Princess

As part of family tradition, this Christmas dinner included crackers with crowns.  I may not have been part of dinner, or crackers even, but I was part of the crowns - I am a princess you know.

My princess sister joined me.

Most of the royal court.  This Christmas a nasty cold has been running through our house and Jonah had excused himself early from dinner due to illness. 

Pre-Christmas

It's been a while since we've had a picture of just the kids, and since we were all dressed up after attending church, the timing was perfect. 

It's only taken 2 1/2 months, but we finally have a picture of our new expanded family. 

Gran and Uncle Peter are visiting to celebrate Christmas with us, and they got in on the picture action as well.

Christmas Pageant

Although Willow Creek is a huge church, they're breaking into section communities to help it feel smaller.  Our section did a little Christmas pageant after the Christmas service and Noah and I got to be sheep.

We also sang a song from Promiseland, "Oh What a Special Night", and here I am warming up.

Our pageant was entirely unrehearsed, which made it all the more authentic.  Here we are as the barnyard animals around the manger with the shepherds on their way in.

Noah and Luke doing the motions to"Oh What a Special Night".  A shepherd and his sheep, how perfect!

Gingerbread

As a Christmas craft, Liz made gingerbread men and brought a few over for us to decorate.  Noah and I did a great job decorating our gingerbread men with great creativity.

Jonah did much less decorating and much more eating.  Actually, he ate all of his frosting and decorating pieces and then yelled for more "sugar" to be put in his bowl.  When he wasn't busy eating the frosting, he was busy eating the actual gingerbread men themselves.

Liz didn't decorate any gingerbread men, but she was a helper and an idea supplier.

The final products.  As you can see, Noah and I did a nice job with our decorating and Jonah did a nice job eating.  Any frosting that you see on Jonah's gingerbread men was put there by Liz and he just forgot to lick it off.

School Performances

This year at school we did a Christmas play called "The Littlest Christmas Tree".  There were 2 "families" in the play that cut trees down and I was the dad of one of the families.  Here I am cutting down our Christmas tree.

This is my "family" from the play - Olivia and Kira.  I'm not sure who was the mum and who was the daughter, but that doesn't really matter.

Here is my soccer crew - every Friday at recess we play soccer and it's become my favorite sport.  Here we have Dylan, me, Anthony, Braden and Bryce.

I helped make the set and am responsible for the tree sign on to my left.  I'm also demonstrating how my axe works to cut down a tree.

Anna also did a little Christmas performance in her classroom where she sang a few songs with her friends.

2 Months

I'm such a happy little girl and love to smile!

Boy have I been busy these last few months, 2 months to be exact.  As you can see, I've been perfecting funny faces as one of my largest accomplishments.  I did have a doctors appointment which revealed that I'm 11 lb 3 oz  (60%) and 22 5/8 inches (70%) and came with 2 unwelcome shots.

My other big achievement has been an awesome smile.  I give it to anyone who will give me a little bit of attention.  I also love playing with my tongue, which I'll also show you if you play with me for long enough.

Flat Stanley

As one of my school projects, we have Flat Stanley touring the world.  My Flat Stanley went home with Auntie Leslie, but before he left he had a drink with her in Illinois.  I'm hoping that the  adventures that they have in Boston are a big more G-rated to share with my class!