January

January brought with it a couple of awards ceremonies for the Elementary kids.

If you are curious about how Jack got the cut on his chin, he ran into a garbage can while he was playing football at school.

Thomas is busy he loves playing with balls still but has branched out to animal has learned a bunch of animal sounds and baby signs. He also pulls himself up on everything works his way into the funniest spots. One of his favorite places is to stand up on the inside of our big barstools. I'll have to get a picture of it.

Mer was in a Broadway Review for her Drama class at school and performed a song from Suessical the musical. She did great.

Thomas got a taste of his first bouncy house at our friend Emma's birthday party. so fun.

Thomas likes to take baths with Luke who dazzles him with his mad bubble blowing skills.  He also taught Tom to say Bubble which comes out more like "Bu Bu".

I started taking Tom to story time occasionally at the library. He is mesmerized by all the little kids running around.  The scarfs are pretty fun to play with too.

Mer took a little vacation all by herself. She flew to Colorado for a weekend to see the snow and visit Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Rachel.

They spoiled her, she had so much fun.

I can't remember why I took this picture but sleeping babies are just cute.

Thomas learned how to feed himself a banana. He can eat almost a whole one all by himself.

Oh, this was cute, we went to Taco Bell and Jack had to rummage to find the whole collection of Hot Sauce packets. Each one has a different spicy message

Thomas took his first steps all by himself in January. The kids were soooo excited for him. Here his is walking a little at Max's soccer tournament.

And on that cute note, Good night!

New Years Eve

The week after Christmas Doug got to stay home and we had fun taking care of house business and making mischief.

We installed our new touch on and off faucet which is a big improvement over the loose, leaking, paint chipped faucet that came with the house.

On new years eve we had a little family party with plenty of good eats.

And some tasty treats.

We watched a movie and played games to pass the time and watched some fireworks out our front door. Max and Mer jumped in the freezing swimming pool at midnight. Here's the proof

Luke asked all week if we could go ice skating so I took him and Jack with Mer and some friends.  We had a ton of fun.

More about Thomas at age one. He loves animals. He learned to growl and would growl for every animal he saw. Luke was hoping to scare him in this lion suit and I think he did.

Doug would come home every day and line up Thomas' animals and teach him their sound or baby sign.

Thomas is obsessed with balls. Expecially the ping pong balls.  They are the perfect size to carry around and put them into things like our subwoofer speaker hole.  He knows just what to do with the ping pong paddle too

He also loves books. He sits and opens them and turns the pages. It's so cute to watch him learn everything.

Thomas turns 1

Two Days after Christmas Thomas had a birthday.  We made him a birthday cake in the shape of a ball in honor of his first word. Well actually it was his second word. The first one was a growl sound we taught him while playing with a dinosaur, but I guess that's not really a word.  Thomas is obsessed with balls and so a ball it had to be.

He was a little grumpy having just woken up from a nap.

This is his look when he's trying to scowl at you while he's trying not to smile.

 Then we let him dig right in.

Doug had to help him a little

We helped him open his present.

And I made him a toy bag for his animals

We had a little one year old photo shoot in our back yard. He is such a cutie.

At about about 11 months Thomas learned how to give the stink eye. For 2-3 weeks straight he would give everyone he saw this mean look. It was pretty funny. He was back to his smiley self when we took these pictures but I'd glad we caught this one. So cute.

At 1 year old he's so much fun. He pulls himself up and walks along the furniture but hasnt quite figured out how to walk. He can crawl up the stairs and will turn around to come down them. He is a smart little guy. He has 7 teeth and weighs about 20 pounds. We are having so much fun with him and are so glad he came to join our family.