A Favorite Moment in Time

The other night I came downstairs to find all four of children in the front room playing together. It was one of those things that just stopped me in my tracks and made me start to tear up. They were having such a good time and not fighting at all!

I love the look on Preston's face in this picture, it is priceless! He loves the imaginext toys. As Ethan starts to pull away from them a little more Preston is definitely stepping in and plays with them ALL OF THE TIME! To listen to him play and see his imagination going is something that I cherish!

Kendra plays with the imaginext too, she enjoys setting them all up and coming up with the next adventure that they are going to act out. She is usually like the director, telling eveyone what they are going to do next. On the report card that she just got her teacher said that she is a good writing and loves to explore different genres. I am contributing that to all of the crazy things that she plays with when she is at home, like the imaginext!

Yes, even Aubrey was in on the fun, at least for a little while. She eventually just played with the bins and got herself stuck in one, but for just a little while she was playing with the big kids.

A few budding photographers

My kids love cameras! Kendra found an older 35mm camera at a garage sale that she just had to have. She got it for free with her charm and Kendra somehow convinced Josh and I to get a battery an film for it. We have had a few rolls developed and she just loves it. I don't mind too much because it is something that she enjoys and I can't argue with having more pictures around the house. And there is something so sweet and innocent about pictures taken from a child's perspective. Kendra took this picture of Josh and I goofing around, but she used my camera. Someday we will get her her own digital camera, maybe when she has a computer to go with it.
Preson also loves the camera. He is always trying to take Kendra's camera away from her. If he finds it unattended I can guarentee that he will turn it on and snap a few pictures. The other day he had my camera and was taking pictures of me.So I grabbed the camera, (he isn't really supossed to touch mine) and snapped some pictures of the two of us. Can you tell where my kiddos get their blue eyes from?Aubrey is my other camera loving kid. If she can see the camera then she wants it. She isn't particular, kendra's, mine, it doesn't matter to her. They all go straight to her mouth. When she scraps her little teeth on mine it makes a funny sound so she LOVES to do that. The other day she had Kendra's camera and was able to turn it on somehow. Kendra didn't like that at all so she took it from her, here is the face she made when the camera got taken away.
This is such a classic Aubrey face. So dramatic, so sad! So maybe someday one of my lovely children will be a photographer and can take amazing pictures of us!

Eater

Aubrey got ahold of an apple the other night. I didn't think it would last long seeing as how she can't really get anything from it but boy was I wrong. She just chewed... And Chewed...

And Chewed. She was getting just a little bit off of it by scraping it along her bottom two teeth. I just had to bust out the camera, she was so excited to be sucking on that apple.

She even offered to share it with Kendra.

Then the other night Igave her a bowl of her very own bananas. She just sat there with her little ankles crossed and shoved them in her mouth.

Of course, she offered me some bananas also, but I politely turned her down. Something about the slimey wet bananas and her yucky little paws was just not very appealing to me.

Something about my girls, but they seem to both be good eaters while my boys tend to NOT be. I guess my daughters are trying to follow in their mommy's footsteps, not necessarily a good attribute to try an emulate but what can I say.

Bonfire at "The Farm"

The company that Josh works for held a New Years bonfire on Saturday. The company owns a whole bunch of property and the particular place where they held the bonfire is referred to as "The Farm." When we told the kids that we were going to "the farm" to have a bonfire and they were so excited. Preston couldn't stop talking about the farm all morning long. When it was finally time to get bundled up and go I thought they were going to go crazy. So we headed out to Lockwood and followed a trail back into a secluded area. I was worried that our van was never going to make it out, (our tires are in desperate need of replacing.) But we made it in and out. They had a toasty fire going and roasted hot dogs and then we had s'mores. SO YUMMY! Jim, the owner, had a mule, (like a four-wheeler/golf cart :)) that he brought out and hooked up a basket thingy to it. I have no idea what to call it can ya tell? It is suppossed to be to feed cows I think I heard Jim say. They hauled kids around behind the mule all over the area. Another guy brought his four-wheeler and hooked up a toboggan to it. That one was a little harder to stay on but it seemed like everyone had fun. The kids found a sledding hill and there were sleds and kids flying everywhere. I had my crew to keep track of so that kept me a little occupied and Aubrey wanted to get down the entire time of course! But we had a blast and the kids definitely enjoyed, "the farm." Sorry these pictures are so tiny, Someone from Josh's office sent them and I can't seem to make them any bigger.

Here is Kendra all loaded up in the "basket thingy" :)

Aubrey did pretty good overall, I had expected worse so I have no complaints. She is at a hard age to take to an activity like this because she just wants down and you can't really do that with snow all over and a fire going.

