Christmas 2009

In November, we had 3 little boys placed with us, Dillan, 1, Nicholas, 2 & Elliot, 3. It made for a very busy Christmas. We did include them in our annual Christmas picture. We take it every year with everybody who is living with us at the time. Getting six kids 4 & under to all look at the camera is hard enough, we don't even worry about smiles! I guess Buddy, our dog, was not happy that he was not originally invited to be in the picture, so he posed himself.

You can just see the excitement in the room (the teenager was not ecstatic about being waken up before noon.)

He did perk up a little bit once the stockings were distributed.

Poor Dillan...his parents refuse to let me cut the back of his hair! I am only allowed to "maintain" his current style - if you can even call it that!

He wasn't as interested in his stocking as he was the gifts.

Santa finally got smart this year, and all of the little kids received a handheld game of some sort from him. (The first month the boys were here they all fought over Amata's Leapster). Since Amata already had one, she got a text to learn thing & Dylan got a drawing toy since he didn't really know how to play one; the others either got a v-tech pocket or a Leapster. The older boys got smaller gifts in addition to the cash they got to spend on our vacation.

Amata's favorite gift by far was her new outfit for dance. She literally wore it all day long...in the car on the way to the Cities (everybody in the gas station we stopped at to go potty loved it, too) to church that night & through dinner & gift opening at her auntie Marnee's!

Halloween 2009

The kids had fun getting ready for Halloween. They are getting old enough to actually help with the pumpkin carving. They all got to pick out their own this year.

I think Cameron picked the biggest one they had!

Baylee made sure to finish her pizza first.

Yummy!

The teenager was thoroughly enjoying the pumpkin carving activities...

Long after the little ones finished their pumpkins, Cameron was still hard at work.

But the end result was worth it for him:

Time to get ready for trick-or-treating...Amata was tired of waiting.

Off they went...

Caleb's 3rd Birthday

Caleb turned 3 back in October; the day before Halloween to be exact. Since they were allowed to wear their costumes to school that day, he had to open one of his gifts that morning.




That's right, he got a Green Bay Packer's, uniform complete with shoulder pads & a helmet (although we didn't show him the helmet until after school, since they couldn't wear masks to school). They may not have had their best season this year, but we are die-hard Packer's fans at our house.

We did make him wait until school & daycare were over before he got to open the rest of his gifts.

Baylee was very excited about his domino train!

But Caleb's second favorite gift (right after the Packer's uniform that he refused to take off all day) was a guitar.

Baylee was just excited for new toys period.

You can never go wrong with a ball & glove. Especially a soft ball, that will most likely not break anything.

Or with a book about baseball...

He has found some things he enjoys, in addition to anything ball related. And Cars is one of those things. Luckily, Cars was one of the few cakes Cub had left when I was cake shopping.

Waiting patiently for the cake to be cut.

As usual, everybody loves cake time!