Sadie's New Word!

The Christmas season has helped broaden Sadie's vocabulary! Yes, this evening she said a new word----- drum roll ----- cookie. We, of course, we're passing around some Christmas cookies after having Christmas #3. Caleb picked out his cookie and Sadie was tagging along not far behind and started saying "cookie." It was very cute, especially when she continued to repeat it.

Well, I guess this will be my last post of 2007. Hope you all have happy and blessed 2008!

Christmas pictures

Here are pictures from Christmas at our house. I just realized that Sadie wasn't in any of these- oops. But you can see the kitchen and Cranky Crane (that was the bigger hit with Caleb). I'll have more updates later but now I need to get some sleep.

Christmas Morning - take 1

Yes, we had our first Christmas morning today, since we'll be off to NJ tomorrow. It went well. Andy spent all of last night putting together the first major gift for the monkeys- a kitchen set. We opted for a wooden one that we thought might stand up well and was smaller than the big plastic ones we saw. It was a big hit. We had it set up in front of the TV as they came down the stairs and Caleb and Sadie immediately started exploring the cabinets. We also had some play food in it that they found and "ate". Then we did the wrapped gifts- some story books, Cranky the Crane (for Caleb), and they each got an outfit. I've discovered that Caleb's response to unwrapping clothes is better when they have Thomas or in this case Bob the Builder on them. He actually took them out and held them up and happily said "Bob shirt and pants!"

After opening the presents, Andy went to work making pancakes while Caleb played with Cranky and Sadie explored the kitchen. It was a nice morning so I think we'll be ready for the next official Christmas.

Makin' Cookies

Well, we've had a very busy start to the holiday season. Wednesday we were out at my mom's for the day to make cookies (my favorite iced cut-out cookies). We had been planning this for awhile. Sadly, plans changed a little when my grandfather passed away late Monday night. As you can see from the slide show, Caleb and Sadie got to make cookies but I had to attend the viewing and other services. Despite the gray cloud, the kids had a blast. Caleb was so excited and eager to help. He helped my mom roll out the dough and then of course, helped with cutting out the Christmas trees and bells and Santas. Sadie preferred to eat her cookie dough instead of playing with it so we gave her cookie cutters to play with instead. I hope you like the pictures.

I was excited because my mom made a batch of Gluten-free cookies for me and they taste wonderful- just like mimi's. Now I have to use all of my self-control to keep from eating them all at once.

Gingerbread House Completed

The Gingerbread Masterpiece!

Sadie's Chair

Lots of updating but this will be the last one for a bit- oh, maybe not, might have a cute video to put up later :-)

I recently brought in my old rocking chair from when I was little and this has become Sadie's favorite place to sit. We keep it in Caleb's room because there's just no room in her room for it. This is where she escapes to when I'm not quick enough catching her going up the stairs. She just loves rocking on it. She also likes to stand on it but she's getting better about listening when we tell her no.

I thought it was appropriate to try and take her first year pictures having her sit in the rocker.

hope you like

Gingerbread Pictures

The Ginger Bread House

hi there, it's been a while since my last post but i've been a little sick. looks like i picked up strep throat and a cold on top of that so this is the first day that i've felt human. so far the kids are pretty healthy but it looks like Sadie might be coming down with a cold. we're saying lots of prayers that we'll all be healthy for the holidays.

so being sick has put off all holiday decorating. we're going to try to set up the tree tonight. seems a little silly since we'll be leaving a week later but oh well. we can't do christmas without a tree.

we did manage to make a gingerbread house. well, actually, Caleb and Andy did it while i tried to keep my distance, not wanting to infect anyone. it was so cute and Caleb was so excited. one of the neighbors gave the kids a kit for christmas and as soon as we brought it home, all Caleb talked about was making the gingerbread house. it was all i could do to put it off until Daddy got home. i kept telling him "mommy doesn't know how to make gingerbread houses. we need Daddy for that" that seemed to work and then when Andy got home, it was all we could do to make him wait until after supper.

well, he loved it and it looks like we will be doing this next year as well. he's still talking about his gingerbread house.

well, that's all for now- i'll post a little more later, including pictures of the house

2 Museums in 2 Days

I had to have a separate post about our whirl wind museum tour :-)

