Our Christmas Tree

I've got tons of pictures to post on here, we've been so busy lately! On Saturday after I got out of work we joined my parents and Sarah and Mark and the kids to get all of our trees. We went to the same place we went last year. They have a great selection of really beautiful trees. It was a bit colder out than we expected, but Isabel and Rowan didn't seem to feel it a bit, all wrapped up in their snowsuits. The snow was pretty deep, over Isabel's knees, so the kids stumbled around a lot and spent more time laying in the snow than walking in it. Here's Isabel all bundled up, you can barely see her little face. :) Here's how this kids spent most of their time.
A nice pic of most of the group. Sophia is the little bundle under Sarah's jacket. :) She slept the whole time.

We decorated our tree later that evening. Isabel had a great time putting the ornaments on. We ended up with a lot of them in one spot in the front thanks to her decorating! :)
Isn't our tree pretty?!
Isabel kept hugging her tree. Also, if we referred to it as our tree she would correct us and tell us "No, it's my tree!"
Here's the finished product! I love Christmas!

Making our gingerbread house

We picked up this cool kit to make a gingerbread house from Trader Joe's. It's super cute and you just have to make the frosting. I love to bake, but I really didn't want to attempt gingerbread. So we just had fun with the kit. It's pretty yummy too, we each snuck a couple of little pieces. :) Isabel has been pretty gentle with it so far and hasn't tried to eat any of it, but she loves to look at it, especially the cat on top and the little people out front. Here's a very proud Isabel showing off our handiwork.
And here's the finished product. I think it's pretty cute.
These next ones are just cute pics of Isabel helping me bake this morning. She loves to dump in the ingredients and to help stir. It's fun to let her help and she actually didn't make too much of a mess!

Some silly Isabel pics

Isabel likes to camp out in the kitchen while I make dinner. This time she brought all of her friends in too and had a sleepover. She also pretended that all of her friends were a pile of leaves and jumped into them over and over again. What an imagination! Jason took these next pics. Isabel decided that she absolutely had to wear her hat and mittens to watch tv. Not sure of her reasoning, but it was pretty cute. Silly girl!

Happy Thanksgiving

I just thought I'd share some pics from Thanksgiving and give you all an idea of how our day went. We had a very nice day and a wonderful meal. We all went to my parents' house for lunch followed by a trip over to Umass to do some Geo-Caching. For those of you who have no idea what that is, it's pretty much treasure hunting for adults using GPS coordinates. Rowan and Isabel had a blast hunting for treasure and were pretty good at finding the hidden caches. It was pretty cold out so we only searched out 2 of them, but it was a nice way to work off dinner before dessert. :)
These first pics are of the kids making Sarah and Mark play Ring Around the Rosies with them.

Here's little miss Sophia, getting bigger and cuter every day.
And here's Uncle Mark running with Rowan and Isabel on our way to the second Geo-cache.
This a pic of the whole group, minus me cause I was behind the camera. We had my parents, Sarah and Mark and Rowan and Sophia, Jason and I and Isabel, and Mark's mom and brother, John. Quite a group!

Doesn't Rowan look like such a big boy in this pic?! I just love his cute grin.
Isabel and Rowan finding one of the caches hidden under branches and leaves.
Ooh, lots of goodies inside! They very excitedly checked out everything in the box before picking out something to keep each and putting a new little goody into the box for the next people.
Rowan picked out a yo-yo and Isabel picked a small stuffed lion. Most of the enjoyment for them was in just finding the caches and being outside. They didn't seem to feel the cold at all.
Run, run, run, they never stopped running! Such energy! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you all had lots to be thankful for this past year. Enjoy the holidays!

First snow of the year

Here's some pics from our fun in the snow today. It was wet and starting to sleet, but Isabel didn't care at all. She never wanted to go back in. We made a family of snow-people and just had a lot of fun. Enjoy the pics.

This is Jasper's reaction to the first snow he's seen. He's definitely not a fan!

Snow and surprise visitors

What a wonderful weekend! While on our way to church on Sunday I got a call on my cell phone from my friends EB and Anthony, my closest friends in Wyoming. They were in New England and wanted to come down and visit that night! I knew they were out here, but had no idea when exactly I'd get to see them. They arrived around dinner time and left the next day about mid-afternoon and we had a wonderful visit. Lots of laughter, wine, food, coffee, and fun. Isabel loves her Auntie EB and Uncle Pony (what EB's niece calls Anthony and she encouraged Isabel to do the same, to Anthony's dismay). She keeps asking "Where Auntie EB go?". Isabel loved having a whole new audience to entertain and to laugh at her every antic. Come back soon, please!!!!! We all miss you guys so much!!! Here's a cute pic of Isabel and her Auntie EB.

