smiling now, but this was caught at just a few weeks old: one of those precious in-between-sleep-and-awake smiles.

 

 (Not sure why these pics are turning sideways.)

He was received his baby blessing at church October 20th.  Yes, he's wearing the same outfit that Michael was blessed in.

The men of the family. (Should have gotten Michael in on this one.)

 A friend of mine offered to do some newborn photos of Joseph.(http://www.nr-photography.com/) So, here he is, just one week old. These came out so precious I wish we had done newborn photos for all the kids.

Is it cold in here?

Halloween, etc.

Michael surprised me one morning by coming into the kitchen declaring "Mom look! I have chicken pox!"  . . . It's amazing how useful a red marker can be.  Thankfully, it was the washable kind.

The kids LOVE their new baby brother. Adelaide especially likes to play with his swing and rub his soft head. Sadie can't resist tickling his feet and trying to get him to grab baby toys. Michael loves to get right up in his face and talk to him in baby talk.  I've been feeling kind of guilty that I can't give Joseph as much attention as I would like (since I'm running around keeping tabs on my other kids), but then I realized he gets plenty of attention! It's just not all from me.

A week before Halloween, we celebrated Sadie's 4th birthday. She has been planning a princess party for the last year. (Reviewing and revising her plans pretty much every hour of every day for the last 10 months.)  We had several little princess-friends come over, ate a castle cake (I had sooo much fun making this!), played party games, and broke a pinata. We made the pinata ourselves doing several layers of paper mache over the course of a week.  And, it was actually easier than I thought it would be. Sadly, we broke it apart before I thought to get a picture of it, but it turned out really cute and surprisingly tough to break open --for four-year-old girls, anyway.

Halloween night, my dad came over to go trick-or-treating with us. (Mom stayed home to hand out candy.) Michael was a robot (if you couldn't guess), Sadie was a princess (big surprise, right?), Adelaide was a ladybug (she loved it), and Joseph was a little doggy (you can't see it very well, but he was wearing a little doggy hat).

These girls are soooo very different and yet both so girly in their own ways. They love dressing up together and are learning to be very sweet together . . . most of the time.

Seven layers of fluff!

I am so proud of this boy! Michael brought his first report card home a few weeks ago and got straight Es --E for excellent! (Except an "S" in PE, but whoever gets an E in PE anyway?!)

 

Several of his classmates have already lost teeth, so he was super-excited to discover one of his own teeth was loose.  

And here he is after he pulled it out just yesterday.