Kinda Dorky

I made some hat cookies for Wee College at Beulah again this year. People tell me I need to start my own business making sugar cookies, and I'm considering it. Apparently my perfectionism with icing cookies isn't as dorky as I thought!

A White Shirt

My mom was over for supper on Tuesday and the boys sang a song as our prayer for the meal. After the song was done, my mom said, "I think Jesus was smiling while you were singing that." Zack replied that he couldn't see Him, and so we had a conversation about listening prayer. (For those of you that don't know what "listening prayer" is, it's really cool. When God says "behold" in the Bible, He means to "look with the eyes of your heart" and the eyes of our heart is our imagination. So it's basically asking Jesus to meet us in our imagination to talk with us.) My mom asked the boys to close their eyes and see if Jesus was here. Nathan closed his eyes for a minute and said, "Yes! He is!" My mom asked him what Jesus looked like. Nathan said, "He's got long hair. And a white shirt on!" After supper, my mom and I were talking about how cute that was and we looked into the living room to see Nathan on the couch with his eyes closed tight and his hands folded. He was double-checking that Jesus was still wearing a white shirt, and ran back into the kitchen to let us know that He hadn't changed His shirt and it was still white. It was so cute.

Zack's Art

The boys (especially Zack) and I spend a lot of time at the kitchen table drawing. Zack loves to draw all kinds of things, and he's really good at it too. He draws pictures and cards for everyone that comes over, it's super adorable. I've been getting better at drawing a few things over the past couple of years, but sometimes Zack will ask me to draw something for him and when I show him the end result, he just says, "It's okay mommy, you did your best..." So here's some of the drawings that Zack and I have done.

Here's our family in the car together - we are all our favorite colors. Pete is driving, then Zack behind him, then me, then Nathan. This is when Zack and I decided to draw some monster trucks. I actually didn't do too bad!

Here's a computer that Zack made for me, with "To Mom, I love u, from Z.H!" on the screen.

Nathan wanted me to draw him a robot on this super-cool paper that Pete's grandma got for Zack for Christmas.

This is a card that Zack made for Nathan whilst in his "I'm Optimus Boy" stage.

Here's Mario and Luigi getting an invincibility star. Sweet.

The Art Of Lego

Nathan plays with Lego all day, every day. He makes vehicles and vehicle-related objects, and is very intentional with every piece. He always makes sure that each vehicle he makes has a specific purpose, which is then outlined in his presentation of his newest creation right after he makes it. Nathan's cars are made by himself - if even one piece is added by someone else, he will remove it very hastily. He's so proud of each one, and always remembers what everything does and what it's for. Here are a few of his vehicles that I was able to take pics of...

Monster Jam

We were able to go to Monster Jam again this year, thanks to Kyle's brother Tyler who still tours with them. We had a blast together and Nathan was so excited that he didn't stop jumping up and down the entire time we were there... Here are the boys with Tyler, sitting on his quad.
More quad sitting when we went to the pits, Zack being cute.This is a pic I got of Nathan when we were sitting in the stands for the show...

School

Pete's been in school since the first week of January, and this is his last week. Starting Wednesday, he's got one major exam every day; the NAIT practical, the NAIT written, and then the provincial. He hasn't been to work since the week before Christmas! He's all frustrated that he's lost his callouses on his hands - he's going to be hurting when he gets back to work. But Pete's doing super good in school, and I'm so proud of him.

I registered Nathan for kindergarten this fall. It's shocking to me that I'll have both boys in school in September. Nathan is SO excited to go - he's going to LOVE it! I can't believe he's growing up so fast.

Zack's doing great in kindergarten, although I know he's kinda bored with some aspects of it. He's quite a reader now; every book he brings home from the school library gets a little bit bigger and has more words. He used to bring home Dr. Seuss to read to us, and now it's books about race cars and how things work. He brought a book this week from the library about how the lungs work, and I'm shocked at his reading skills and comprehension. He hadn't read the book until he read it at home with me, and he reads words like "automatically" and "oxygen" without missing a beat. Then Zack proceeded to tell me that the word "automatically" comes from the word "automatic" which is just like the doors at Safeway... Wow.

Growing Up

Another step for a growing child happened this weekend; Zack has his first loose tooth. Is he really old enough for all of this? Yikes!

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!