Here is the family photo album for December. What a fun month it was. So much fun that we have two albums to share this month! I hope the holiday season has been great for all of you!
 |
| Christmas Day 2009 |
Welcome to the new year everyone! 
Just a quick post today to start this new year off on the right foot. The kids (and us parents) all has a nice night out at a friend's house last night for NYE and today we mostly stuck around home and took it easy. James and I had fun taking some pictures for a new photography challenge I started today. (See my photography blog for a post about that.) We recently got the playroom organized again and James was enjoying playing with the trains on the train table and other fun stuff that we can now find again. I think he is holding some measuring stick in this photograph, and boy is he happy with himself. He's got such a cute smile, how could I not put his happy face on the blog again? Anyway, have a wonderful 2010 and enjoy all that the new year has to offer!
Today we took the train into Boston with all the kids. I (daddy) took a day off from work to have a nice family day. Our trip started out at the Museum of Science, as it often does. We spent a few hours there despite it being packed with the vacation week crowds. After the museum we made our way over to Boston's "north end" for some authentic Itallian pizza and pastries. Now we're all on the train north taking us back to home. It's been fun and it was good to spend the day together.
This is (was) our first Christmas with baby James in the house. I guess he's not so much of a baby anymore, but he'll always be our baby boy now. I took this photo just after the tree went up around the middle of December. It was a great tree, which was amazing considering we took all of about 10 minutes to pick it out on a very cold day at the tree farm. James was amazed by the strange new object in the house, covered in colored lights and dangling decorations. Fortunately we never caught him trying to climb on it, though there was one day when the tree was found mysteriously leaning dangerously to one side. Anyway, I love this picture of James with Mom and wanted to get it posted before the new year arrives. Hope the holidays have been wondrous for all of you as well!
Just uploaded a new "monthly" album for November highlighting family and friends. Going to try to make this a habit every month, and maybe even go back through the previous months to see what I missed.
Every now and again I see photos like this one and I think about what a proud and imaginative builder Max is. He's always creating something out of something, whether he's building with his growing collection of Lego things or just taping together pieces of cardboard from the recycling bin. He hopes one day to be featured in the Lego Club magazine's "Cool Creations" column. (Though I'm a bit perturbed at Lego at the moment for wasting no time in sending us catalogs we but still haven't received his Club magazines.) He's made airplanes from milk cartons, droids from old buckets, and helicopters from pieces of scrap wood. Lauren too likes to build things like just like her big brother, and I'm sure in a few years she'll be putting together some pretty cool creations as well. Occasionally we see her going around wearing one of my big leather tool belts with every toy she can fit crammed into the various pouches. Needless to say they both love to help Daddy in the workshop, and I try not to discourage it too often. Sometimes we even build things things together just so they can learn how to use the different tools properly. Building with the Lego's is a bit less stressful for Daddy though, so it's nice when we end up sitting around Max's Lego table putting things together. As you can see in the photo here, he's very proud of his creations. And we're very proud of him.
It snowed this morning, which made most of the adults I know pretty grumpy. I have to admit that I was none to excited about it myself. But, the children were thrilled. Max flew through 
breakfast and got dressed faster than any day this school year so that he could go outside. Lauren's first words o
f the
morning were "It's snowing! I need to put on my snow pants!" and off she went to dress in clothing suitable for blizzard conditions. I figured it wasn't worth arguing about, so I helped the dress and they played outside for quite a while. It was really fun to watch.
Boy, over 2 months since we have posted. I will try to be better. For the time being, though, here are a couple of silly pictures of four out of five of our "kids" playing together (okay, I don't think Cisco was really playing. It was more like he was waiting for them to go someplace else). Lauren and Max have a definitely love/hate relationship these days. One moment, they are playing really nicely together, and the next, they are yelling, hitting, screaming, crying, etc. In fact, as I wrote this, they did that exact thing. Sigh. Obviously, I prefer them getting along. :) Max adores James and James adores Max. Lauren goes between being killing James wi
th kindness and just killing him. He might be scooting along on the floor and she will decide to "help" him sit up. Or, he might be sitting up, and she might shove him over. James usually looks at Lauren with suspicion. Who can blame him. However, Josh managed to capture a moment when all three were happy. Here are a couple of pictures.
We had a pretty good laugh the other day. Lauren, as many of you know, is pretty fearless when it comes to things like climbing, swimming, and all those things that often instill fear into the hearts of the young and inexperienced. While vacationing up at the lake house in Maine we were swimming with a group of kids at a birthday party at a neighbor's house. Most of the kids were much older than Lauren, so she seemed like a peanut compared to many of the children who were jumping from the dock and swimming the lake. We still keep Lauren in a life jacket while swimming there... mostly because she's not a strong swimmer yet and partly because we just don't know when she may decide it's time to launch herself into the water. Anyway, she spent a lot of her time in the water doing what the big kids were doing... climbing up onto the dock and then jumping back in, often onto some random "floatie" in the water. After one of the small breaks from swimming she asked me to put her life jacket back on. Once she was secured she ran off down the length of the deck, right past a group of the older kids, and threw herself back into the water. One of the kids, realizing that the flash that just passed by him and into the water was the three-year-old girl, called out to us in disbelief and asked "Is she afraid of anything?" Ha ha! No, no... I'm afraid she isn't.
Posts
All Comments
