And We're Up to Date

 It's been a bit busy here the past few weeks. It has been a very good, but very full month of December. Today has been one of those rare stay at home all day kinds of days. So what have we been up to this month? Lots of Christmas activities - town events, church events, and family time. Last Saturday (the 8th) we hosted a Christmas gathering at our house for our church family. My parents came down that day for a quick visit, hung out with the kids, helped us prepare for our party, and spent a little time fellowshipping with our church family. Yesterday was our church's children's program during the morning service. In the evening we hosted a family movie night. It was a great day spent with the body of believers here in Wahoo! 

The boys have enjoyed watching some Christmas movies - Charlie Brown's Christmas, Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Word World Christmas. And, they have enjoyed eating Christmas cookies, coloring Christmas pages, reading Christmas books, and playing with the Little People Nativity set. Silas has been making baby Jesus spend quite a bit of time sleeping on a pirate ship lately! Jonah is now done with preschool until the new year. And, last week was our final BSF until then as well. 

This sweet girl is 3 months old as of yesterday. She had her first cold over the past two weeks. I ended up taking her into the doctor last week because I wanted to make sure her lungs sounded ok since she was breathing a little funny at times. Thankfully, she was fine. It seems as if really thick mucus in her upper airway was the cause. Even though she did not eat well at all during her cold, she must be getting plenty to eat. She weighed 14 lbs, 14 oz at her appointment. Lydia wears mostly 3-6 and 6 month clothes as well as some 6-9 months! She is still waking up once at night. I usually put her down around 8:30 pm. Then, she wakes up around 2:30 or 3:00am. She gets up for the day anywhere from 6:00-8:00am. Both boys were consistently sleeping 10-11 hours at night at this age. I would love it if she would get to that point, too. However, I do cherish our middle of the night feedings. She often wakes up squealing and squeaking happily and will smile and talk like crazy at 3:00 am. Maybe she appreciates her one-on-one attention?! Just this week Lydia has been able to sit in the Bumbo seat. It has been a great thing for all of us. She has always liked to sit upright, which until now has meant that she wanted to be held most of the time. Now, she happily sits in the Bumbo for 15-20 minutes at a time. The boys love it as they can bring her lots of toys to play with. And, Lydia LOVES watching her brothers. She smiles away at them and her eyes will follow them in and out of rooms until she can't see them anymore. Lydia is such a sweet blessing to us!

Another exciting part of this month is that Jonah won the preschool age division coloring contest through the Chamber of Commerce. This is his coloring sheet. One of his prizes was a box of 64 crayons. He has liked having so many new colors! Also, the same day he found out about winning the coloring contest, the town newspaper called to say that he received the honorable mention in his age division for their drawing contest in which he had to draw his favorite Christmas scene. The newspaper will print it in the paper this week. Maybe we have a little artist on our hands?!?!

We are looking forward to celebrating Christmas here at home on Saturday before heading to Minnesota on Sunday after church to be with our family. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Decorating Cookies

This girl didn't decorate cookies, but she sure was cute watching us hard at work!

Pardon the bed hair - both boys napped that day! Yay!

Taking the first bite...and many more followed! :)

Two New Traditions

We started two new traditions at our home this year for Christmas. In a previous blog, I wrote about a new Thanksgiving tradition. It has been fun and meaningful over the past year or two to consider what we want to teach our children about holidays and how to carry out that teaching. The boys have loved these new Christmas activities.

This is a Noel Calendar. Noel Piper used to make these advent calendars which had an accompanying story that involved all of the parts of the nativity story. I had really wanted one a number of years ago, but then she stopped making them. Last fall, Noel posted a blog saying that she had some of the burlap screen-printed backgrounds left over and was giving them away. I got two of them. This fall, I collected all the animals, painted old-fashioned clothespins to look like people, and sewed lots of little velcro pieces onto the banner to create this advent calendar - one for us and one for my sister and her family.  Along with the story Noel provided, I added a short Bible reading to each day that takes us mostly through Luke 1 & 2. We have had a wonderful time using this calendar!

Our other new tradition has been to read a Christmas book every night. I collected Christmas books from ones we already had and ones I found at our library's annual book sale. I wrapped them up at the beginning of the month. Now, the boys take turns each night picking out a book that we can read together. I would love to be able to put all of the books under the tree, but I know that at this stage in life they would not stay wrapped. So, we have a box we pull out every night. Maybe one day I can trust them to stay under the tree...

Much of my desire to develop meaningful traditions for our family came from reading the book Treasuring God in Our Traditions by Noel Piper. It is a great, simple, encouraging read!

A Visit With Santa

At the end of November, we enjoyed an evening out to participate in Wahoo's Christmas tree lighting followed by visits with Santa. 

