Merry Christmas!

nesquick bandit

important safety tip: don't leave a three-year-old alone with the ingredients of something as yummy as chocolate milk. Thanks to Sophie's creativity, we ended up with a quart and a half of chocolate milk in our milk container, plus plenty of extra nesquick all over the kitchen (and all over Sophie).

Also notice the set of Sharpie markers that she's sitting on. Yeah, our kitchen is a mess waiting to happen!

End-of-year school talent show

Luke and Izzy participated in their school's talent show, each deciding to play a piece on the piano. They both did great! Izzy played Beauty and the Beast, and Luke played Jon Schmidt's Waterfall.

resolution

Ok, fine, I will update our family blog!

After repeated frustration on Camille's part that I have been keeping the kids' soccer team's blog up to date but have not been putting as much effort into our family's blog, I've finally given in and will start updating this blog as well. There's going to be a lot of back-filling to do in order to get caught up, but that's how things go sometimes.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the updates as they start getting posted.

Thanksgiving 2008

We flew to Salt Lake to spend Thanksgiving with the Thompsons. It is always an adventure getting all of the cousins together, and this trip certainly had its share. It was so nice to see our kids getting along so well with their cousins, and they would disappear for hours at a time. Luke with Nathan, Hank and Will to play DS or shoot air-soft guns. Isabella with Emme, Caitlin, and Thomas to create plays and color. Simeon with Andrew and Carter to ride on the bikes or play cars. Sophie would just follow around whatever group of kids she could keep up with.

We had amazing weather and had a huge soccer game Thanksgiving afternoon which ended up postponing dinner. When we finally went inside there were 45 people in all for dinner. Turkeys beware.

After dinner there was the customary football and crashing. Simeon is picking up on this tradition quite well.

We had a great time seeing all of our family in Salt Lake.

watch where you walk

During our Thanksgiving trip in Salt Lake, Nate unfortunately injured his foot. We've all heard stories of kids leaving toys out and them getting stepped on by unsuspecting adults. This is one of those.

One night shortly after our arrival, Izzy (as she often does) fell asleep somewhere other than her bed and needed to be transferred. Everyone else was asleep as Nate carefully and quietly carried Izzy to her bed. On the way he stepped on a toy. Now, having grown up with five younger siblings and now with four kids, this was not a new experience. In all experiences stepping on toys in the dark, it is generally acknowledged that Legos are the worst. Nate now begs to differ.

Instead of meeting up with a stray Lego, Nate stepped on a die-cast metal bulldozer, complete with pointy smokestacks, that proceeded to rip through his foot leaving a big cut. Somehow Izzy was successfully transferred without stirring and none of the other kids was woken up.

Seriously, toy companies need to recognize that every toy will be stepped on in the dark at some point and should do some testing and have a warning label or a rating scale for what kind of damage they can do.

Halooween 2008

Halloween week began with a visit to City Hall on the 28th. The City Hosts a trick-or-treating event during the day for little ones 5 and under. We were able to meet all the people who help run the city and even got candy from the mayor. It was a great event.

Halloween night was perfect. The weather was in the 60s and we sure enjoyed walking around our neighborhood. We couldn't get an individual picture of our cutest little bunny. She just kept running away. Nate and I walked around together for about 30 minutes but our bunny ran out of steam so we headed back home to give out candy. We had tons of trick-or-treaters and even ran out of candy.

Simeon enjoyed being batman and wore his costume on and off all week. Izzy was Miley Cyrus and Luke was his namesake Luke Skywalker. My favorite costume find was with Luke's top. After looking at Halloween stores and others and just not finding the right look, I was able to find a Karate top at the thiftstore for $3! It was perfect.