Video of Carolyn's New Toys!

An Early Christmas

We decided to start alternating which side of our family we travel to for Christmas and inviting the other side up here to celebrate an early or late Christmas at our house. Diane's mom came up the week before Christmas, (which was a blessing for Diane as Zach was out of town most of the week). Friday night we enjoyed a nice dinner together, made cookies and opened presents. Although I'm sad about not visiting Pittsburgh at Christmas, it was fun to have my mom here as part of the holidays at our house!

Enjoy some pictures of our time together!

Carolyn and Grandma making butter cookies together. I was glad to have some bakers because with the power outage 2 weekends ago and 20 inches of snow last weekend, I've been quite behind!

Putting on the sprinkles - Carolyn definitely needed help controlling the speed of the sprinkles!!

Carolyn's crafts!

Carolyn picked out this snowman soap dispenser as part of Grandma's present. She was really pleased to find it and held it while we finished our shopping. I had warned her about the need to hold it carefully because it could break. When it came time to pay, I asked her to put it up on the register. She looked very intently at the cashier and said "please be very careful with this. It is special and can break" before handing it over!

Zach opens a weight tree to better organize the weights that are all over our garage floor!

Mommy opens her sweaters from Grandma!

Carolyn opens her Little People Zoo from Grandma!

Carolyn is VERY excited about the Little People Zoo. I couldn't capture her expression very well, but as she opened it she said "oh, wow" under her breath and kept tearing the paper.

Building the Zoo!

Carolyn also got a marble building set. She isn't quite ready to build it on her own, but really enjoys racing the marbles down! Dad is definitely the best builder in our family!!

We're looking forward to a special Christmas morning here and then traveling to visit family the day after Christmas!!

Merry Christmas - we hope that your family is enjoying many blessings in this special time of year as we celebrate the birth of our Savior!

Christmas Decorations!

Carolyn is super excited about Jesus' birthday this year, so it was really fun to decorate for Christmas with her!



Zach is getting the tree out and Carolyn is doing an excited little dance!



Carolyn enjoyed hanging the ornaments. Zach and I want the tree to be something fun and special for our whole family, so we are only using non-breakable ornaments.


Carolyn placed hers all in a cluster in one section of the bottom and I didn't rearrange them because it makes me smile to see her little area there!


Carolyn hung her stocking using her stepstool to reach!

Daddy puts the finishing touches on the tree!

What a Weekend!

We had a major ice storm Thursday into Friday that really shook things up around here! We lost power in the middle of the night Thursday and finally got it back Sunday afternoon! Unbelievable. We felt lucky because not everyone has there's back yet, and the damage we suffered was minor.

It got down to 43 in our house, not that bad when you consider we had friends with homes in the 30's....


A little frightening to see your indoor and outdoor thermoter about equal - in December!

A view of our backyard from upstairs.




Zach and our neighbor had to very carefully remove this branch from our power line.



A large part of our neighbor's tree fell on our new fence and broke 3 sections.

We've been Busy!

Well, we've been busy, so it's been almost a month since I've updated...again! I'm trying to get better with pictures/updates, but I've been stuck in a bit of a rut lately!

I've been busy with moms group stuff and our big Christmas party is coming up on Wednesday! I've been busy with our family Christmas things too - decorating, baking, cards, shopping, wrapping, etc! :)


Zach's class finishes up next week, so he's pretty swamped with his final project and exam. He spends much of his time like this lately.


Carolyn is as usual quite busy in her own little way......

Here she is teaching her dog class. She lined all of the dogs up in a row (sorted by the amount of fur each dog has...) and wearing her dog sweater taught the dogs how to bark and eat bones. She takes herself quite seriously and it's hard to watch without laughing too much!


Her most favorite activity of all is crafts and we have to do at least one craft every day. She is happy with any sort of cutting, gluing, pasting, etc. Here we made some animals and then spelled their names out with her letters.


