December Pictures

Here's some shots from December!

This is what the transmission from my car looks like. I asked Pete to take a picture of it while he was working on it right before Christmas. Doesn't it look so cool?

Zack drew a really cute 2-sided picture of a happy face and a sad face, so I had him pose accordingly. So cute!

This is the first gingerbread house that I've ever built by myself. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out... To bad it only lasted a few days before it got eaten! I made it out of sugar cookie dough instead of gingerbread - I'm not the biggest fan of gingerbread, and it turned out pretty good. I stayed up WAY too late building it, but I had so much fun.

This is the boys sledding on the hill by Pete's parents' place in Rocky Mountain House. We had a blast with them - it was a beautiful day! After supper that day we went for a walk to the Von Hollen's house, a pretty big tourist attraction in Rocky at Christmas, and it's only a couple blocks away. They spend months decorating their house and yard, they even have corporate sponsors and everything for their lights. Their yard has a pathway that goes all the way around the back of the house complete with lit arches all the way through and "lookout points" to see all of the inflatable stuff they have in the back yard. It's pretty cool - the boys went around a few times to take it all in!

His Own Words

We listen to music all the time, and the boys love to sing along. While Zack prefers to sing the words in the song, Nathan prefers to use the melody to sing about whatever he wants. We were on the way home from church this weekend, and Nathan was singing along to the music in the car (loudly, as usual); "I loooooooove dinoSAAAAAURSSS!!! *Fast unintelligible other stuff* Neeeeeerf guuuns!!" He often sings about Lego, fast cars, and monster trucks too (surprise, surprise!).

Scarfy 2.0

He's aliiiive! This week the boys and I finished this year's snowman. It's been beautiful outside, but the way our house sits, our yard is in constant shade in the winter which doesn't make that good sticky snow. We went outside on Friday morning and the snow wasn't sticky, but I was determined to make it work. So I grabbed the watering can, filled it with hot water, and sprinkled the snow with it. I gathered all the new wet snow I just made, and continued to sprinkle the ball I was making and then a path in front of it. So I rolled and the boys sprinkled, and eventually we got ourselves a snowman! Yay! I'll put pictures up soon - it's even better than last year.

Man Supper

Every family has certain names for events/products/etc that other people don't have, and one of ours is "Man Supper." Man Supper happens when I have a meeting/worship practice/other thing and I can't be home for supper to feed Pete and the boys. Zack and Nathan - especially Nathan - love Man Supper because they usually get to eat/drink stuff that I don't feed them. It's funny; if you give a positive name to put to the experience it somehow makes the whole thing easier and fun...

Christmas Day

We really wanted to get the boys something cool for Christmas this year, but not really having a Christmas budget that included presents for our immediate family was disheartening for us. BUT at the end of November one of the guys at Pete's work asked him if we would like to have (for freeeeee) his Power Wheels truck. It was sitting at his house and was never even driven once, and now his son is too big for it. So Pete said that OF COURSE we'd love to have it, and picked it up a few days before Christmas - it even came with two batteries and a charger. All we had to do was get the dust off of the truck and charge the batteries. Well we managed to wrap it (somewhat) and the boys LOVE it! Here they are on Christmas day driving their new truck around.

Christmas Picture: Epic Fail

Enough said.

Shrinking!

Nathan was very alarmed and worried when he got up this morning, and when I asked him what was wrong he said, "Mommy, I'm shrinking because I need to read the bible more! We need to read it now!" He was remembering the shrink and grow song from church. So cute!

Snow Buddy

My little Nathan loves to personify objects; his cars and trucks, pillow, all kinds of things. Yesterday was the cutest one by far. We were in Rocky Mountain House for the weekend visiting Pete's parents for Christmas, and after church we went sledding. While we were sledding, Nathan found a clump of snow that was all hard and stuck together. He named it "Snow Buddy" and carried it around everywhere we went outside. When we went into the house for supper, Snow Buddy sat on the front step right by the door. After supper we went for a walk to go see some Christmas lights, and Nathan carried Snow Buddy all the way there and back. He was sad that we couldn't take Snow Buddy home (he would melt in the car!), but we left him on the front step at Grandma and Grandpa's and Nathan said an adorable goodbye to him as we left.