Playing Together

I thought I was in for it on Monday. Alex had been off work for two weeks and then Grandparents were here for a week. I was preparing my self for entertainment withdrawl with the kids. But Monday was quiet and peaceful. I think it is because they are enjoying some free time to play with thier Christmas presents.

This is a conversation I heard from the other room. Voices were never raised and from the sound of it there was no anger involved.

Elias: Oh, Emma you knocked down my blocks.

Emm: I'm sorry. Do you still like me?

Elias: No, not all.

And then they resumed playing together.

Grandparents

GRANDPARENTS ARE FUN

We had to say to goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa Haverland today as they headed back to Colorado. The kids had the joy of seeing both grandparents over the holidays and as a result Grandma's and Grandpa's are not just pictures but people our kids have very fond memories of. We got to see Grandma and Grandpa Busenitz at Thanksgiving. Emma still talks about making cinnamon rolls with Grandma. I wish I had a picture of that, but to my shame Grandma and Emma were up early working hard while I slept in.

On January 1st Grandma and Grandpa Haverland came to our home for a visit. It was tight quarters in our place, but oh so worth it to have them at our home.

Happy New Year

The Rose Parade

Instead of getting up before dawn to see The Rose Parade in person we decided to tour the floats the next day. We missed out on the bands, but we got to see the floats up close.

It's amazing what can be done with flowers.

It was a beautiful sunny day and thankfully we made it early enough before the crowds.

Look closely thise are slices of oranges on the front of his shoes.

Christmas 2007

Merry Christmas

These are a few of my favorite pictures from Christmas morning.

The creative placement of Christmas presents this year.

Trying to give Brooke a chance to open her own gifts.

Posing with matching shirts.

The tender moments. Enjoying the presents!!!

Cleaning or Playing

I could be cleaning...

I could have been cleaning the house this morning because the bathrooms certainly needed it. But when the kiddos are looking this cute it's easy to be distracted. There are days when I feel like a referee in a WWF match, but then there are the days when the kids play so well together I just have to sit back and let the sweet memory sink in.

This is our smiley girl, who as you can tell puts up with alot from her siblings.

This video is a little coaxed but does represent Brooke very well.

Oh Christmas Tree

Our Tree

I read in a blog recently that a mother decided to not tempt evil and put her tree on the front porch away from harm's way. Ashamedly my first thought was, "I'm glad my kids are more obedient than that." I'm experienced after all. This is my 5th Christmas keeping a baby or a toddler from touching the ornaments. A few hand swats and an occasional spanking and by day 3 or 4 the tree has been reasonably safe. But then came number 3 and suddenly putting the tree on the porch doesn't seem like such a bad idea. After fishing broken ornaments out a certain young mouth I decided I wasn't dealing just with an obedience issue, but a safety issue. My strategy, however, is not as drastic yet as putting the tree on the front porch. I decided just taking off the first row or two of the ornaments and moving them upward would fix the problem. We'll see if this works. If not, there may be an addendum to this post.

BEFORE

DURING

AFTER

Church

All Dressed Up

Saturday evening I had the kids clothes all laid out for church the next day. This is not a completely normal occurance, but if I'm on top of things it's on my Saturday to do list. However, Sunday morning when I went to dress Brooke I realized the dress I had gotten out for her was too small, so I went with plan B. When I handed Elias his kacki's there was a huge stain on it (from a melted crayon) that I hadn't noticed the night before, and therefore had to find something else for him to wear as well. After was all said and done I looked at the kids and myself and realized we were all dressed in black and white and ready for church early. I guess Alex didn't get the memo because he had a blue shirt on. But he changed to a white shirt and we thought we would try and get a family picture at church. It didn't work so this is all we got. Sometimes I plan and plan and things never go as well as when I see God's hand perfectly orchestrating things.

Dressing up

Elias loves dressing up and pretending. These are a couple of his latest opportunities to dress up. These are all church activites so instead of Halloween costumes we dressed up for "Harvest parties."

Watch out there's a new sheriff in town. For Calvary kids the kids dressed up like something on a farm and had a little parade at a convelescent home. Elias's favorite part were the spurs.

For Awana they had to dress up like a Bible hero. After putting my bathrobe on him for inspiration I came up with the idea of adding a crown and voila, we had a Kind David outfit. Elias is always running around our apartment keeping us safe from giants so this was a perfect idea. Thankfully my son does not have high standards in the dress up department and is quite content with whatever his mom throws together.

Autumn in California

It's pumpkin time!!

In California we like to pretend it's fall. Even though the temperatures are in the 70's and 80's Emma insists on wearing her sweater. One of the ways we pretend that we are not in urban LA is to visit the Underwood Family farm. Right now it's the closest thing my kids know about animals and gardens. The kids loved being able to choose thier very own pumpkin and loved climbing on the giant pumpkins.

This pumpkin was too big to take home.

But this one was just right!

It took a little coaxing but the kids loves feeding the donkeys.

Look Mom, "No wheels"!!!

My baby is growing up.

June 22, 2006

The above picture is over a year old, but is the beginning of this story. A few months before Elias's 4th birthday Alex was throwing some things away in our dumpster when he found a bike. A picture of my husband dumpster diving would have added to this post but I'm sure there is no way I would be able to get my husband to reenact his dumpster diving for a picture. But back to the story... Alex couldn't figure out why someone would throw a perfectly new bicycle away. It still had all the wrappings and obviously had never been ridden. After bringing it inside he realized the chain wouldn't stay on. Alex got out his tools and was able to do some adjustments and fix it. I'd like to say we gave it to Elias the next day, but being the economists that we are we hid it until his birthday. And so yes, one of his birthday presents came from the dumpster, but to our credit it was not his only present and we did spend money on at least one of his presents.

October 24, 2007

Elias loved his bike, but eventually one of the training wheels broke and since then has been riding it with just one training wheel. Today the kids were out riding their bikes and on a whim I decided to take the remaining training wheel off. I didn't have much hope that he would learn to ride without it today, mostly because it's quite hot and I didn't envision myself running up and down the sidewalk. However, it only required me running up and down the block 3 or 4 times and he quickly got the hang of it. I think I'm going to start training him for the Tour de France next week.

Watch out for those corners.

Wow, how my little boy has grown. Looking back at the above pictures I realized it looks like Elias doesn't have much of a wardrobe. I assure you ,however, the Lord is very gracious and Elias has more than one t-shirt.