Henry & Gingerbread houses & Cleaning dance party

Here's our cute Henry - I just can't get enough pictures of him. :)

Some years we get the gingerbread house kit - this year that kids wanted to try and make their own.  I think they enjoyed eating our candy more than the candy that comes in the kits.  I think James ate more candy than made it onto his house.

I put some music on for the kids while they were suppose to help me clean the basement, but it just turned into a dance party.  (I love watching Ellie's dancing/running in the background.)

First Solid Food

 These are a few pictures of Henry eating his first baby cereal.  He caught on pretty quickly and seemed to enjoy it.  We didn't get it all in his mouth, but some of it was swallowed, which I count as a big success!

 Sorry, it's a super long video.

December Pictures

A few pictures of the kids having fun in December.  Henry loves holding and trying to eat the hand-knit ornament his Aunt Amber made him.  Below, Tori one day decided she wanted to be a fortune teller.  I can't remember what inspired that, but I love her outfit and set-up.



Ellie got this Little People castle for Christmas and she played with it for hours - it was so adorable!  I tried to catch some of it on video, but it doesn't do it justice how sweet it was to watch her play and have so much fun.

Henry is sporting some of the new clothes he got for Christmas.  Below, Ellie, James and Tori all got Build a Bear gift cards for Christmas and they each chose a My Little Pony to build.  Those ponies have already received a lot of love!

IHOP

We went to IHOP for breakfast one of the days after Christmas last year and I think it now has to be a tradition.  James loves this place - I think it's because of the amount of things he gets to eat for breakfast that are chocolate (giant chocolate pancake with chocolate chips and a huge hot chocolate).  He always asks, "Can we go eat at the place with the blue roof?"  This time was even more fun because we had Grandma Katie with us. :)

Christmas Eve

Grandma Katie came to visit for Christmas.  It was really fun to have someone come stay at our house for the first time for Christmas.  These are just a few pictures after Christmas eve dinner.  Happy kids and Grandma with bellies full of fun food.  Also, there are a few pictures of James in his new Superman pjs.

Christmas Sunday

Below are a few pictures of everyone dressed in their Christmas outfits for church on the Sunday before Christmas. 

I think like some of the candid ones better than the ones where I got all of them looking at me.  Henry was napping up until right before church so that's why he's not in some of them.

James' Preschool Christmas Concert

 These are a few pictures from James' preschool Christmas concert.  His music teacher did such a great job!  James' loves Miss Pat and she's the nicest woman (always greets every kid each morning by name when they come into the door).  James loved singing the songs.  His favorites were the drummer boy and do you hear what I hear.  I was having a hard time videoing because my camera was running out of memory and I was holding a little Henry who was having a bit of a hard time, but I included the a small part of the video that turned out best at the end of this post.

James' Tower

James loves to build towers.

Christmas at the Mall

The kids insisted on seeing Santa at the mall.  We had never been at this mall before, so we went to try it out.  He was on break at first, so we let the kids ride the carousel (above).  Then we went to get in a nice long line. ;)  The cute thing, though, was after Santa came off his break he came out singing and playing the banjo.  It was actually pretty impressive and really fun/cute to watch.  Welcome to Christmas in the south. 

I was actually just amazed that we got all the kids to sit with him.  Tori loves it, James would only stand by him, Ellie was not a huge fan and Henry actually did okay for a few minutes.

Ellie's friends and other pics

 

Ellie has a little playgroup/preschool that we do with a couple of friends in our homes.  Here are a couple pictures of the girls at our house.  They all love Tori's old dress-ups.  Above - Abby, Penny & Ellie.
Below - Abby, Penny, Ellie & Lucy.
(Brooke and Caroline were playing with toys in James' room.)

 The rest of the pictures below are the kids just striking poses.  Every now and then they really want me to take their pictures (it's good, since I'm getting worse at getting the camera out).

Cousin running and bookmark contest

I just had to add this cute video of Henry bouncing.  He sure loves this chair!

 Below, is a picture of us cheering on cousin Casey during his big cross country race.  We're so proud of him and it's so fun to cheer him on!

Below is a picture of Tori's bookmark that she drew.  The local library had a bookmark designing contest done through the schools and Tori was one of the winners for third graders.  She was very proud of it, so she signed her name Victoria instead of Tori.  Unfortunately, there is another girl named Victoria in her class and there was a little mix up for awhile because they thought the other Victoria had won.  Both girls were very sweet and mature about the whole thing, though.