Farewell 2011

We thank God for His blessings and protection this past year, and look forward to the adventures of the coming year!

Happy New Year, friends and family!

Christmas Highlights

Today we celebrated Christmas with Ron's brothers and their families. We haven't seen them since last Thanksgiving, so the cousins had a lot of catching up to do. It was nice to all be together for awhile. The kids are all growing up so quickly, and they all played so nicely together!

Here is our annual couch picture. They've grown a bit since last year. (Hopefully someone else's picture turned out better than mine! My coloring is off.)













A little Christmas caroling before gifts










Caleb















Emiko
















Danielle & Annalise

Christmas Highlights

On Christmas Eve day we went to Christmas Eve service with Grandma & Grandpa C and Uncle Ron. After church we went out for dinner and then back to our house to visit and open presents. Tyler was most excited about receiving the camo snuggie he'd been hoping for! We had a very nice evening together.

Tyler & his snuggie

Uncle Ron & Danielle check out the Ripley's book Tyler got the night before.

Danielle enjoying one of her new books.

Christmas Highlights

We celebrated Christmas with my Dad on Christmas Eve eve. We had a very nice dinner with Mamaw, Papaw, Uncle Jack, Uncle James, Aunt Nikki, Beth, & Seb. The kids opened gifts and we all visited together. Tyler was surprised with a camera from Mamaw and Papaw. Danielle got the American Girl doll Kanani. Uncle Jack gave the kids magic kits, which have proved to be rather entertaining. The kids got lots of other great gifts, too. We had a very nice evening together. It was a lovely way to kick off our Christmas celebrations!

Merry Christmas!

As usual, we had a wonderful Christmas day! We are are so thankful for our greatest Christmas gift - God's Son. We opened gifts, ate, played with our toys, watched movies, and hung out in our pjs all day. Since Ron is off all week, we're looking forward to a repeat performance tomorrow (minus the gift opening)!

Here are some pictures from today. (We've had 2 of our 4 relative Christmas celebrations already. I'll post pictures from those another day.)

Clara was a good girl this year and got lots of goodies from Santa. Danielle asked Santa to bring Clara a doggie bed, too.

Danielle had an American Girl Christmas. This is the Feel-Better Kit - because you never know when your doll might need a finger splint or crutches! (Actually, it's very cute.)

Tyler is learning how to play chess and requested a glass chess set for Christmas.

The item at the top of Danielle's list this year was the American Girl doll Rebecca....which is what this is.

Christmas Secrets - Revealed

We decided a few days ago that we would suprise the kids with the gifts Ron made for them before bed on Christmas Eve. Ron made Tyler a pen that has a toxic waste symbol on it and is swirls of black, green, and orange. (Tyler likes to doodle pictures that involve oozing vats of toxic waste.) I would love to post pictures of Tyler opening his pen and his wonderful reaction to it; however, his pjs don't cover as much as Danielle's. So, I won't be posting those. Suffice it to say, he loved his pen and his reaction was enough to make me a little teary.

Danielle LOVED her bed. She ran over to Ron and gave him a big hug. It was so worth the time and effort! She understands my lack of sewing skills and was appropriately impressed. She picked up the pillow and said, "You really sewed this?!" It was perfect.

Christmas Secrets

I had to share this because I am so excited about it! Ron made Danielle a bed for her American Girl doll. I made the linens for the bed, and they turned out surprisingly well in spite of my lack of skill! I can't wait to give it to her! (Santa is NOT getting the credit for this one!)

Basketball

Danielle's team won their first game Saturday morning. I can't believe how much fun it is to watch Danielle play! We enjoyed watching Tyler, but this is different. Danielle obviously enjoys it a lot more than Tyler did. Today was picture day, too. I was trying not to get in the grumpy camera man's (aka photographer's) way, so I didn't get a picture with her actually looking at me. Here are a couple pictures from her game, too. Once again, I was lucky enough to have my camera out and ready when she made a basket!

Yes, You Can...

...teach an old dog new tricks. I guess it's especially easy if the "old" dog is only 2 1/2 and the new trick involves an activity that breed is well known for.

Anyway, this is what we've been working on with Clara.

We only get the paper on Saturday & Sunday, and this is only the 3rd week (so, 5th time) we've worked with her. As you can see, it didn't take any "work" on my part at all this time. She is so smart!

Baton Performance

Wednesday night Danielle's baton group performed at a retirement home in our town. At the last practice the kids made cards to hand out to all the residents after the performance. I wanted to tape this performance since something happened to our video from their performance a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately this is really not a good representation of the routine. The room was small, so the group had to split into 2 groups to perform. (We have almost 40 kids in our group this year!) Even with that the girls were crammed into the room rather haphazardly and had a hard time keeping in sync because they couldn't really see each other.


Danielle is the 3rd one in, and she is on cue most of the time (despite the girls beside her). I cut the video off about half way, but the routine just repeats for the most part. Some of the better girls usually do a "trick" at the end where they flip the baton between their legs and over their hip, but there wasn't enough room for them to do that here. Danielle is one of the girls who is supposed to do the trick, but she's about 50/50 on it (as are most of the others).


The residents seemed to enjoy watching the girls, although the staff was rather grumpy about having to put a little extra effort into their evening routine. (For that reason, we'll give this home only 3 stars and will cross it off our list of potential possibilities for our retired loved ones.) :)

A Winner!

Today we had the pleasure of attending another handwriting award ceremony at the elementary school!


Danielle's teacher contacted us last week so we could make plans to attend the assembly. We were not allowed to let her know she had won, though. She was so excited about the contest, that it was a little more difficult to keep the secret from her than it was from Tyler. She asked me several times if the school had called. Thankfully they had emailed, so that was an easy question to answer. In a last ditch effort to figure out if we had been contacted she said, "I know you're not supposed to tell me if I won, so I just want you to tell me if I should be more excited or less excited." We must have played our roles well because she was convinced when I dropped her off this morning that she hadn't won.


This was her expression when she walked in to the assembly and saw us sitting there. It was so worth the effort of keeping it from her!











She came in 2nd place for the 2nd grade girls and was pretty proud of herself. We are proud, too.

O' Christmas Tree

We finally put our tree up this weekend. We made a day of it yesterday and went out to a movie and dinner before hand. (We saw The Muppets. If you haven't seen it yet, don't waste your money! I thought it was painful, but the kids enjoyed it.)

It was really cold last night, so we were rather quick about finding the perfect tree. We bought the first tree Tyler & Danielle both agreed on, and we found it in under 5 minutes. Not bad! We set it up last night and decorated it today.

It's nice and tall. Ron is standing on a chair and Danielle still had a difficult time reaching the top.

We had a nice day together yesterday and fun decorating it today. The kids couldn't wait to put their gifts for each other under it.

Danielle's Busy Day

Danielle's baton group performed at our town's tree lighting ceremony tonight. We have so many girls in our group this year; there was hardly enough room for them all to line up. Danielle was front and center again! (Being in the front row is quite the privilege.) The girl next to Danielle bumped her and knocked Danielle's baton from her hand within the first few seconds of the routine. Danielle quickly recovered, though, and did a great job. She put a lot of time and effort into practicing for this, and it showed. I'm proud of her.

Later tonight Danielle played in her first basketball game. Kids Danielle's age play in an instructional league, where you can't steal the ball from someone's hands, the coaches double as the refs, and the players wear color coordinated sweat bands so they know who they're guarding. Considering Danielle's team only had 2 practices prior to this game, it's probably a good thing they teach and learn as they go. Danielle had a blast! She ran her butt off, guarded her guy, and even scored once. It was really fun watching her!