Merry Christmas!

Daddy and His Babies

While we were living in Arizona, we were able to take a trip up to the Grand Canyon. While we visited, I just happened to snap this shot of my boys...

About 15 feet to our left was the Grand Canyon. This was just a little walkway set up to get from one viewing point to another.

Anyway, a few weeks (or maybe a few months?) ago, we went on a field trip with our homeschool group to a farm. One of the activities was a corn maze and I got this picture:

Hunter and Kylee are right around the same age in both pictures. Before I know it, Gunnar will be walking right along side his daddy!

Big Girl

This little missy has gone on the potty FOUR TIMES in the last week, with two of them being today! I'm so proud of her and SO excited we could be down to only one in diapers soon! Yay!

Random iPhone Pictures

Every so often, my friend Keri has "Random iPhone Picture" posts, where she just posts some recent pictures she's taken and explains them. Those are some of my favorite posts since the blog post isn't about one thing in particular, but just a bunch of little stuff she wants to share. Well, I decided that I'm going to start doing the same thing. Thanks for the idea, Keri!

Here's Hunter doing his phonics homework, but on this particular day, he felt the need to do it with his revolver on his hip. You never know when a bad guy is going to enter the scene!

We went to a friend's Super Hero birthday party, and Becky, the birthday boy's mom, made capes for all the kids!

 

Hunter and Kylee want to wear theirs all the time while they play! Kylee calls hers a "cake." And even though I don't have photographic evidence, I keep finding Greg with Gunnar's little cape on! He woke me up from my Sunday nap today and I laughed because he had it on. Apparently, he'd had it on for a while because he couldn't even figure out why I was laughing!

I make chocolate chip pancakes fairly regularly for breakfast for the kids. On this particular day, I guess picky-eater-Kylee only wanted the chocolate chips.

I found this in the bathroom the other day. Baby doll needed a clean diaper, I guess! I think I'm going to sew some baby doll cloth diapers for her for Christmas!

Kylee let me french braid her hair!

Thanks to sales and coupons, my pantry is ready for Christmas cookie time!

We have all three pictures of the kids around 4 months old with the American flag in frames...finally!

I found the older two watching a movie I'd put in for them together on the floor. It was so sweet!

Gunnar fell asleep mid-playing...silly boy.

Daddy is just a big jungle gym.

Kylee loves carrots!

She's also a diva. After church today, she didn't want her big furry coat off.

Gunnar fell asleep like this too! And every time we took his foot out, he would put it right back in!

7 Months

How on earth is our sweet boy 7 months already?

People ask me if he is ever not smiling. Um, not very often!

He really loves to smile at anyone that talks to him. And he loves his toes!

 He's not crawling yet. He still needs to get his knees under him. However, he does roll once or twice to get to something close, and he will probably be low crawling soon. He definitely has a desire to things out of his reach and you can tell he's trying to figure out ways to get to them.

He LOVES to eat. And as soon as I can start to give him table food, he's going to love it. He hasn't eaten any baby food he doesn't like, and he always eyes our food and watches every bite go into our mouth with a look like he doesn't understand why we're not sharing!

He gives open mouth kisses!

And he's getting pretty good at sitting up. He's still a bit wobbly and needs someone there to catch him when he falls, but it's coming along.

He loves his little giraffe from the Friedleins. I turn the music box on and give it to him and he puts himself to sleep.

When he gets excited, he's been kicking his little legs, even if you're holding him. It's too cute. And he has even started doing it when I'm singing. I'm starting to wonder if he's dancing!

Mommy and daddy love you sweet baby boy!

I Love FaceTime!

Even though family is 1000 miles away, cousins can still be silly with each other like they're sitting right next to each other. And maybe Aunties can be silly too. :)

Need a Smile?

Our Anniversary

Just last week, Gregory and I celebrated 7 YEARS of marital bliss. I cannot believe we've been married for 7 years. But seriously, it's been wonderful. I'm very thankful for the marriage we have.

We were able to go out on a date to celebrate, thanks to the Goodfellows and Jenny who watched our munchkins. Greg's parents had given him (us) an Outback gift certificate for Greg's birthday, so we used it for our date.

On a side note...I've always had extremely fine hair. Whenever I've tried to curl it, it lasts about 1.5 hours and then the curl falls out and all my hard work is gone. But my new best friend is a ceramic curling iron! Seriously, buy one if you have problems with your hair holding curl! This was right after I finished, and all I have in my hair is a light mist of flexible hold hairspray. And that's only because I felt better knowing it was there. It would still hold without it. And the curl was in all night. Amazing!

Anyway, here's me and my man.

After our wedding, we had a ton of napkins left over, so I try to remember to bring some to our dinner dates for every anniversary. Translation: I remembered last year and this year. When I pulled them out, Greg rolled his eyes, but in a "you're cute" sort of way, so it was ok.

We had a good time. And we even had some fun with my front facing camera. Our server probably couldn't wait to get rid of us!

Thanks for babysitting our babies, Gary, Melissa and Jenny! We had a great time!

I love you Gregory Douglas and I can't wait for the next 7 years!

Halloween

For Halloween at church, the kids were asked to dress as their favorite Bible character. When we asked Hunter who he wanted to dress as from the Bible, he answered with "a Preacher." I loved his answer too much to tell him that didn't meet the criteria!

He already has everything in his wardrobe except for a suit jacket. I went to Goodwill and scored one for $2.76! It was quite dirty, 

and I was a little worried because it was dry clean only but Fels Naptha did the trick!

I got it wet, scrubbed it with the bar of Fels Naptha and did some scrubbing with my hands, and then rinsed it clean. I made sure to blow dry it dry so it didn't leave any water marks. 

It turned out great!

And so did our little preacher boy!

 Isn't my boy so handsome?!

I had some mouse ears that I've had from high school so I put those on Kylee just for fun. Mice were on the Ark, right?

They both liked their costumes!

And Gunnar? He just went as a handsome boy. Not that that's a costume...

Towards the end of the church service, the kids came in to sing a few songs,

And then we all lined up around the sanctuary with candy and they got to come and "trick-or-treat."

Here he is again just waiting patiently.

Then we had our Fall Festival this past Friday. They have games for the kids to play, and FRIED OREOS. Oh my...it's a good thing I didn't bring any of those home. They were so good! Anyway, this is about the kids...
 
Here is Hunter playing an Angry Birds game...

And it was so fun with Kylee because she's just now getting old enough to play games like this so she had fun too.

 And Gunnar was just plain cute. What can I say? it's what he does best.

The kids had a couple of fun days! Now we just need to figure out how to rid of all this candy...