I want a princess dress!

Emma is a girly girl and she loves big frilly dresses. The only problem is that Abbie despised frilly dresses when she was 3 years old. That being said, all we have for hand me downs are plain overall type dresses. Emma keeps begging for a "princess" dress to wear for church. She was shopping with me at Costco the other day and we passed these beautiful poofy dresses. I bought her one, and she has been in heaven ever since. She hugged and kissed me right there in the store.

We'd like you to meet Jonesy.

In January we got a dog. Jones is his name, and this is his story. We had been looking for a dog for several months. We wanted a Labradoodle, but always found them to be way too expensive. We were regularly checking Craigslist and the local animal shelters for a dog that fit what we wanted. We wanted a dog that is great with kids, a bigger dog that likes to run and be active, a non-barker (we have too many of these in the neighborhood), and one that was hypoallergenic (Erick is terribly allergic to animal dander). That being said, we thought that we might never find the dog for us. January also turned out to be a very hectic month due to some medical problems that I had. On Monday we were looking on the shelter websites and found 2 Labradoodle puppies, that were brothers. We decided that we would go to the shelter the next day as soon as Erick got off work. Well Tuesday morning, after taking Abbie to school, I decided to make a quick trip to the shelter with Emma, just to check things out. The first thing that you notice is the smell. The second thing that you notice is the noise (all the barking). Emma and I walked through the shelter and really didn't see any dogs that we were interested in. On the way out I asked if they still had the Labradoodles and she said that there was one left. He was in the first kennel, I just didn't see him. I was able to take him out on the lawn. All he did was snuggle in close to me, he wouldn't leave. I knew right then that he was a keeper. I took him home right then and there, and surprised the kids when they got home from school. He has been the sweetest dog that you could ask for. He lets the kids (Emma) maul him. He is about 6 months old, and is 45 pounds, so we expect him to get quite a bit bigger. We love our big boy, he really is the sweetest thing.

Taking the doggies for a walk.

Our friends also got a dog (around Christmas time). Indy & Jones (get it....Indy Jones) love to play together. They can wrestle for hours.

A bath at home.

Hiking with Jonesy.

Christmas 2008

On our way to the Victorian Dinner

Ringing the bell (It doesn't get too cold here, but this particular night was freezing!!)

Sledding (Tyler found his own little hole to hang out in.)

Abbie went nonstop

Emma enjoyed the hot chocolate

On a hike with our Fresno cousins

At the top of the hike (what a view)

My boys playing Mario Kart on Christmas morning

Abbie playing with some new dolls

Emma snuggling her new Care Bear

Erick juggling the Christmas oranges

Christmas Eve (practicing their angry faces.)

Christmas Eve (in their new PJs)

Emma was a angel in the Christmas Eve play

Tyler was Joseph (and a star)

Abbie and her friends are angels and wise men

I was in charge of decorations for Christmas Eve dinner. This was the adult table.

Tyler and I worked on this ginger bread house (this year we used hot glue to put the houses together rather than royal icing, it worked so much better)

This is Abbies final product

Abbie at the Ward Christmas party (Mommy why does Santa look like Brother Goldsberry??) Abbie asked for Legos

Tyler asked for a bike with gears. NOTE: No pictures of Emma, she refused, maybe next year.

Tyler class Christmas party

Abbie was a reindeer in the Kindergarten Musical.

Here are some other things that we did in the month of Dec.

Carolling (this has been a long time tradition we go with our friends and have a blast, we even have guitar accompaniment)

Teacher and friend gifts (we made brownie mixes and chocolate dipped pretzels and hot chocolate mixes)

Secret Santa (we gave a Christmas sock filled with goodies for the 12 days of Christmas, we also did it to a family that lives in a private cul-de-sac and has a big picture window. It was tough but we had such a great time. I think that it was the highlight of our Christmas season. We also did this for the kids and hung a sock filled with a treat every morning for them>)

Cub Scouts make display for Creche Festival (I'm the Den Leader)

Cub Scouts ride in Christmas Parade

Seeing and hanging Christmas lights

Christmas cards

New Years Eve party
ect...ect

The month of Nov.

The day after Thanksgiving we went to the Zoo and Fairytale Land

Donuts to get us ready for the Turkey Trot.

Enjoying a perfect fall day.

Abbie did a Thanksgiving program. She was such a cute pilgrim.

This is Erick at the end 26.2 miles. Tyler really wanted to run in with him. (So did I, but you will get that story below.)

Sorry there was no time to post. But things are starting to settle down a little bit. Here is a list of all the fun things that we did. Nov. We had the Sacramento marathon. I had so much fun last year at the Tahoe Marathon that I was really looking forward to doing another. I attempted, but I had to drop out at mile 14, because of my knee. The previous 2 months had been a struggle of trying to train and not kill my knee. I had ITB syndrome in my left knee. So that didn't go very well for me. Erick finished the marathon, it was his first. He did great. I was sad because I would have loved to finish that with him. After the marathon Erick (being my physical therapist) told me that I needed to take a break from running, but I wouldn't hear of it. I had trained too hard to to let it all slip away. So I cut down the mileage and signed up for the Turkey trot, hoping that it would help me feel like I had completed something. (Not finishing the marathon was very hard on me.) I ran the first 4 miles relatively pain free and then mile 5 & 6 came and they were absolute torture. Every step killed me. But I kept going and finished. After this race I realised that I was going to hurt myself permanently if I didn't stop and so I took 6 weeks off from running, or biking or really doing anything that hurts my knees. It was a really long 6 weeks. I could just feel the hard earned muscle melting away. I kept myself busy with Christmas and hoped that I would get better. I tried to do strengthening on my knee and did some physical therapy. I started back running last week. And it was pain free!!!!!! And I just have to take it slowly and hopefully I will make a full recovery. Sorry to ramble on so much about this, apparently I needed to get this off my chest.

Halloween

As usual we had busy Halloween week, the only damper being the rain on Halloween. But we survived it and have buckets, and buckets of candy to show for it.

Abbie was a ladybug. Her costume was very easy to make. We had some left over material and so we made this bag to go with it.

Emma was Sleeping Beauty.


Tyler was Indiana Jones (cue music). This $3 whip we got at the costume store actually worked.

We had our annual pumpkin carving at the our friends house.

The kids loved the Witches Brew (root beer and dry ice).
We made spider web pizza's.

We decorated cookies.

And, of course, we carved pumpkins.

This year there was no school on Halloween and so we had a little carnival for the kids.

The rain didn't stop the kids from trick-o-treating for hours.