Christmas with family

We enjoyed a long week in Minot. The trip home was a piece of cake because we didn't even need our winter jackets! I'm convinced the warm temps made the kids even crazier on Christmas Eve. Gus and Ross went outside around 9pm, right before bed, to sprinkle some reindeer food on the lawn.

Other than the reindeer food, and cookies for Santa, they just ran around like fools.

Disclaimer: I typed a very long post, but somehow after I published it, photos are missing and so is the rest of the text. So for now, enjoy photos. I hope the photos can speak for themselves since the captions have disappeared.

Merry Christmas

Nora is working on her talking skills

She's also into dental hygiene at the moment. She'll stay in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, for 30 minutes at a time.



Don't worry, Steph, while we're all at home for Christmas we'll work with her on your family's names.

You know you let your 4-year old use the DVR too much when...

The other night while Gus and I were reading a few bedtime stories, he put his hand on my arm and said, "hey mom, can you pause the book real quick, I need to go get a drink."

Pause the book? Sure, Gus. Or I could just stop reading for a moment. Either one.


On that note, I think I'll sub in 1 more book in the evenings in place of Toy Story 3 or Cars 2.

Showtime

Gus' preschool, Small Wonders, held their annual Christmas program this week. This was Gus' first official Christmas program. He did a great job of standing up tall, and not bothering the kids next to him. The singing part? Not really interested. I don't think he'll be the performer of the family but that's OK. We think he enjoyed it once he could see us sitting in the audience.



After the program was over, he was ready to play. It would appear that he is more of a solo artist, and more comfortable performing on his own.





Here's Gus with his buddy, Conner. They wanted to take a picture with each other but they didn't want to stop.

Here. Much better.
Gus' teachers are great. Mrs. Julie, and Senora Kayla, his Spanish teacher.


And finally, a clip of my all-time favorite Christmas song.



??? I love 4 year olds.

Reunited

Now that the air has that winter chill in it, Gus and his best neighbor buddy Caleb haven't been hanging out nearly as much as they did all summer and fall.

Until this past Saturday.

Caleb and Gus played cars all afternoon. Then they watched the movie Cars while zipped up in Cars sleeping bags. And soon after that it was time to pretend they were cars and eat a snack (they called it fueling up).

Buddies!

Oh, Christmas Tree

Ever since Ross and I have been married, we've had a fake, pre-lit Christmas tree. It has been handy, and it looks good. We liked the simplicity of it - open the box, unfold the branches, wrap a ribbon around it (I skipped ornaments because it took too long), and plug it in. Voila, a beautiful tree with no mess. 15 minutes to set it up.

So why would I want to complicate things and throw a real tree into the mix? Because we have kids, of course, and we are responsible for forming glorious memories for them.

But before we went to pick out our real tree, we brought out the old trusty fake tree and put it up in the kitchen. It was our warm-up tree. Also, we aren't using the ribbon this year because it became tangled during that 15 minute set up time I was bragging about earlier.


Thanks to Ross' family (Aunt Nancy and Grandma Vickie) for being the sole providers of all the ornaments on our trees. Nancy and Leo gave Ross an ornament every year when he was a child, and even gifted us some ornaments the first few years after we were married, so it was fun to take them out of all their boxes, plus see a little piece of Ross' Christmas history. Vickie had them all packaged up so it was easy as could be to add them to our little tree. It also appears we've inherited some of Ross' brothers' - Chad and Kyle's - ornaments. If you want them, guys, lemmeknow.

Nora added her own ornament that she made last year. For some reason she was drawn to this one.

The kids helped pick out the best looking, best smelling Fraser Fir I've ever seen.

It's up in our living room now and waiting to be decorated! It was totally worth it.

Old School

Gus found some old Bishop Ryan garb while playing in Grandma Vickie's basement. Go Lions! As his wise Great Aunt Nancy said, "it would be real convenient if Gus' high school colors were purple and gold". So I did some checking and if we stay in Fargo in this house, Gus and Nora will likely go to the new Davies High School in South Fargo.

Translation for the aunts fan club = red and gold, the Eagles.

Meanwhile, Nora found the old rocking horse and galloped away, until she got a little too into it and galloped her forehead into his mane (not pictured here). Ouch!

Thanksgiving

We are so thankful for our family and friends. We got to see many of them this weekend in Minot. Here's Nora with Great-Grandma Ethel just before our first huge meal of the day.

This Thanksgiving was also Mom and Dad's 38th Wedding Anniversary. Happy Anni to 2 wonderful people! We celebrated with a mini-wedding cake, because we did not get enough food or pies or treats during our normal Thanksgiving meal.

After naps and 2 rounds of dessert at my parent's house, we headed out to Ross' aunt and uncle, Patty and Paul's house. Here's a pic of the girl cousins - Holly, Laura, and Jenna - with Nora.

Gus convinced his Uncle Kyle to play ping pong with him after he spent 10 minutes watching Alex and Grant play an intense game of pong. It got him pumped up.

Great-Aunt Nancy had the touch. She put lil' Cooper right to sleep!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Happy 4th Birthday, Gus

On November 17th, Gus turned 4. He had an awesome day, and an awesome weekend. Here he is on his way out the door to preschool. He's carrying the Birthday Bag, which is like Ultimate Show and Tell. On their birthday, each child gets to fill up the Birthday Bag with all of their favorite items from home, to share with their class. Gus filled his bag with 3 shirts, 3 cars, about 5 photos, a basketball, and a Dr. Seuss book.

He paused for a rare photo opp with both his mom and dad before school. Smart kid - he knew gifts were an option later in the day, so he listened very well all morning. Coincidence? I think not.

On Friday, we got a room at the Holiday Inn, Gus' favorite pool in Fargo, and invited a few folks over to swim and eat cake. Here's Gus with his buddy/neighbor, Caleb. They warmed up for the pool by wearing their matching Cars swimming trunks and jumping from bed to bed until the parents finally put a stop to it (OK, so it was just me who told them to stop).

Family swim!

Nora was really into the pool this time.

The only person who loved the pool more than Nora, was Will.

Gus picked his theme: Race Cars.


His guests were Caleb, Jake, Taylor, and Will. The Mpls crew couldn't make it because the first snow of the year made for some slippery driving conditions. Also, the Johnson's were moving into their new beautiful home so they couldn't make it either. We missed you all. Next time, Gabs, Carson, and Ashton!

Gus got a set of remote control cars from his Uncle Josh and Aunt Christy. He was so moved by the gift, that he started handing out hugs. (Cars will do this to a 4 year old boy.)

Buddies! Who, by the way, share the same birthday. Caleb and Gus were both born on November 17th. Pretty neat!

Not to be outdone by anyone, Nora puked half way through the party, so she went topless the rest of the night. She wasn't ill, she's just got a wicked gag reflex.

But a little puke never slows this gal down. Onward! Stealing Gus' new toys.

Thank you to everyone who helped Gus celebrate his 4th b-day. 4 is going to be great.