We are thankful for our family!

Everyone in my family was able to come home for Thanksgiving this year! My sister, Christy, stayed for a week after Thanksgiving with her two boys, Tommy and Joey. Darren and Claire had to go home for school, but I stayed at my parent's house with Samantha and Miles while she was here. Miles had so much fun playing with his cousins. Three boys under three was quite a handful! One funny incident happened while my mom was teaching a piano lesson. One of the boys dumped out an entire can of white paint and we didn't notice until we saw little white footprints everywhere. What a nightmare! Luckily, most of it was on the wood floor so it wiped up pretty easily even though we couldn't find any paper towels!

Miles and Joey

Miles and Tommy

Top L-R: Paul, Taylor, Tommy, Jon, Christy, Joey, Michalann, Jerry, Samantha
Bottom: Ellis, Miles, Grandpa, Grandma, Claire, and Darren

Funsteps Preschool

a "People Nest" at preschool

"Mr. Gobble"

This year I am doing a co-op preschool with 6 other families. Each week, Claire has preschool at a different house. She has had a great time, even though the girls sometimes fight. I like preparing the lessons, and teaching hasn't been so bad since Jerry has been there most of the time. One week we learned about Turkeys. Last week, we learned about cows and milk. We had fun doing a tasting survey of different milk products and making butter.

Pretty Ballerina

Our first semester of dance and gymnastics was a success! I was so excited that Claire loved it because I have always wished that I could dance. She looked so cute doing her dances, always with a little smile and a natural grace. Miles loved watching from the sidelines, too. It was pretty funny to see him walking around in her tap shoes, and get just as excited to go to dance as she was. Maybe one day he can be her dancing partner.

Sammi learns to crawl!

Isn't she so cute?! It's hard to believe Samantha is 7 1/2 months old already. She is by far our fastest crawler. I guess she just wants to keep up with everyone else!

Claire Loses Her First Tooth!

The excitement this morning was when Claire came downstairs for breakfast and we noticed that her first loose tooth had fallen out sometime during the night! Darren found it in her bed, so we were able to put it under her pillow tonight for the tooth fairy. She and Darren actually had the same tooth loose, and we are just waiting for Darren's to fall out now. He said to me, "I guess she's ahead of me - but I'm still older - right?"

Darren's Haircut

We were trying to save money so we decided to cut Darren's hair ourselves. I started and Jerry finished. I was just going to give Darren a little trim, but that is hard to do with clippers. I tried to act like Darren's short hair was a suprise for everyone, but Jerry was not amused. He likes Darren's hair long. Poor Darren was in the chair for an hour and a half while Jerry finished the blending!

It's Always Fun When Grandpa Comes!

You can see why this is Claire's favorite song!