What's new with us?

Not much. I figured you were all getting pretty sick of my Thanksgiving post though, so I thought it would be a good idea to give you something new to look at. So these are just some pictures of the kids and our Christmas decorations. Yes, they're finally up! We're usually much more prompt about decorating, but it just wasn't happening this year for some reason. We found a great sale on a kitchen nook, so we treated ourselves to one! Andy had to assemble it, and Abby was his little helper. She mostly just wanted to dig through his tool bag though...
I forget how long her arms are, but she reminded me when she was able to reach over to the table and get her applesauce cup. She was so excited and having so much fun making a mess I just decided to go with it!
Abby, who is definitely into EVERYTHING, found one of Zach's art projects from school and proceeded to tear off the reindeers bow and nose. Poor Zach...nothing is safe anymore!

In front of our tree. Zach, trying to hang an ornament. Christmas is so much more fun with him this year because he really gets it now. It's so fun to see the excitement and wonder in his eyes! (and yes, his shirt is on backwards!) Our tree! I love it, and it smells so good!
Our Christmas stockings. Zach doesn't quite understand why there's a train on his. He says, "So I'm going to be a train for Christmas?" (like we're going to dress up like we did for Halloween or something) It's funny. Although I wouldn't mind seeing Andy try to dress up like a Christmas tree! ha! :)
And, my new pride and joy. My Willow Tree Nativity. Isn't it pretty? I have to admit that I didn't even know it existed until I saw Brenley's on her blog. Hope you don't mind that I copied you Brenley! You have such good taste, and I just love my new Nativity! Aahhhh......

Thanksgiving Weekend

We hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving! Ours was great, but I think Zach, Abby and I were all spoiled by having Andy home with us for 4 whole days! It was so nice, and made it hard to give him up on Monday morning when he had to go back to work. Oh well, we'll take what we can get! Here are some pictures of our weekend. We spent the day at my sister, Alice's beautiful home. It was special this year because both of my brothers and their families were with us too, so the whole family was together. Here are the grandkids at the kids table....oh how I remember the days of sitting at the kids table! Abby, who was very excited about the stairs! We don't have stairs at our house, so she was having fun trying to crawl up them. She did pretty good too!

Zach and his cousins, Elena, Jasmine, and Sarah, relaxing after dinner.
This was the football-watching crowd....my brother Mark, my brother-in-law Brad, dad and Andy.
The completely adorable turkey cupcakes that my sister-in-law made! Aren't they cute???

Just a little family shot!

The next day Andy decided to do our outdoor lights. He really went all out this year and even got one of the scissor-lifts from work so he could get way up high in our tree. Cracks me up! All of the neighbors were calling him Clark Griswald!
A little higher!
The final effect...although it's hard to tell how they really look in this picture. You'll have to take my word for it that it looks awesome! He did a great job! What a guy! :)

On Sunday we went out to tag our Christmas tree. It's our little family tradition to tag our tree every year on Thanksgiving weekend. My mom joins us too to make it even more special. Here's Zach taking off on his tree quest.
My sweet little man!
Ok, you may think this is a weird shot, but I thought it was so pretty! We were walking along and I saw all of these tomatoes, rotting on the ground. They were still so colorful though. Such a pretty color-spot among what can be a bleak time of year.
Grandma, hiding in the trees!

And, one more family pic. We took a few and I think one of them is going to end up being our Christmas card picture. Seems to be another tradition that we have....the last three years our Christmas card picture has been from the Christmas tree farm. Andy and I joke about dragging the kids out 15 years from now for our traditional picture! Oh well....a tradition is a tradition, right? :)

And that about sums up our weekend! Hope yours was wonderful too!

GOBBLE GOBBLE!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE! We hope you all have a blessed day filled with love, family, friends, and everything GOOD!

Nothing much to report...

