Snow, snow & more snow

While we were in Oklahoma for Christmas, there was just so much snow. We had a blast playing in it several times during the week. Josh is in love with it. I think he still hopes that when we move we'll move into a "snow house." We shall see!

Building a snowman with Daddy. Sticks all over the place. Apparently, you can't have too many "limbs."

Josh sledding with Grandpa.

Emily giving it a try with Daddy.

Josh didn't need adult help. Here he is sledding down, backwards, with his cousin, Kaity.

Poor Josh got hurt every time we did anything on this trip. Fortunately, Grandpa was there to help him through this one.

Emily on Grandma and Grandpa's purple sled. I think this may have been the only smile from her on this trip sledding. It was just SOOOO cold that day... and just about every day we were there.

Josh and Daddy making their way back up after a run down the slope. What troopers.

Jessica's Blessing

One of the reasons we headed home for Christmas was so that we'd have a better chance of having more of our family around for Jessie's baby blessing. Since we had that big snow storm on Christmas Eve, and it never really warmed up to or above freezing, church was canceled that Sunday, December 27. So we did the blessing at Peter's parent's house. It was a very nice way to do it.

We managed to have Peter's entire immediate family there. We took lots of family pictures the morning of the blessing. This was the one with the whole family all together. Aren't we a lovely bunch. :)

With all the family pictures we took that morning, I guess we just got all pictured out. We completely forgot to get a picture of all the people in my family that came. My parents, my brother, Nathan, and my sister, Robyn, were all there. We also didn't get a picture of Jessie in her blessing gown. My goodness, we totally fell down on the job on this one. So, I eventually got her back into the blessing gown and snapped this photo. She's nearly a month older here. I was afraid the dress wouldn't even fit, but it was just fine. My mom makes blessing outfits, so this was one of hers. Thanks a bunch, mom! It was gorgeous. (By the way, if you are looking for a blessing outfit, let me know, I'll get you in touch with her, and you can see if she has anything you'd like. She'd be more than happy to sell you one.)

Jessie with Great Grandma Datin the day of the blessing.

Josh is always looking for an opportunity to hold Jessica. He's such a sweet big brother.

Christmas Day

Christmas morning is a lot of fun. Watching the kids get new stuff and enjoying themselves is always neat.

First thing in the morning, we went out to the front room and got our stockings. Josh and Emily were super impressed. Jessie was not so much. Maybe next year. Somehow, this is the only picture we got from the Christmas morning presents. Oops! It was super cold that morning, so it was really nice to be right next to a hot fire. Emily was just happy to be getting some new things. Can you tell?

Look at all that snow we got on Christmas Eve! This, by the way, is not a toy tractor. It is quite big. And the snow drifts are practically covering the equipment attached to the back.

Granny pulled out a box of old Legos. Josh had such a great time putting them together. Especially when Granny was helping him out. He spent a long time putting these things together, even after no one was helping any longer. I think we've found a great toy for his 5th birthday... which is not the one coming up in a couple weeks.

I debated whether to post this picture, as it may be a little embarrassing to Josh as he gets older, but I wanted to make sure it ended up in the blog. Emily got a box of Tinkerbell and friends costumes for Christmas, and I let Josh dress up when Emily did. It was a little disturbing to look at. He really is a handsome boy, but not such a pretty fairy, don't you think? Emily, on the other hand is a very pretty Tinkerbell.

A small story to go with this in the blog book. We went back to the bedroom we were staying in, and Emily decided she wanted to get into her new play clothes. So, I helped her get changed. Then, I asked Josh if he wanted to get dressed up too. It was strange that he hadn't jumped in on his own, but once invited, there was no holding back. They both got totally decked out, and wanted to go show it off to everyone else in the house. Of course, no one else knew what we'd been up to, so when we got out there, everyone just burst out laughing. And lots of pictures were snapped. Josh was such a good sport, and just stood there posing for all the pictures with his little sister. It was definitely amusing.

A little later, we decided to take advantage of all this snow, and went out to play with the sleds. Emily was apprehensive, but once we got going, she loved every minute. Until she fell out of the sled on her face... at which point she wanted to go inside. I think it just surprised her how cold it really was.

Both the kids got to ride on sleds at the same time getting pulled behind their fun aunt Katie. Pictured above is the beginning of one of the "good" falls Emily had.

As you can see here, falling on her back didn't bother her one bit.

Josh enjoyed falling off the sleds as well. It was a lot of fun to watch.

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas and Christmas Eve with Peter's family. We had a really great time. It snowed buckets. It was declared a blizzard. Can you believe it? Blizzard in Oklahoma? Who'd a thunk? Peter's sister, Katie, had fun projects for the kids to do that evening. She's so creative.

The proud granny holding little Jessica. I love it when a baby sleeps on you like this.

Getting ready to brave the storm.

Just such an adorable picture, I had to include it.

Emily wasn't so sure about all this snow. And especially all this cold. We don't do cold very often down here in Florida... though it's hardly broken 60 in the past couple weeks and the lows have been in the low 30s. Brrrrr.... But that was after this trip.

Josh, on the other hand, was not phased. He LOVES the snow. He could have stayed out there for quite some time. But it was getting dangerously cold, so we brought the kids in pretty quickly after all that bundling up.

