The little guys.

Brock has been enjoying himself every week attending swimming lessons at the Y.

He is fearless in the pool & absolutely loved his teacher.

But he passed the first level & is moving on to learn more techniques.

Mr. Adler has just reached a point in lessons where he can swim on his own

(in the deep end, for short distances).

It won't be long before he will be swimming all over!

And as of yesterday afternoon...we got a sick one in the house.

This little turkey & his sidekick dog!

Luke worked late so it was just me tackling puke on blankets, carpet, 

baths & more baths, supper (somewhere in there), laundry...

AND then that whole routine repeated itself.

Ohhh Lord help me. I made it through the day.

Luke took the night shift & apparently all of that occurred through the night too. 

Mr. Adler didn't know what to do with himself

while his pal was out of commission.

So he took on the roll of caretaker.

He told me that he better eat supper early because he needs to take care of Brock!

Ohhh he's so sweet & thoughtful.

And Ms. Olivia was highly concerned for Brock too.

She slept by him all night, right on his pillow.

Adler also helped entertain Vance while I tended to all the clean up. 

Here's to more feel-good days ahead!

I just hope he's feeling better for the church Christmas program,

because we've been listening to him singing 

'Go tell it on the mountain' for a couple months now!

Weekend in December.

It was the annual church Cookie Walk event this past Saturday.

I donated a lovely decorated batch of Christmas shaped sugar cookies

& felt the urge to buy them back so I could bring them to our family Christmas!

So off I went to the church to make a good donation

& get TONS of goodies (much more than just the cookies I made!).

Here's the loot I picked up!

Saturday night we had some friends over.

The last time we hung out together was at their house on the lake in the summer.

It had been way too long.

We had good food, drinks, & the kids ran around & played all night.

Daniel was Mr. Chess man that night & Luke took him on for a heated game. 

 

The boys also had time to get some snuggling in earlier in the day.

The snow was beautiful & thick & heavy this past weekend.

Which meant that Luke & the boys were outside tending to the driveway

& attempting to make their first 'Frosty' snowman

while Vance & I got to roll around & play inside.

It was joyous!

Preschool Christmas Program.

 Adler had his preschool Christmas program Monday night.

He decided he was going to sing

& he was very excited to show us how he could sing.

(If you remember....last year he did not sing one song!)

And sure enough, he did sing.

He did not do most of the gestures, he said that was 'funny',

but we were very proud of him that he got over his fear of

'everyone laughing & smiling at me'

and actually opened his mouth to sing!

Grandma Yvonne came to watch him & he was quite happy 

to have her there.

We started the night with a craft. 

Hanging out with our preschool pals. (Rafe, Mason, Madden) 

Vance loved being in the action too. 

After the craft it was time for singing!

And just as he anticipated, Grandma gave him a little gift

for a performance well done.

He was telling me for over a week how he thought Grandma was going

to get him something special!  

Good thing Grandma came through with his visions. 

Back row: Tanner, Isabell, Adler, Sigrid, Alex

Front row: Kyleigh, ANna, Rafe, Kendric, Mason 

After singing it was time to eat cookies & run around like a bunch of wild monkeys. 

Luke chattin with the dads we've come to know through preschool. 

All of our boys were running around & making lots of noise,

but we felt it was a great time to wear off some energy before bed time.

So we all allowed it to happen! 

Here's the clan that hangs out together at playdates.

(minus Kyleigh, but she wanted in on the fun that night too!) 

 Us 3 mommas who have 9 boys combined!  3 each! 

We can really relate to one another.

I'm so happy to have met them & have a friendship with our families

& watch each others boys grow up.

Crisis resolved.