Man, I have been needing to update for awhile now, but there just hasn't been much going on in our lives that seemed very blog-worthy. Guess we're kinda boring lately! However, I decided I could at least put on a couple of pictures to show off my little cuties! :) Abby, working on brushing her teeth. We haven't been very good about regularily brushing them, so that's my new goal. It would be a good thing, right?
Two almost naked kids, fresh from the bath. Cracks me up how much they look alike! They sure enjoy each other's company though....it's so nice when your kids grow up being friends. Well, at least for now they're friends. Ask me again in 10 years!
Don't worry, these aren't his real teeth! (as if you thought they were!) Andy had these lovely fake teeth that he wore for Halloween awhile ago, and Zach just thinks they are the funniest things! Ahhh, my handsome little boy. ;-)
Sweet little Abby......what more can I say?
Abby posing for me on her (well it's actually Zach's but we won't tell him) little chair. I had to snap the picture quickly before she fell off!

Halloween and Pumpkin Patches!

Zach's Halloween parade at his preschool.....he's towards the back of the line....the Pirate picking his nose. (lovely!) Can you find him?
Zach the Pirate, and his little girlfriend, Rylee the Elephant. Everyday they hold hands as we walk to our cars from school. They're so cute together!
Ready for trick-or-treating! My sister Alice, holding Abby, our nieces Emily and Jasmine, and Zach.
Abby wearing a funny pumpkin hat toward the end of our evening. She sure made a cute lion, but she kept tearing the mane off, so we took her costume off and gave her some better moving freedom. Thanks to Brynne for the adorable costume though! Everybody loved it!! :)

Z and A at Johnson's Farm. This was before the crazy tractor ride to the pumpkin patch. It was very fun!
Still at Johnson's. Zach and Abby enjoying the company of their cousins. These 4 handsome guys are the sons of Andy's sister, Colleen and her husband, Mike. (notice Abby eating a handful of hay!)
Earlier the same day we went out to Thistledown. That has got to be my favorite farm. Just so old-fashioned and un-pretentious.
Abby's first pumpkin experience!
Me and my cute kids!

The Latest Goings On...

Just wanted to share some recent pictures showing what we've been up to lately. This first one has no story to go with it, just a cute picture of my cute girl in her cute clothes. :)

These were taken out at Lone Pine Farm the other weekend. Abby really seems to have an affinity for animals, as is shown by her huge smile, and Zach liked feeding the little goats. We went on the cow train too, but of course I don't have any pictures of that. Darn!



Zach and Abby having a great time on the swings at the park. Daddy looks like he is having fun too!

Story time!
Zach displaying his latest obsession...playing dress up. Usually this involves mommy's clothing, and sometimes he'll throw on this nifty wig too. He has a great time until we tell him how beautiful he looks, and then he gets a bit defensive, says "I'm not beautiful!" and takes off the outfit. It's pretty humerous.
Abby, who is now crawling, (army-crawl style) made it all the way from the kitchen into the bathroom and thought she was hot stuff because of it! She was so excited and kept turning around to make sure I was watching her. Then she would squeal with delight and go a little further. So cute!

Decorating and eating the Halloween cookies that Zach and I made. Yum!

So that's it for now. We've got a lot more pumpkin patch pictures that I need to post, so check back for those later. Gotta love the pumpkin patch!

A little trip to the zoo...

Ok, it's been awhile since we've had an update now....I've had a hard time moving on from Zach's birthday it seems! Anyway, last Friday Andy took the day off work and we headed up to Portland to go to the zoo. Zach had never been before so we thought he would get a kick out of seeing all of the animals and how big they are! Of course, the weather had been great ALL week until Friday so we got rained on. Figures! Actually one of my favorite things about our outing was Zachary talking about the rain and hoping that the animals weren't going to get soggy. He's so funny! Here are a few pics of our time there.....which wasn't long since Abby was tired and crabby, and Zach, who was also tired from walking all around, didn't end up getting as excited about everything like we thought he would, so he was very ready to leave and go visit Aunt Karen (Andy's sis) after a couple of hours. It didn't help that a couple of the best exhibits (primates and predators) were closed for some reason too. Oh well! It was still a fun time. :)