Santa on Skates?

Last weekend we went to the Eagle Winter Festival at the ice rink.  Lilly immediately found a friend and we only saw her in passing.  Davis got a little more comfortable on skates and eventually skated on his own, without the use of the 'red thing'.  The best part was Davis got to skate with Santa.  (Lilly wouldn't go near him!)

And it begins...

As soon as we got home from our Oklahoma Thanksgiving vacation, we rolled right into Christmas.  We decorated the house, got out the advent calendar, and put up the tree.  Here is the tree right after the kids decorated it.

Independence

Lilly has been working on being independent lately.  She has done a super job of cleaning up her room without being asked, making herself meals, putting her clean clothes away, etc...  Well, her little brother mimics her every move.  So the other day Lilly made herself a bagel for lunch.  Then her little brother did the same.  Here is his version of a bagel with some butter.  Look closely at the butter...

It might be hard to see, but the butter is about one inch high!  In order to prevent my 3 year old from having a coronary the next day, I put ALL but a millimeter back into the butter tub and worked on some butter training with D. 

Family

Here are a few lingering family photos from Thanksgiving...

 A photo after turkey...full and happy!  Although, the turkey made Davis a little mischievous as you can tell by his karate chopping legs in the photo.

A stop at a park before we got to Sayre.

Gobble Gobble

We had a very thankful Thanksgiving!  We traveled to Oklahoma where many of the Place, Brower, and McBride Families converged at Grandma Linda's house in Sayre.  We had a lot of fun, good food, and enjoyed our time with our family!   

 Lilly, Olivia and Davis helping Grandma Kelly make her famous homemade noodles. 

 Davis rolling out his little piece of dough.

A good cook is a messy cook.

We spent part of an afternoon visiting Grandpa Bil's grave.  A festive Christmas arrangement was put in his headstone along with some holiday lights.  The kids got into the decorating and found blown petals on the ground and made their own arrangement for Grandpa Bil. 

Davis just informed me that he loves this picture and he was so happy to visit Grandpa Bil

Grandma Linda had a fun little closet full of toys.  It was the perfect spot to make forts, build Lego houses, and be a kid.  Here are Lilly and Davis playing with cousin Christopher, also 6 years old.

It was near 80 degrees on Thanksgiving day, so there was plenty of outside time.  Here are Gabriel, Christopher, and Davis playing Hangerball...a pretty fun game!  

The girls stop to pose for a photo while playing Hangerball.  Jenn, Lilly, and Olivia.

Sayre has a neat City Park, so we spent some time there too.  Here is Davis digging in the dirt. 

Olivia, Gabriel, Lilly, and Davis stop playing for a moment to snap a photo.  

Lilly snuggling with Aunt Jenn.

Snowy Day

Yeah...we finally have snow, and lots of it!  We woke up on Saturday morning to about half a foot of snow in our yard and Sunday morning brought about another 8 inches.  After digging out all of our snow clothes from various closets, we headed outside for some snow angels, snowball fights, and best of all, a snowgirl.  Here are the kids with Snowflake, their snowgirl. 

Happy Halloween

BOO!  Halloween was a lot of fun!  Both kids had their school parties and then we trick or treated around the block.  There were a few spooky houses that were almost to scary to visit, and one or two house were passed up altogether!  Davis dressed up as a Policeman and while out trick or treating a Policeman was patroling the neighbohood and stopped to talk to Davis.  We had fun, but the kids tuckered out pretty quickly, so it was a relatively early and mellow evening. 

 The Policeman

 The Magic Butterfly

  Trick or Treat