Well as you can see I came out of crisis mode...
and pretty quick I may add!
After calming down I figured I will just come to grips with having to upload
a ton of pictures that I deleted & go back into the blog and repost the pictures
in their hopeful correct spot.
Good luck to me...I know!
I did have to buy storage (which is a bunch of whoooo---ieeeee)
but I figure I will spend $2.49 for a couple months until I can fix my problem & print my blog into book.
Once that is accomplished I need to figure out step 2.
Step 2 options: find a new blog site that has more storage for pictures that does not cost money OR pay $2.49 per month to have a blog (which if you know me, I think it's crazy to spend $5 or $10 or whatever it is to have texting on a phone....so I'm definitely not willing to pay monthly for a blog) OR figure out how to bypass paying for more storage.
So if you know of other better blogs I could use to journal with that would be wonderful!  Please share the info with me.
Until then, enjoy my blog that I pay $2.49 for! Hope it's worth it to you folks!  Well really, I don't care...I want to make sure I have this journal for myself.  Here I go spending  a few hundred to print this darn thing!

Family picture time!

Fall always means picture time for us.

We have the best photographer (Renee Massingham in Dassel)

& the weather is always gorgeous.

And a few other reasons...

Adler turned 5 

Vance turned 3 months old, 

& Brock turned 3. 

The Grinch.

I'm getting a little more active with community ed events

now that the boys are a good age to do things together.

Just the other day the boys & I went to the Children's Theatre

to watch the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Brock's favorite part was stopping for donuts & flavored water & riding the bus

& Adler completely loved the performance.

Here they are riding the bus. 

 It was so fun watching a bunch of little ones get on the bus for the first time.

Us parents had just as much fun giggling at them & snapping photos!

Animal lover.

We have a genuine animal lover in our home.

It's so sweet & so real.

Doesn't really matter why type of animal.

He loves them all.

Here he is sharing his blanket with Livy.

(something he does often...as in many times a day).

This little lover is also causing mom some concern.

He has a bottomless stomach!

We were at home all last week because Adler and I were sick

& he asked for food ALL DAY LONG, ALL WEEK LONG.

He had no one to play with, he didn't leave the house & run around at the Y

like he usually does & he kept the pantry doors open!!!

This is a prime example.

He had a BIG supper.  2 plates of spaghetti.

Luke came home an hour later & had a plate so of course Brock grabbed a fork

& started helping himself!

And as I watched I was coming to terms with 

the large cost of groceries that is coming in the future!

Thanksgiving 2012.

Thanksgiving was spent at the Herdina's.

No surprise!

If you've forgotten, it's Luke's favorite holiday.

He woke up Thanksgiving morning so excited for all the food.

He was acting like a kid at Christmas.

It was ridiculous! (but expected.)

Here we are drinking all the wine & sparkling juice before the festivities begin!

Look at Peyton....ohh he's something!

Relaxing after the big meal watching some football.

After lunch at the Herdina's we headed over to my parents.

The boys had lots of fun playing with their cousin Gabe

& 'swimming' in the hot tub!

The 2nd turkey/ham feast was great too (thanks to mom & Joe!).

Brock also decided he was going to make a garage with lincoln logs.

Look at the roof on that thing. (interesting concept!)

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving like we did!

Now....onto Christmas!

Christmas is here!

My MOST favorite month is here!

I can't wait for Thanksgiving to be over

so we can start the festivities.

And this year we actually didn't wait until after Thanksgiving

to get our tree.

We drove up to the local tree farm

& of course we were the only ones there.

But the tree farmer was out working in the yard

& he informed us that even though they're not open yet,

he'd sell us a tree!

I was so happy to pick our tree 

& the weather couldn't have been more beautiful.

Gettin' all bundled up.

And here's Brock, helpin dad get the tree in our house!

This year we have absolutely NO room for a tree,

but some how we found a few inches on the wall...

granted you can't get through the walkway to the front door anymore though!

ohhh well, that baby swing is still a must in our house.

The boys were so eager to pick out their ornaments & get them on the tree!

(just like I always was growing up.)

And this little guy loves sitting up now to play with his toys.

If he's laying down, he rolls all over.

It won't be long before he's crawling!