Oh how the time flies.  Thanksgiving was a hit and Christmas is just around the corner.  I'm pretty excited for the holidays.  It's nice to have Kyle home to spend time with us.  It's sad but kids are asleep more than awake at this age and sadly they are awake when Kyle is at work.  Boo :(


Anyways, we have been anxiously getting ready for the holidays.  Half of the Christmas shopping is done and we just watched the Christmas devotional the other night.  I put up the tree and Jack has finally stopped pulling the ornaments off.  I knew it would only take a few days to lose interest :)  I also made an advent calendar for us which further solidifies the fact that I am not very good at quilting.  I'm okay at sewing but quilting is just too difficult.  I think it's the precision that gets me.  Bah!  It's a nice calendar though and it's got lots of thoughts on Christ.

Because the kiddos are so young, we are still in a somewhat melding and mixing of traditions phase.  I'm guessing Jack won't be able to remember this Christmas and Claire still has a while.  What this boils down to is a lot of talk about how we will approach Christmas, what role Santa will play, and what traditional meals will we eat.   So far nothing has solidified yet but I'm guessing next Christmas we'll have to kick this lazy celebration and really put and effort into the Christmas traditions.

Today I decided to try a photo shoot in our house.  I didn't get any really good pictures but I got one that worked fine and we didn't have any melt downs so I would call that a success.

Testing the white balance.  Jack's ready for his close-up.  He was saying "Cheese!" before I even got him in front of the camera.

 Check out the hands in the pockets!

Smiles :)

Final usable product

Tonight was their first time in the bath together.  It was a little scary but worked out well.  I was impressed by the amount of water we save and the TIME we saved.  It was pretty sweet and Jack was so nice-he didn't push Claire over once.

Claire just sittin' pretty.  She has this adorable little smile, it melts my heart all the time.  Speaking of hearts, Jack can now say "heart" "start" "kiss" "Zoey" "Tonie" "zipper" and much more.  And speaking of Jack:

I didn't think the flash was going to go off but luckily it didn't wake him-whew!  This Elmo is a lifesaver.  Whenever Jack doesn't want to do something like give us his binky or have his diaper changed, we do it for Elmo and then Jack follows.  Ah, it's very nice.