a Sunday activity

Annelise and I have a new Sunday tradition. We are holding piano lessons! Annelise seems to really like them and it has been fun to teach her on the same books I used as a kid.

Happy Birthday Brian!

Happy Birthday Brian! These candles only represent about half his age, which is funny because sometimes I don't feel like we are any older than when we got married. We love you and I plan to make up your birthday dinner (babysitter canceled due to the flu in our house) really soon!

Citizenship Award

Every quarter there is a little awards ceremony at Annelise's school. For second quarter Annelise received the "Good Citizenship" award for her class. She was really happy about this and kept telling us about the 'reward' she got that day. We are really proud of how well she is doing at school and I'm so glad she loves kindergarten so much and can't think of anything better than being with her friends all day.

Puzzles

We got Nathan these Melissa and Doug wooden puzzles for Christmas kind of as an afterthought. I had no idea he would be so in love with them. He has absolutely mastered them and continues to play with them several times a day. He really has a thing for puzzles right now. By the way, I think wooden puzzle pieces are genius!

A nice day for the park

One thing I do love about Houston in the winter are some of the most perfect January days. One Wednesday afternoon we picked up Annelise from school. Even though we are only a couple of minutes from home and usually go straight there and do homework, Annelise asked if we could go to the park. I said sure and just kept driving to the park. I think they were all shocked! We had a great time at the park that day.

January happenings

We all got the flu this past week, so some of these pics are a bit slow in getting here, but here they finally are!

We went to the temple a couple of weeks ago. Afterwards, we ate lunch on the temple grounds. Even though it takes us a while to get there the kids are always really good about it and have a fun time.

Christmas 2010

Here they are sporting their new Christmas jammies. I love this picture because it shows how completely excited they were at Christmas this year. They really made it so much fun!

gingerbread cookies

This year Annelise really wanted to decorate gingerbread cookies. I have all these really great cookie cutters, so we searched the groceries stores in town for "safe" premade dough but couldn't find any and I didn't have the energy to make them from scratch, so we settled on these premade gingerbread men. Fortunately, they still had a blast with just the decorating part and Lily was even content to just eat one without insisting on decorating as well.

aquarium in Galveston

For Thanksgiving we took the kids to the aquarium in Galveston. They loved it and I learned that I don't know how to take pictures in dark places, but this one with the penguins turned out!
Annelise and Nathan also liked the starfish in the touch tank. Their favorite one was named "chocolate chip" because he was white with lots of brown spots.