Katie had the kids make candy Christmas trees. From what I understand, Emily did little decorating and a lot of eating. What can you do? At least she obviously enjoyed herself.

Josh here, showing off his own artwork. He was so proud of himself.

Then Josh knew what you're supposed to do with candy, and frosting, and ice cream cones. You eat it. As soon as you can. I think this was the only bite he took, though. They had so much fun with it all.

Hair Cuts By Josh

I am still not caught up to date on this blog yet, but seeing as we had a BIG event today, I thought I'd go ahead and share. Emily got her first hair cut! Yeah! Well, not exactly how I'd planned it going. That's for sure.

Jessie had woken up early for her nap, so I was in the bedroom trying to put her back down. When I finally came out, I saw Josh standing in front of Emily with scissors in hand. Emily's hair looked like it was laying in such a way that didn't make sense, unless it was cut. I stopped and stared for at least 30 seconds, if not a whole minute. I think my jaw was laying on the ground. I think Josh new he was in trouble. When I asked if he'd cut her hair, he said really fast "No." Obviously not true. So, he went to his corner as I inspected the damage. It could have been worse. Had Jessie taken much longer, there might not have been anything left. Right now, I'm just going to leave it alone and see how it grows out.

Of course, Josh cut the hair at the crown of her head. If you'll remember, Emily had quite the mohawk at that spot on her head when she was little. (Click here if you'd like a refresher.) So we're in for some interesting hair styles for a while.

This is all the hair I collected to save from her first haircut. He really chopped off quite a bit.

Emily and Jessie. Never figured their hair would have such similar characteristics at this point in their lives. :)

Oats and Tractors

We are still during the week before Christmas. We were in Guthrie, visiting Peter's family and they needed to go get some oats. I don't know where they took the oats, or why they got them. But they needed them. So they took the kids with them to the farm and loaded up the oats, and the kids, in the back of the truck.

Everyone just checking out the back of the truck. I assume it was empty otherwise at this point. I wasn't there, so I'm not exactly sure how all this happened.

Looks to me like Josh was enjoying watching how the oats get into the truck.

But sitting in the oats was obviously far more fun. Josh apparently had a bad string of luck while we were in Guthrie. While they were having all this fun, Josh touched a belt on the auger (That thing you see dropping the oats into the truck)... they had warned him... and lost some skin on his hand. I'm not sure a day went by that he didn't get himself hurt. Fortunately, nothing was serious.

Josh loved getting in the tractor with Granddad.

I'm not sure what Emily is so upset about. But this is our van. She's holding the camera case. My guess? She probably wanted to take some pictures, but the camera was obviously busy. Isn't she cute? Peter just informed me that it was Josh who had the camera and she was just looking at the case. He doesn't think she was actually upset... yet.

I don't think Emily wanted to get into the tractor with Granddad, but Daddy managed to coax her in. Doesn't she seem so happy to be up there? :) Here, she was upset. She may have just been really tired.

Josh apparently liked it better with Granddad. Oh well, Daddy. Can't win them all.

Dogs and Trains at Christmas

In December, we took a trip back to Oklahoma to spend time with family for Christmas and have Jessica's blessing. We had a great time. We got to Peter's family's house in time to go to Grandma and Granddad's Christmas dinner on December 19. It was great to see Peter's grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and their kids.

The biggest story from the Christmas dinner kept Josh off his feet for a little while. Grandma and Granddad now have a dog. Josh wanted to see the dog, so I took them over close enough to pet him, but far enough away that the dog couldn't jump on him. I told him that he wasn't to go any closer. Later, I was sitting on the swing with him, and Josh pointed out that the dog looked lonely... should have seen the big red flag there. I can't remember what I said but I took him back over to pet the dog again, and told him that he shouldn't go any closer because I didn't want the dog to jump on him. Josh started playing with the other kids and having a great time with them. The other kids were being careful with him, making sure he wasn't getting hurt in the dodge ball game they were playing, and just being all around nice, so I eventually went inside for a little bit to spend time with the adults. This is on a farm in the country, so I didn't figure I had anything to worry about. By this time, the dodge ball game was over, and Josh was sitting on the swing with Tiger, who I believe is 5? A few minutes later, Tiger came inside and said the dog was jumping on the little boy out there. I was in the other room in the back of the house, so I didn't hear any of this until the adults came inside with Josh crying. He had decided to go visit the lonely dog all the way over at his doghouse. The dog then jumped on him... he's a very jumpy dog... knocked him over and kept jumping on him. Josh, in the process of falling over, sprained his ankle, so he couldn't walk on that foot for a few days. Thank goodness the dog didn't bite or scratch him. We were really blessed in that. After Josh could walk around, somehow, he kept falling and twisting it again, and again, and again. Poor kid.

Granny and Granddad (Peter's parents) have this little tractor to ride. It was Josh's favorite toy to play on... until it snowed and we couldn't use it any more. He sure had a blast while it lasted.

Emily thought it was a pretty cool tractor, too. She just couldn't reach the pedals.

One of the evenings during the week before Christmas, we went to see the Christmas lights in a neighboring town. Can't remember the name. They have a train ride through the lights that you can ride through the park. Here's a picture of Josh and Emily with their cousin Savanna, waiting for our turn on the train.

Here they are waiting some more. I just thought this was a cute shot to share.

The train that we got to ride through the lights was lit up itself. It was such a fun night.