Friends at school and other pictures

Rudolph saying hi to Jacob

Sammy's friend Michael. What a goof!

Little Miss Jackie

Sweet Erica (our next door neighbor) saying hi to Jacob

Cool Dylan - Sammy and AJ's friend lives down the street from us

4th grade teachers. Mrs Weth (left) and Mrs Carver (2nd from right) are Sammy's teachers this year. Absolutely wonderful ladies.

Here comes Santa Claus

Flying in with his crew. Wonder if he names his helicopters like he does his reindeer?

Landing in front of the school. Luckily it wasn't that dry this year and they didn't cause a dust storm like last year!

If you look close enough, you can see that Mrs. Claus is saying hi to Jacob.

Frosty going through the 4th graders, saying hi to Sammy.

Santa getting ready to leave.

Bye bye Santa!!!

Waiting for Santa

Here's the boys waiting for Santa to come visit their school.

I love Christmas around here. Just like Halloween, the people around here go crazy with decorating for Christmas. Unfortunately, we don't have an outside outlet, so we were unable to decorate outside this year. The boys and I love to drive around to look at all the decorations and then come home and sit by the fire, drink hot cocoa and listen to Christmas music. Then, every year, Santa will come to visit the kids at the school before they get out for the holiday. That is my most favorite thing about Christmas these days. I love being able to bring Jacob up to the school and be a part of it as well. Santa, Mrs. Claus, Rudolph, Frosty and some elves all fly in on helicopters to say hello to the boys and girls. The kids all love it and it brings tears to my eyes every year seeing the joy on their faces.

Jacob's "1st" Haircut

Jacob has been watching me trim my hair for the past few months and apparently has decided that his hair is getting too long and wanted to trim it up a little bit as well. I think it would look a lot better if he had done both sides. I guess that old saying "monkey see, monkey do" really is true. What am I going to do with him??

Not to be outdone by his little brother, AJ decided to do a little trimming himself. Try not to focus on the lock of hair going out the side all crazy, it's the bangs he messed with. Needless to say, I've put the scissors up far far out of their reach. For those who are curious, NO, you will not see any pictures of Sammy doing this idiotic thing, because he already did it 3 years ago when we lived in Florida. His was by far the worst though. He had gotten the top and back of his hair. Jaime had to take him to get it looking halfway decent and that's about all she did (and even then, I'm still giving her too much credit) She did a horrible job on his hair. You could still see exactly where he had cut. Crazy, crazy, crazy kids.

My baby

He wanted me to pick him up the other day but wouldn't wrap his legs around me like he usually does and he just felt really big to me, so I had Jaime take a picture to see how big he's getting. Now, is he really big, or am I really small, or is he normal and I'm still really small?!?!

Climbing again.....

This was the day I was finally getting their rooms back together and going through some old clothes. Jacob found his halloween costume and wanted to wear it, so I figured, why not? This picture cracks me up.

Dentist robbery or Real deal?

As we all know, most children do not like to brush their teeth. They'll do anything they can to get out of it. My kids love weekends and summer because they usually fall asleep before they do their teeth. Of course, I make them brush them the next morning when they get up and boy do they get mad at me! The only one so far who likes to do his teeth is Jacob. He's always in the bathroom brushing or flossing. Okay, so he's not the greatest at it, but it's a start!! Anyway, yesterday, we took AJ to the pediatrics dentist because our dentist said that he had quite a few cavities and some were so bad that he might have to be sedated when they fix them and since he doesn't do that there, recommended us to this children's dentist. She was in there going over with us all that needs to be done. Talking about sealants, crowns, fillings and even a "baby" root canal, totalling up to over $2,700!!! Now I ask you, why would you do all that to baby teeth that are going to fall out anyway? And to make matters worse, she doesn't take insurance so this would all come out of pocket until the insurance company reimbursed us maybe a quarter of that amount. Is all that really necessary????

Still more pictures

Sammy ran into a friend from his class and they thought it was really cool that they were both there that day. Especially when the night before our Penguins beat her favorite team (Stars) in hockey. Do I need to be worried about Sammy being the shortest in his class????? I know that me and his father aren't the tallest people in the world, but look at his brothers. Hmmmm....

Daddy helping Jacob because he would cry when you left him alone. Just like Sammy on his first time!! The only one who really took to it was AJ. But then again, we also had AJ start on roller blades first. After that, ice skating was no big deal for him.

More skating pictures

A lot of these pictures are dark, so let me apologize right now for that. It is really hard to get a good picture when they're skating by me! Most of them were taken with the subject either half in the picture or way off center to the right!

Saturday Fun

Saturday Jaime decided to take the boys ice skating. I wanted to come along because it was Jacob's first time. We'd been having him walk around the house in his ice skates getting used to them, but he found out real quick that it's a whole different story when you're actually on the ice!

My little monkey

I don't know if you can see this one very well or not. It came out pretty dark.

These are two of Jacob's favorite places to climb. He is always getting into the sink and spraying water all over the kitchen or he'll climb up to get whatever goodies we have in the cabinet. Sometimes, he'll even pull a chair over to the pantry and get up in there. He's even gotten to the point where he can pull a wood chair over a tile floor without making noise. Can we say "sneak"?

Thanksgiving

Can you see the snow? Look hard!!

We had a great Thanksgiving this year. We had our friend Dan and his daughter, Heather come over to watch the game and have dinner with us. Jaime cooked a turkey on the grill even though it "snowed". The boys got so excited because for about half an hour it snowed big huge flakes and we tried to take some pictures of it , but didn't turn out too well. I love living in Texas with my children. Every time it snows they act like it's the first time they've ever seen snow. But you can't blame them. It's not like back home in Iowa where once it starts snowing it doesn't stop until spring!! Dinner was a big hit even though I messed up the apple salad the first attempt. Before you even ask how you can mess up apple salad, let me tell you that in my family, you drain the pineapple juice, add an egg, sugar and flour to it, cook it till boiling, then put it in the fridge to cool down and add cool whip to it before mixing it with the fruit. See? It's always the cooking part that gets me in trouble. Which is why I thank God that I married a man who can do anything in the kitchen! Am I lucky or what?

Thanksgiving break

It wouldn't be a cold weather holiday without one of the boys being sick. At least it's just a cough and all he needed was a few treatments to get him through the day.

This is where he goes when I tell him he needs to stay out of mommy and daddy's way. We're painting our house and were doing some touch ups the day before Thanksgiving and didn't want Jacob to keep touching the wet paint (notice pic above with white paint on shirt sleeve). Even though he looks miserable, he liked being in there. He's the one who went and got it to sit in!

Here's Jaime cleaning up the mess from scraping the caulk around the front window. Notice how Jacob doesn't like the loud noise of the vacuum cleaner. He does the same thing to the garbage disposal and blender.

Sammy and AJ and some of the neighborhood boys got together for a little football. It was so cold that day!! I couldn't believe the other boys were wearing shorts.