On another note, it's snowing here!!! Since we waited till well into January for snow last winter I'm thrilled to see it snow in November. I don't think it's supposed to last long, but it's so pretty! I didn't even know it was supposed to snow today, so I was shocked when Jason opened the blinds this morning to show me all the white stuff outside. Isabel wants to go outside and make snowballs so I guess I have to find her winter gear and see if any of it still fits. I had to take a pic of the view off our back deck because I thought it was so pretty I had to show you all.
One day last week Sarah came over with the kids and Isabel and Rowan had a blast together. Isabel also adores her cousin Sophia and really wanted to hold her. The closest she got to that was this pic of her trying to hold Sophia's hand. I thought it was a pretty cute pic. She always wants to hold her, but then gets nervous and settles for sitting next to her instead. She did help me give Sophia a bottle, Isabel held the end and I kept the bottle from being jammed into Sophia's face. :) It was pretty sweet.

The angle on this shot makes Sophia look gigantic and my kid tiny. Of course my kid is pretty little, but they are not the same size, I swear!
Rowan watched me giving his sister a bottle and decided he needed to feed one of Isabel's babies too. So he sat down next to me and very sweetly fed the baby doll. What a sweet boy he can be! (Sometimes at least) :)

This is just a cute pic of Isabel and I that I just love. One of her favorite things to do now is to sit on my shoulders and go into the bathroom so she can see us in the mirror. I love how she's snuggling my head in this pic. That's my little sweetheart!

Halloween pics

We had a great time on Halloween. Isabel was a witch, but wouldn't wear her hat, so most people assumed she was a princess, which was okay by me. We went over to my sister's house and took the kids trick-or-treating around their neighborhood. Rowan was dressed as Diego and little Sophia was the cutest little pumpkin ever. I was worried that Isabel wouldn't want to wear her costume, but she loved looking so pretty. I was also a little worried about how she would do with walking up to strangers and saying "trick-or-treat". I should never have worried, she loved it! She got the concept really quickly and had a blast. She always waited to make sure that Rowan had gotten candy too before saying "Thank you" very politely. Then she would be off marching towards the next house. She only ate a couple of pieces of her candy, she had more fun just getting it. Once we got back to the house she loved helping out her Uncle Mark hand out the candy to other trick-or-treaters. Every time kids would come to the door she would drop whatever she was doing and run to the door and grab the bowl of candy. She loved putting the candy in the kids' bags. We let her have one piece of candy and a couple of cookies that my mom had made and Jason and I are still working on the rest of the candy. I already can't wait for next year, this was so much fun. Don't you love the ruby slipper shoes? When Isabel got dressed in this Rowan asked "Ooh, Is Aba a flower?" She loved her dress and especially her pretty shoes. I would too, I'd love a pair!
Isn't Sophia just the cutest pumpkin ever?! Look how sweetly she's smiling up at her mommy.
Mark got a hold of these giant glowsticks for the kids to carry. When it got dark Isabel was so busy looking at her glowstick to watch where she was going and nearly fell on her face many times.
Rowan managed to eat quite a bit of his candy. I love the chocolate smeared face.
And here's Isabel's chocolate smeared face pic too. Such a happy smile!

Family fun at the playground

Here's some fun pics from a recent trip to the playground. Jason was actually not working on a weekday, so we all had a chance to play on the playground together for some quality family time. Isabel was thrilled to order Daddy here and there, saying "Swing now Daddy", and "More slide now Daddy." I mostly stood back and took some pics and watched them have fun together. Isabel is quite a little daredevil and has no fear of the big slides and she even tried to pump her legs to swing higher. She really loved swinging next to Daddy.
My big girl!
This is the face she made when I asked her to smile. :)

Jason got into the fun and got a bit goofy."What Daddy doing, Mommy?"
"Off now Daddy, please!"
I love the static hair look. She also really flew off this slide, causing many face plants on the ground. Of course she immediately got up again and ran to do it again, every time.
Another pic of Daddy and daughter having fun together. Isabel is definitely in the 2 year old stage of loving to boss her parents around. She alternately ordered each of us to go down one slide while she went down the other. I feel that I must make sure that it's known that we don't regularly let Isabel order us around. That's not really a stage that I want to indulge. :) But it is so fun seeing her independence grow. I know I've said it before, but I really love this age, 2 year olds are a blast!!