we're still around

Dressing Nora up in my old dress...

 ...and a dress of Grandma's. We love to play dress up.

 Holiday outfits are plentiful.

 He is working and talking on the phone. Likely talking to his grandpas about farming.

 His dirty little secret is riding in Charlie's carseat.

 I finished my first ECFE session teaching before Thanksgiving. We made this fun turkey in November. Nice to have a slow down in hours and to not have to work at night for a couple of months.

 Thanksgiving seems like a lifetime ago. Nora's eyes got huge when she saw her plate of food. She loved it all, but was especially into the pumpkin pie. She shoveled it in as fast as she could.

 Class was done before Thanksgiving but we did have our Gingerbread make & take at ECFE. We had 35 people in the morning and 95 people in the evening. Levi came at night and made a gingerbread house. He also helped me make the lovely photo back drop we used for the event before preschool one day.

 It snowed and the snow stuck around for awhile. Levi loved pulling Nora around. He would ask her if she was ready to go and she would shake her head "yes". Oh, I also remember that November brought very mild cases of hand, foot & mouth for the boys and nasty colds for everyone. I appreciated the warmer temps in December.

 More festive outfits for Christmas including reindeer leggings with attached tutu.

 Cooking making & cookie eating.

 "The DOnald"

 Major milestone here: 1st lost tooth. It fell out at school during lunch and they sent him how with the tooth in a little treasure box necklace. Within minutes of getting home, Levi managed to lose the lost tooth. Things escalated quickly as Charlie said he would pull out one of Levi's teeth to make up for it. I searched high and low and couldn't find it, but I did find a big cookie crumb on the floor that could easily pass as a tooth. I somehow managed to sneak it into the box and tape it all up and trick them into thinking we found the tooth.  As Charlie explained to me how the tooth fairy operates, Levi made it pretty clear that he DID NOT WANT THAT THING in our house. I was trying to explain that the tooth fairy is in our imagination, like Curious George, Micky Mouse or Daniel Tiger. Levi's response was that "Daniel Tiger is kinda scary." Umm, ok child. He insisted I put the tooth in the garage but we did eventually settle on putting it on mom & dad's door. Luckily, the tooth fairy took the "tooth" but I'm afraid we may someday discover that the tooth fairy dropped the tooth on their way out. Charlie was so excited & not at all freaked out about the whole deal. The permanent tooth was already growing in quite a bit and now his 2nd tooth  is really loose, too. He loved telling everyone (I mean everyone!) he had 21 teeth for awhile.

 We went to watch Uncle Tyler play bball one night. Charles was steadfast in his sign holding during the warm ups. I put Nora on the floor during halftime and she scooted all the way across the gym. The crowd was cheering for her and laughing and she was loving it. She was getting some air with her scooting. She is now known around town as the girl who provided the halftime entertainment. It was much more exciting than the rest of the game ;) The next night while visiting Santa, we had 3 people ask us if she was the girl from the game.

 Nora is obsessed with babies. She found this one when she woke up at grandma's and wouldn't let it go. She takes her baby to daycare almost daily and it is one of her favorite words (along with me-me and cheese)

Visiting Santa in SV. Charlie asked for an ipad (ha!) and Levi a dishwasher. Too bad Levi had a better chance of gettting what he asked for! Charlie was so adamant about the ipad that I did have to tell him he wasn't getting one so that he wouldn't be disappointed. He was very sad and even when I asked if he'd rather have a whole bunch of presents instead of just 1 he responded, "no, I just want an ipad." hmmm, can't fool that child.

Put the nativity up for the first time in a few years. Levi made sure some modern day Holstein's graced the nativity as well.

Baking cookies at great grandma's.

4 generations of cookie bakers

Levi ate himself into oblivion once again. He was shoveling in grapes and announced he had to throw up. So he did and then came back and immediately asked for a cookie. Puke and rally...

 Levi's preschool program. He surprised me by a.) standing in the front and b.) occasionally moving his lips and doing some of the actions. Not sure if he actually sang but he knew there was juice and cookies afterwards and I told him we could go have lunch with Charlie, too.

Helping at Charlie's classroom party. They didn't have a Christmas program at school but I think we counted 5 ornaments that they made at school to bring home.