Catching You Up

Here's the gang Thanksgiving morning. That day the kids slept in until 7:40 - definitely something to be thankful for. Then we watched the parade, the whole thing. And then went to Dale's sister's, Sally and Shirley's and spent the whole day eating and visiting and eating some more. It was a nice, relaxing day.

Timothy on his first Thanksgiving.

Best buds on Thanksgiving morning.



The day after Thanksgiving we got our Christmas tree and decorated it. The kids helped quite a bit. Henry loves the tree, especially our talking Charlie Brown ornament. Some days he stays out of the tree, but most days it's very hard (if he has the chance) to not touch all the ornaments. The Christmas tree is in the front room of the house so thankfully I can gate Henry in the other part of the house away from the tree. We also decorated for Christmas that day, you see Alex helping set up our nativity.



We've gotten a lot of snow this past week, which has resulted in late starts and a day off of school. So Wednesday when the boys were home, they and Sophie played and played and played out in it. Henry stayed inside this time but really wanted his picture taken with Max.

Boats, the Baby and a Birthday

Monday night the boys had their raingutter regatta. Max won one and lost 3. Alex won 3 and made it to the final 4, but then lost one. It was a fun night for everyone. And Aunt Kathy was so sweet and came to cheer on the boys. Thanks Aunt Kathy!

Also on Monday Timmy turned 2 months old. The last couple of weeks he had become a little smiler, which is great!


Thursday was Sophia's actual birthday. So we had two of her friends, Caleb and Lauren, as well as their siblings over to play. They colored together, ate cupcakes, and after Caleb left the girls got into Sophia's dress up clothes. That night we had conferences for the boys, that went very well, so Sophia got to go to Aunt Kathy's, which of course she was so happy about!! (The boys were very happy too.)
Today (Saturday) we went to the Erie Canal museum (in Syracuse), for cubscouts. Everyone had a good time, they have some good hands-on stuff, we didn't think to bring the camera though.

Uncle Bob is Sophia's godfather, so he and Aunt Wendy and Lisa came out for a long weekend to celebrate Sophia's birthday. It was great to have them out and we had a lot of fun together.

Aunt Wendy, Sophia, and Uncle Bob.

Lisa and Samantha made T-shirst for all the kids plus Aunt Kathy for the party, complete with everyone's names on their backs. (Sorry we missed Sami in this one).


Sophia was SO EXCITED as she opened up her presents!! She LOVED everything, it was a lot of fun to watch her open her gifts. (She even got the Hot Tamales she asked Aunt Kathy for and was extremely excited about them.)


Max, Sophia, Alex and Samantha with Sophia's cake. This year Sophia wanted an Angelina Balleria cake, so since I already had a mouse cake pan I used that. It didn't look exactly like Angelina, but Sophia didn't care one bit and was very excited about it.

Saturday was beautiful!! Everyone hung outside for a good share of the day. One of Sophia's gift was a new big girl bicycle, who knew it would be perfect bike riding weather in Novemeber! We were all glad it was.


Aunt Wendy pitching for Alex.


Lisa and Timmy

Opps!

Someday I will post without a million mistakes. The Trick-or-Treat post is not one of them. Think of this post as a game, how many mistakes can you find? There are plenty of them. Well enjoy the photos anyway. :)

Trick-or-Treat

We had a very fun Halloween. Even Henry went trick-or-treating and just like the big kids he loved it. It was a cold night, you could see your breath, one of our neighbors said it was only about 35 degrees. Anyway, we have lots of yummy candy to eat now.


Timmy on his 1st Halloween.


Aunt Kathy and Samantha came over and we all carved our pumpkins together. It was a lot of fun to do everyone's togehter.


Here's the whole gang ready to trick-or-treat. Clari, dressed as a cowgirl, and her mom were able to come have dinner and trick-or-treat with us, it's become our annual tradition to do Halloween together.

Timmy in his monkey costume.

Our little SnowWhite

Max as Lugi (from the video game) the moustache only stayed on for about 30 sec. And some how I didn't get individual shots of Henry and Alex, so I'll have to have them put their costumes on again and post shots of them.


Here's what our pumpkins looked like. Sophia's is the "silly" one, Alex's is the 3 skulls, Max's is the haunted house, and Henry's is the traditional one sitting by the uncarved plastic one. Timmy's is a little plastic one this year we got this year when we got booed (to be booed is to have your neighbors leave a little Halloween treat bag on your door step, then you return the favor to a different neighbor).

A lot has been going on.

Timmy had his first real bath, (in the sink) on Oct.6. He seemed to like it. He just quietly laid there as I washed him up.





We had a lot of visitors for Timmy's baptism. From top to bottom. Maddison (the kids' cousin), Sophia and Timmy. Sara holding Timmy. Amy and Kelli (more cousin's of the kids). Uncle Chris playing a new lego game Max got as a big brother present. Aunt Coco reading to Sophia and Oliver (Sara and Eric's son).




Timothy was baptized on 10-10-10. Kathy (Steffen) and Dale (Steffen) are is godparents. And we were happy to also have Mom Steffen, my grandparents, Sami, Dale(Stiles), Madison, Sara, Eric, Oliver, Coco, Chris, Amy and Kelli all join us for the celebration.



Mom Steffen was here with us for 3 weeks. It was wonderful!!! She was so helpful! She got here September 19 and stayed until Oct.10. I/We were so thankful and happy to have her here. Even over her morning coffee she is doting over Timothy and playing make-believe with Sophia.




My grandparents rode the train out to visit us and see Timothy get baptized. They were here Oct. 7-13. We went on walks, you see they went up to the tree house, and played. We played outside with the kids two of the days they were here, it was a lot of fun - but I didn't get any good pictures of it. We were so glad they could make it.



On October 15 little Timmy turned 1 month already. It doesn't seem it's been that long.

Family and Hiking

Aunt Coco and Kelli came out to see Timmy and help us all adjust to life with a newborn again right away.They visited Sept.18-26. It was so great to have them here and I can't thank them enough for bringing Grandma Steffen out and all the help Aunt Coco was. Kelli and Sophia loved watching TV together in the afternoons. And Friday night we did a movie night at aunt Kathy's. Oh, and Saturday Kelli helped Randy make doughnuts. They were very yummy!




All the kids have loved having Grandma Steffen here. Randy and I have loved it too.




Alex and Max's (Randy is the leader for Max's group)cubscout pack went for a hike at Whetstone Park here in NY last Sunday (Oct.3). (Not far from Kathy and Dale's cabin). When everyone started the hike they were prepared for a 4 mile hike, it turned out to be closer to 6 maybe 7 miles though. Randy said it was a really pretty hike with some small waterfalls and even some little streams they had to cross. Most of the hike was on the ledge of a huge gorge, with no railing, so Randy said he held Max's hand most of the way. They all seemed to think it was fun. They ended up stopping at Kathy and Dale's cabin and the boys got to shoot some kind of gun for the first time. They thought it was very exciting, plus Aunt Kathy had made apple pie, which of course Alex loved. The two boys got home smiling in their sleep.