Last Thursday we went to see the new dinosaur exhibit at the Carnegie with Aunt Lindsay. This was great and I highly recommend checking it out (T-Rex will be opening in the spring). We had planned on walking over but it was too windy. Caleb was so good walking through it. I opted to bring the single big stroller instead of the double because I wanted to be able to steer easily and I didn't know how crowded it would be. So Sadie rode (which was good because she was sleepy) and Caleb got to walk around and explore. We walked into the exhibit and I pointed out the dinosaurs and he saw the guys on the high lift working on the rest of the exhibit. But he did go on to see the dinosaurs and we heard lots of "big dinosaur" It was very cool. Sadie liked walking around and touching the fake plants that she could reach. Caleb liked playing with the touch screens and getting Aunt Lindsay to read about the dinosaurs for him. We moved through the dinosaurs and then tried to find the polar bears. After the polar bears we went looking for the other African and North American exhibits (you'd think the polar bears would be with them but nope, not the case- the polar bears are in the Eskimo section). We passed the bird display cases on our way and Caleb happily pointed to a toucan and declared it a mango (got them mixed up from a book). We finally made it to the animals but everyone was tired so we scooted through there pretty quickly.

Sadie was too cute walking around and insisting that I hold her hand. She's very observant of how we do things and learned that Caleb has to hold our hands so she must have to as well.

On Friday we met friends visiting from Canada at the Children's Museum and I learned that I cannot do this museum on my own just yet with these two. Sadie just can't quite keep up with Caleb and I can't help him out with things while also trying to watch her.

We had lots of fun. Caleb still really enjoys the "neighborhood guy" aka Mr. Rogers and he spent lots of time happily sitting on the trolley in the middle of the space. He also liked watching the "how things are made" videos. Sadie spent most of the time just toddling around and watching everyone.

Moving on from there we went to the next area that had a huge doll house set up. Caleb seemed to like playing with the doll house and tried to moved the people around and put them with the right furniture. It was neat watching him play like that. After that was the tool garage and the ramp with the matchbox cars and tracks. Those were a big hit. The final room downstairs was a circus room with different acts that you could try, like a tight-rope walker, stilts, juggling and playing the drums. We also found a percussion set that had you stomp on buttons on the floor to play drums that were above your head. Caleb liked those but they were a little tough to get to work. There was also a podium set up with pretend microphones and a TV so that you could pretend to be giving a speech on TV. Caleb tried that out and seemed to know what to do.

Then we went upstairs to the happiest spot. The second floor has train tables and rice tables and sand tables and all kinds of other stuff. Both Caleb and Sadie had a lot of fun here. Sadie liked the rocking horse (of course) and then found a little baby area with toys to play in. After the trains, Caleb surprised me by going to the rice table and playing there for a good 15 min. He didn't like sticking his hands in the rice too much but liked scooping it and pouring it with the shovels.

Yeah Jesus!

Caleb's new cheer after trying to sing "Away in the Manger".

Yes, we are full on into Christmas spirit. We've gotten out our Advent Caledar (thanks g'ma) and it's a big hit. Of course, we forgot that it was December first so we really didn't start until December second and then I realized that I was doing it wrong. It's a big fabric calendar with pockets and little figures from the nativity in the pockets. I thought you were supposed to take the figures out of the pockets each day and put them up in the manger but upon reading the packaging I discovered that, no you're supposed to put someone in the pocket each day. I don't really think it matters but I'm not sure what we'll stick with. There's not really enough flannel fabric to stick them to in the manger (all the figure have velcro on their backs). I also haven't decided where to hang it so right now it's up on the entertainment center and all the figures are in a bowl. This morning Caleb kept grabbing my hand pulling me over to the TV and saying "help with the baby Jesus." Took me a minute to figure out what he wanted but then he and Sadie had lots of fun playing with them.

We've been singing lots of Christmas carols-

Jingle Bells
Over the River and Through the Woods (i know that's not really a carol but there's snow)
Frosty the Snowman (Andy and I keep mixing up the words but so far Caleb hasn't noticed)
Suzie Snowflake
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Away in a Manger

and Caleb's new favorite CD is the Chipmunks Christmas CD. All I heard in the car today when I tried to put on other music was "no, Chipmunks" so what was I to do?

Sadie loves all the singing because then she constantly has music to dance to. It's quite cute watching the two of them. Caleb will start singing a song and Sadie will dance. Then they'll both clap when it's done and start again.

We discovered that Caleb is really learning things in Sunday school. It was raining when we got in the car to go to church yesterday and as Andy strapped Caleb in he (Caleb, not Andy :-) ) proceeded to tell us all about the rain and Noah and building a boat and all the animals. It was something to have him remember all that and be able to tell it back so that it still made sense.

Sadie's has started saying pretty and choo choo. We're not sure what the choo choo actually means because she says it quite a bit but picked it up from one of the books we read. She hasn't been napping too well lately and I can't decide if she still needs her morning nap or not. She definitely gets tired but won't seem to sleep for more than a half hour or 45 min. at a time. It's tough when Caleb consistently is taking a good 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon. Hopefully we'll get this worked out soon.