Christmas Pictures

Here are some Christmas pictures from yesterday:

an ornament our little elf made us at school:



opening his stocking (if anyone read our christmas letter, these are the dog pajamas he insists on wearing every night):



trying to ride on the big crane from Gran and Papa Michael:



letter/number puzzles from Memere and Grandpa Bob:



new pillow from Aunt Angie and Uncle Roland:



Ernie showing off his Red Sox tie (which matches his pants and hat quite well):



Hanging out under the tree:

Christmas Treats

Here are some pictures of Samuel helping make Christmas cookies. As you can see, he loved playing with the cookie dough and the flour. We had to change every article of his clothing afterwards.

And here he is decorating a graham cracker gingerbread house

The finished product (minus most of the chocolate chips because he ate them):

Breakfast of Champions

This morning when Samuel woke up, we had the following conversation:

Samuel: "my eat banana?"
Me: "Sure, you can eat a banana."
Samuel: "my berry hungry whoa-whoa" (I'm very hungry for yogurt)
Me: Well, let's go downstairs and get some yogurt.
Samuel: "my berry hungry marshmallows"

Can't blame the kid for trying.

Got Milk?

Well then by all means, blow bubbles in it:

Fun with snow

We got our first snow here last week (well, the first snow that actually stuck to the ground.) Samuel really wants to go play in it ("my play snow?" he keeps asking.) Unfortunately, the weather has been awful - it has just been raining and sleeting ever since. I think it has rained more in the 7 months we have lived here than it did the entire 5 years we lived in Colorado. I am missing the Colorado winters, where it might snow, but the sun would come out later that day, or the next day at the latest.

But, if you can't go out and play in the snow, you can at least take a snowball inside, right? (look closely, it's in Samuel's hand)



And maybe Mickey Mouse would like to play with a snowball:

If all else fails, it makes a good snack:

We made a snowman craft the other day. I cut out all of the pieces and helped Samuel glue them together, and then he glued the cotton balls on by himself:

Thanksgiving

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year. Here are some pictures of everyone showing off the turkey hats we made:

Barbara and Bob:



Meg and Pete:



Erin and Ernie:



me, Erin, and Meg:



Lilly:



Samuel:

Countdown Box Review

My coundown boxes were reviewed by a website called mamaslike. If you want to read the review, check it out here:

http://mamaslike.com/3-2-1-baby/

Weekend Pictures

Here are a few pictures from around the house this weekend.

Ernie and Samuel in our garage. Ernie has been working really hard to get everything in there organized. Samuel loves to walk around with a screwdriver and "fix" things in the garage.



Making oatmeal cookies. I think Samuel is eating straight brown sugar here, and loving it:



Under the table with Monty:

What's in your refrigerator?

Here's Samuel hanging out in our fridge. (this is my first attempt posting a video, so hopefully it works okay.)

Halloween

We bought Samuel a super cute monkey costume for Halloween this year. He hated it. He screamed his head off when I tried it on him - like perhaps the costume was filled with fire ants. I tried to take a picture of him wearing just the hat, but he decided to throw himself on the floor:



Maybe he will like Halloween more next year.

We had 2 pumpkins this year. The first one we decorated in the super easy way of cutting shapes out of black duct tape and sticking them to the pumpkin:





The second one Ernie and Samuel carved. Samuel looked and it and said "scary." I have to agree with him!

Go Red Sox!

Anyone who knows Ernie, knows that he loves the Red Sox. He was really excited that they made it to the World Series this year (and are up 3 games to 0 at this point!). Ernie has a Red Sox baseball hat that Samuel has been slightly obsessed with since birth. Now that Samuel can talk more, he calls it "my B hat" (because of the B in the logo on the front.) Ernie, Samuel and I all own Red Sox hats and Samuel likes for all of us to either wear them at the same time, or not wear them at the same time. He'll say "Mommy's B hat, Daddy's B hat, Sam's B hat" and point to each of us in turn. Here are some pictures of him showing his support for the Red Sox.


This first one is from when he was about 8 months old:



Here he looks like he doesn't like the score of the game very much:



Hanging out with his hat on backwards, like a true boy:





Samuel seems quite into hats lately, which is a good thing since winter will be here before we know it. I'm not sure how warm this basket hat will be:




He is saying such funny things lately. A typical conversation will go like this:

Samuel: "Mommy - dining room - play - you?"
Me: "You want me to come into the dining room and play with you?"
Samuel: "Me too." (he'll say this instead of yes)

He hasn't quite mastered the art of conversation (or pronouns) yet, but he is certainly trying. He also likes to tell us when he thinks something is delicious. He'll say "ummmm, my whoa-whoa licious!", which translates into my yogurt is delicious.

And his memory is so sharp. An episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse showed Mickey looking through a telescope. The other day I gave Samuel a paper towel tube to play with and he told me it was his telescope to see things far away with (and maybe to SMELL things far away as this picture shows)

Ribbit, Ribbit

Barbara and Bob sent Samuel this frog towel for his birthday. Here he is after his bath the other night:



In this picture he sort of looks like a Star Wars character:

Visit with Meg and Lilly

This past weekend Meg and Lilly came to visit. Samuel was very excited to see Lilly (or "baby nee-nee" as he calls her.) We had fun going to the playground, playing with toys at home, and having Samuel's birthday party.

Here are some pictures from the weekend.

At the playground:







Lilly LOVED Monty (who doesn't?):




Birthday party ("it's my pahty" Samuel said):










Thank you to everyone who sent such wonderful presents. We tried to get pictures of Samuel with everything, but he was too excited to sit still. If you don't see your gift here, rest assured we do have it and love it.

Wiggles and Giggles

Monday nights I take Samuel to a gymnastics class called "Wiggles and Giggles" at the YMCA. When I first signed him up for this class, I imagined there would be instructors teaching him how to do sommersaults and walk on a balance beam. Instead it's more like open gym time. The kids get to run all around the room, climb on foam shapes, play with balls, jump on the trampoline, and screech a lot. Samuel loves it. Last night I took some pictures of him at class.

Playing with pom-poms on the trampoline:



Rolling around on the floor:



Climbing down a foam wedge:



Running through the rainbow:



And here is his absolute favorite part of class - the instructor giving each kid a happy face stamp on their hand:



They get the stamp at the end of class for doing a good job. The ride back to our house is less than 10 minutes long, and he usually mentions his happy face stamp about 25 times on the ride. He likes the stamp so much that the instructor gave him one on each hand last night. He was one happy kid!