This picture is kind of random but I figured I would include it anyways. There were a lot of people there. It was originally just going to be for the people in the office and their families. There are maybe ten people that work in the office that Josh works in, but somehow drivers ended up coming and then all of their families and then some friends of friends. I don't know how many total there ended up being but they did run out of food!

Wow, a good picture of Josh and I, CRAZY! Josh got a bad headache at the end so we had to make a quick escape but I think that it was just from the campfire because it eased up pretty fast once we got out of the area.

Merry Christmas

Yeah, I know that I am late... WAY LATE, but I still wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I never truly got into the spirit of the holiday so I apologize for the lack of enthusiasm. Next year I will be better, I promise! We had a wonderful, quiet, mellow Christmas. Christmas Eve I spent the day cooking, well not really but the food was so yummy you would have thought that I had. A long time ago, before I had even graduated high school, my mom came across a recipe for a turkey that was different from your traditional roasted turkey. That year I helped my mom cook all day and I was in charge of the bird. The recipe calls for filling the turkey with orange slices, onions, and fresh rosemary and thyme. And then you also baste it with a mixture made out of orange juice concentrate and other yummy things. The turkey was a HIT and oh so yummy. A couple of years later when I had my own Thanksgiving for the first time I knew exactly how I wanted to cook my turkey and it was wonderful then too. So of course this year I did the same yummy orange turkey and it hasn't failed me yet. We loved it and the kids gobbled it up!

So we ate a yummy dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Wynia and opened presents. We let the kids open their traditional Christmas pj's and then their gifts to one another. I think that this is our new tradition. I love taking the kids out shopping for one another, even if I do keep their budget pretty limited. To see them get excited about GIVING instead of getting during the holidays is just awesome. So Josh and I decided to let them give their presents to each other on Christmas eve so that they could enjoy the spirit of GIVING a little more and it seemed to work great. Definitely our new tradition!

Aubrey loved the phone that Preston got her!Christmas morning was actually calm around our house. Aubrey and Preston slept in, I think that it was close to eight when we got up and I walked down to find this. Kendra and Ethan sitting on the couch reading their new books that they had got the night before sitting ever so patiently. I think that I about fell over. I don't think that these are my kids, or even kids at all for that matter. This is how our conversation went,

me: "what time did were you up?"

Kendra: "oh at about 7:12 I think"

Me: "why didn't you wake us up?"

Kendra: "because you were sleeping"

Me: "you still could have woke us up, didn't you want to open your presents?"

Kendra: "Well I have been reading, I am already done with the Sunday fairy book!"

Seriously? Not even normal! So I grabbed the camera and video camera and we took our sweet time opening up all of the wonderful presents. Ethan's excitement level definitely soared after he ripped open his first present and Preston was just as cute as he could be as he got exactly what he wanted.... a skateboard. Aubrey was actually pretty good at opening up the presents and with a little help from her brothers she made it through her pile. Kendra, who I think is hard to shop for, also ramped up her excitement and loved her presents but I would have to say that her fairy book set has seen the most action since Christmas by both her and Ethan!

Preston is not much of a morning person and he took a while to get going but after that he didn't stop all day, he crashed hard that night.

This is Josh before we headed downstairs, Aubrey was pretty content with staying in bed with daddy and Josh had no arguments either.

Kendra got the "Julie" American girl doll and a new outfit for her Kirsten doll. She was so excited that Kirsten got to have a friend now. She has never been too incredibly into dolls. She plays with them from time to time but nothing big or major so it has been fun to watch her enjoy these dolls and read their stories and actually get excited about them.

Later Christmas day we went over to Grandma and Grandpa Black's house and had another wonderful meal and played a super fun game of quelf! I love that game, it was too hilarious. At one point Josh had to give a 30 second monologue as he rode an ostrich in circles around a beached whale. He also happened to have the rule that told him he had to act like a member of the opposite sex so his delivered his monologue as a woman. We were cracking up and his step dad was quite perplexed as to what Josh was doing :)

Here is Josh and his brother and sister, I know it is really hard to see, sorry. They are playing the wii I think.Preston had to get a bath on Christmas morning and he wasn't too happy about it. I couldn't help take this picture when I was washing his hair, it is just so long!I had to include this picture of Aubrey with the slinky. She is totally perplexed by the thing! So that was our Christmas. We had a blast and are still trying to find places to put all of the new toys. The kids have been playing with their new imaginext sets pretty much everyday so I would say that Santa did pretty good this year.