The boys well know that Santa is just pretend. So, when Santa asked them what they wanted for Christmas Jonah just started at him strangely. At other times that people have asked Jonah what he wants Santa to bring to him, he will say, "Santa doesn't bring presents. He is just pretend. Mommies and Daddies give presents to kids." Glad he knows the truth, hoping he doesn't hurt any feelings with his matter-of-factness!

10 Weeks Old

These pictures are from a few weeks ago when Lydia was 10 weeks old. It is SO fun to watch her grow! The weeks are going by too quickly!

Silas joined Lydia for a little tummy time

Taking a rest

Getting stronger!

Christmas Decorating

Decorating for Christmas was a family activity this year. We had a great time pulling things out of boxes and putting them where they would go best. The boys helped by decorating with some stuffed animals and other unbreakable decor. And, last year I was smart enough to put a lot of non-breakable ornaments in a ziploc gallon bag. So, when it came time to put ornaments on the tree, I was able to dump out the bag of ornaments for my two over-excited boys to start hanging on our tree!

 The boys received Peanuts Christmas t-shirts from Grandma. Their cousins have matching shirts to wear at Christmas for a cousin picture.

It is next to impossible to get a everyone-looking, everyone-smiling picture with a 4 year old, 2 year old, and 2 month old. 

Lydia is starting to look a little nervous about sitting with her brothers!

Thanksgiving

We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home this year. This is the 3rd year that we have been in our home in Wahoo for Thanksgiving. Although we miss being with family, we have come to look forward to and enjoy our time as a little family. We watched some of the Thanksgiving Day Parade, hung out most of the day, and had a nice meal together in the evening. We continued the new tradition we started last year of writing on our Thanksgiving tablecloth. Even though this was only the second year of using it, it was fun to look back on what we wrote in thankfulness last year. A new tradition we started this year was our Thankfulness Tree on the wall in our dining room. It was a good activity for the boys to start this year as it began to get the wheels turning in their minds about giving thanks and praise to God for who He is and what He has done.

2012 Family Pictures

Lydia was 8 weeks old when these pictures were taken

Resemblance

Around Jonah's birthday, I never took the time to look back at the picture of me when I was young with the same cake my mom made for me (see the last blog post). It came to mind the other day, so I pulled it up and thought I'd share.

Jonah at 4 years old

Me at 5 years old (I think)

Hopefully, there are more blogs and pictures to come. Life gets busy with 3 kids. Wow!

Our 4 Year Old

This guy turned 4 years old on the 7th. We had a great time celebrating him! It seemed like Jonah got lots of parties this year - one with my parents, one with Mike's parents, and one with just our little family. 

I had a cake like this for my birthday when I was young. My mom made one for Jonah, too! 

My parents got Jonah a red-footed booby bird to go with Heezy, Jonah's blue-footed booby. Jonah often talks about Heezy's brothers and cousins. Their names all end in "eezy," of course! So, we were excited to see what Jonah would name Heezy's relative. As soon as Jonah pulled him out of the bag, he exclaimed, "CHEEZY!!!" In the picture above, Heezy and Cheezy were having a reunion.

We celebrated Jonah's birthday with a few gifts and a cake. We have decided to use the "something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read" rhyme as our birthday gift tradition. This year for Jonah: want - color-by-number book, need - a bigger bicycle, wear - winter boots, read - the set of 3 Frog and Toad books.

Jonah saw his doctor for his 4-year-old well visit on Friday. He weighed in at 41 pounds and was 42 inches tall. He is in the 85th %ile for height and 84th %ile for weight. At 4 years old, Jonah LOVES to color, draw and write on his magnadoodle, build legos, listen to music, sing, and read. And, he can read just about any kids book (crazy!). Jonah's mind is always going. He is constantly asking questions. He enjoys all of his activities (preschool, Bible Study Fellowship, and Awana), but Awana is definitely his favorite. Jonah is a great big brother to Silas and Lydia. He certainly has his moments of frustration with Silas, but I am daily amazed at the graciousness and self-control he has when Silas destroys his Legos, messes up his perfectly arranged cars, or erases his Magnadoodle that had wonderfully drawn pictures and writing on it. 

We love you, Jonah! God has richly blessed us through you!

Our 4-year-old riding off into the sunset!

Pumpkin Carving at the Rue's

This morning, we carved the pumpkins we picked at Vala's Pumpkin Patch last month. 

The Before Pictures:

Jonah and Mike worked hard scooping out Jonah's pumpkin and separating all of the seeds, which Mike roasted for us when we were done carving.

Sy made sure his pumpkin was clean and ready to be carved

 The After Pictures:

What a fun morning! Our Halloween fun is about halfway through. Jonah has a party at preschool tomorrow. Tomorrow night, I am making pumpkin chili for supper. We will watch "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" after supper tomorrow evening. Then, on Wednesday, I think the boys will take part in a town kiddie parade for Halloween. And, there is a fall family supper and party at Awana that evening. Lots of fall fun!