She's transitioned from a nap to a rest time complete with books and animals in her bed. As you can see, she still gets her nap in when she needs it! :)


Within the next few days I should have a post with our Christmas decorations up! :)

Happy Birthday Carolyn!!!

We had a wonderful time celebrating Carolyn's 3rd birthday last week!!! She turned 3 on Friday and we had a party with her friends to celebrate. Grandma was here because she came to watch Carolyn for the rest of the weekend while mom and dad enjoyed a little getaway!!

Enjoy some pictures!


We had to wake Carolyn up from a nap for her party! She was very, very excited about it and waited on the couch with her party balloons waiting for her friends to come!



We got Carolyn a triangle to add to her instrument collection!



The only thing Carolyn asked for for her birthday was a computer. She was VERY happy to get her own laptop!



My mom and I made Carolyn a caterpillar cake. Her party had a caterpillar and butterfly theme. The kids had sandwiches for dinner and we used a butterfly cookie cutter to cut them into butterflys!



Blowing out her candles!



She didn't look too thrilled to be opening presents, but she really did enjoy them! After she opened each present, on her own initiative, she walked up to each kid and said thank you and went back to her chair for the next present.


Grandma brought Carolyn these cute little puppies. Carolyn wanted them to sleep right next to her bed.


Carolyn built this very long necklace that she wanted more than one person to wear.

Halloween!

Carolyn had a very fun Halloween! She loved trick-or-treating!


Carolyn as Clifford the Big Red Dog. I thought the paws on her feet were the cutest part!

Trick-or-treating with her little friends from our neighborhood. Carolyn enjoyed being the biggest and ringing the doorbell at each house.

With her loot!

Fall Fun!!!

We've really been enjoying fall! Carolyn had 2 Halloween parties this week and we did some special pumpkin things today at home. She's excited for trick-or-treat tomorrow!!

First step, Carolyn rolls out the dough. Notice her left arm.

Cut the shape. We made pumpkins, leaves and apples.


Scoop up the cookie. Mommy takes over from here for the baking.

Carolyn needed an outfit change before icing. And after of course.

Icing. How much could I pay you to eat that cookie?

Tada!

After dinner, we all carved pumpkins. Carolyn's job was to take the lid off. She was surprised at the inside!


Scooping out the guts!


Here they are! The big one is a happy face that mommy and daddy made and the little one is Carolyn's sad face pumpkin. Daddy cut just as she drew!

Finally! A Look At Our Fall

And I thought last time was bad, this post is way overdue! Fall has been busy - I'll let pictures tell the story!!


Carolyn still likes everything "just so" and most of her play is quite "orderly" as you can see here.


Carolyn loves drawing and recently has started to make a lot of recognizable things - this is Daddy. Interestingly, most of her people's arms come more out of their head than their body!

We went apple picking twice - once with the moms group and once with Zach's work. The apples are delicious -Carolyn enjoying both picking and eating!

Carolyn picking out her pumpkin - we went pumpkin picking again and she actually got to pick a pumpkin off the vine that time!

On the way down to my brother's wedding, we stopped to visit good friends from here who've since moved back to PA. It was a refreshing visit and the kids were so fun to see together. It's been almost a year since they've been together, and they just fell right back in line!

Enjoying the playground!


It was such a beautiful fall day!
Carolyn LOVED being the passenger in Ains' car!


Congratulations to my brother David and new sister in law Amy!!!

Carolyn looked beautiful in her flower girl dress and did a really nice job spreading petals down the very long aisle! We were impressed!

At Pap and Nana's house we were able to celebrate Carolyn's 3rd Birthday with family (just a little bit early - she'll turn 3 in November!)
Carolyn got a really nice floor puzzle from Nana and Pap - she's really into puzzles now!


Carolyn got a really nice floor puzzle from Nana and Pap - she's really into puzzles now!


I hope to post later this week with more pictures of our fall fun!!!