Christmas photo I forgot to post

Pretty girl in her Christmas dress :)

Silly pictures & latest happenings

I can't believe Katie is nearly 9 months old! She is trying new foods often, I have been much more brave when introducing her to new foods. She loves any food she can eat with her hands, instead of off a spoon. She is a big fan of bananas, cheerios, puffs, avocados, and berries. I have made her a few pureed chicken/veggie/potato dishes that she eats them. Her favorite veggies are peas and squash.

Katie is a MOVER! She never sits in one spot! She started with an army crawl in early December, she is close to a real crawl. She has started "talking" with words like "da-da-da". I have not heard "ma-ma" yet.

The green monster, enjoying avocado:

Life with Kevin is a blast (most days)! I have really noticed a big change in his personality between 3 years old and now that he is close to 4. Whoever termed the preschool years as the "magical years" was definitely right! Kevin has a wonderful imagination and loves to play with all of super hero action figures and trains. One of favorite parts of the day is when I am in kitchen and able to overhear him playing games with his toys. He talks to them, names them, races with them. We continue to love Kevin's preschool, which is at our church. Today they are hosting Indoor Energy Days (think of it as preschool gym class). The kids are going to do calisthenics, yoga, relay games, make smoothies and trail mix. I wonder how you go about teaching yoga to 3 and 4 year- olds?

Dan and John left this get-up here at Christmas time, Kevin has fun with it:

Little sister

If their were a course on how to become a pesky little sister, I would be the teacher and Katie would be my prize student! Little Sister rules to live by:

1. Always want to do whatever your older brother is doing
2. Put your brother's new toys in your mouth
3. Force Mommy to banish all super cool, tiny action figures.
4. Disregard all girly toys in favor of brother's new stuff
5. Crawl all over the Candy Land or Memory board to disrupt the game
6. Always crawl towards and chew on Tiger (most beloved love)

I fully expect this list to grow over the years. After all, the drama between Brian and I was legendary for a few years.

Kevin, as the older brother, continues to be proud that he is bigger, faster, and stays up later than his baby sister. He likes to show off when she is eating yucky baby food while he is enjoying a hot dog or cookie :)

Train table, yes!

It's n0 surprise that Kevin woke up very early on Christmas morning. We were opening his presents in the dark! Well after all the kids presents were opened, all the adult gifts were opened, we reminded Kevin that Santa brought him a much bigger gift that would not fit in our family room:



This was definitely the highlight of our Christmas morning!

Christmas, New Years and more!

Our Christmas was wonderful, we celebrated with Grandmom, PopPop and Uncle Brian. Unfortunately, all the pictures from Christmas morning are on my Dad's camera. Nate has some video on his new Flip, I'll add that soon.

The day after Christmas we hosted all the Stone's. Here are some pictures:

James is so cute playing hide and seek:


The grown up table in the fancy dining room, the rest of us at the kiddie table in the kitchen:


Uncle Nate and Miss Isabel:


Isabel and Katie in their matching pj's at New Year's:

Snow day, finally

Kevin has been so patient, he has wanted to play in the snow so badly. Finally, today, we have enough snow to enjoy. We were lucky to inherit skis from our neighbors, he had to fear!

After skiing in our yard for a while, we went to the big sledding hill in our neighborhood. Nate was so happy that this year Kevin is big enough to climb back up the hill all by himself. Brian surprised all of us with his sledding skills too!

All set!