Happy New Year!!

Since I totally missed wishing you all a Merry Christmas, I guess Happy New Year will have to do:). We are finally recovering from the Christmas/New Year party craziness, and I have a LOT of blog catch up to do. We'll see how that goes over the next few weeks:). For those of you who are regulars that are on our Christmas card list, please do not thing that we have crossed you off of the list. Christmas cards are one thing that went by the wayside this year for several reasons.
First of all, we have two crazy 2 year olds, and I can't seem to get a decent picture of both of them at the same time to save my life lately!! We made several attempts to take "Christmas Card" pictures, and no luck!! That, combined with a surgical recovery that I significantly underestimated and a camera that I am NOT in love with right now, left me with no good pictures and no umph to try any harder to get one:(. Maybe we'll have better luck next year!! Here are some pics from Christmas morning (too bad the first one didn't happen until then - it might have actually been a card contender:), and some of our failed attempts to get a good shot of the boys. Enjoy!!

Not sure how I got off centered here.

Sorry!!

Oh, and I have one funny pre-Christmas funny to share. About mid December, I was out for an evening with a good friend having some girl time. The boys were already in bed when I got home, but they were still awake so I went in to give them a goodnight kiss. Brock sits up to greet me, and asks where I've been and who I was with. "Mommy?" he says, "Next time you go with Becky, can I go too?". "Why?", I reply. Brock, with his most exasperated voice and hands out, palms up towards the ceiling dramatically says, "Because Daddy calls Santa all day long!!". What a funny (and apparently disobedient) guy!!

How do you eat an ice cream cone when it's 15 degrees outside?

In your hooded sweatshirt - with the hood up, of course!! These boys have a new found love for Schwan's Sundae Cones, and they prefer to eat them from the bottom up.

And, when you're this cute, you get to eat them however you want to!!

Guess who we saw yesterday??

This was as close as they would get to poor old Santa!! I guess that it was good that there were no tears:).

They both told Santa that they wanted tools for Christmas. Not really sure that they actually need any more tools, but glad to hear I'm on the right track for Christmas morning:).

I'm Thankful for.............

For the past week or so, we've been talking a lot about what it means to be thankful, and we've been giving examples of things we're thankful for. This morning we gave the boys the true test. Daddy posed the question first thing this morning...... What are you thankful for??

Here's how the conversation went..........

Dad - "Happy Thanksgiving!! What are you thankful for?"
Kyle - "I'm thankful for Brock, my toys, my tools and my house!"
Brock - "I'm thankful that Christmas is coming!! I'm going to have Christmas tree in my house with lights, and get presents!!"

I think that he's a little mixed up on our holiday conversations, either that or he has decided that he really, really likes Christmas. Who can blame the kid!!

We did eventually hear, along with many other things that they are thankful for, that Brock is thankful for his brother, but not his house. Too funny!

My little firefighters

So, I confess...........Halloween came and went, 3 nights of Trick or Treating, and I forgot to take a picture of my firefighters:(. Not a single shot!! I guess we were just too caught up in the fun of it all:). Thank goodness, their costumes were easy to recreate (they've been wearing the hats around the house ever since Halloween, and the coats are their real coats - courtesy of Grandma Leman for their 2nd birthday) so we redressed them on Sunday afternoon and took some pictures. Our neighbors might have thought that we were crazy, but I got my pictures:).

Brock and Kyle really enjoyed their trick-or-treating experiences this year. We started in P'ville on Friday night, headed to Roanoke on Saturday night, and then just went to a couple of neighbor's on Sunday night. We didn't hit more than 5 places each night, but you would never have guessed that by the amount of candy that they had by the time it was all over:).

They were screaming, "Firefighters!!" as we took this picture. Yea, I'm pretty sure the neighbors think that we're crazy:).

Love B's face in this one!!

And K's face in this one!!

After a few shots on the front porch, we headed across the street to the fire hydrant that they look at and talk about so much. One day this summer, we were headed out to run some errands. When we opened the garage door, I could hear the engine of a large truck, so I told the boys to go check it out. Much to our surprise, there was a fire truck parked in front of our house, and the firefighters were flushing this hydrant. The boys were in awe. Our trip to the store was immediately canceled, and we settled in to watch the firefighters do their work instead. They definitely didn't mind the audience - they came over and talked to the boys at length. They were so nice to them, and even gave them both stickers that looked like a fire fighter's badge. So fun!! Ever since that encounter, both boys see and point out fire hydrants continually as we drive. And every time we walk up and down our street, they stop at the fire hydrants and tell me exactly what each part of the hydrant is for.

"Now, if only we had a wrench to turn this thing on!!"

"Right here, Mom. This is where the wrench goes!"

Kyle is spraying the water from his imaginary hose.

One last Halloween funny - The boys say some of our pre-meal prayers, and after our 1st trick-or-treat night, Kyle prayed to go trick-or-treating again. It happened that night - his prayers were answered!! He was convinced that if he prayed for it, he would get to go again, and he's been praying almost daily to go trick-or-treating again. I keep telling him that we're done for this year, but he's still believing:).

For Grandma Leman

Thanks, Grandma, for all of the cozy jams that you gave us. We will be snuggly warm all winter:). Love you!!

P. S. We had fun at your house today!! And, the tools are a hit. We played with them all evening:).

His brother's keeper:)

I was unloading the dishwasher one morning this week when Kyle came into the kitchen:

Kyle: "Excuse me, please."
Me: "What do you need??"
Kyle: "I need to throw this away." - (the open dishwasher blocks the garbage can)
Me: "What is it?" (I'm always curious as to what is being thrown away - sometimes they find "garbage" to pitch just for the sake of getting to throw it away:)
Kyle: "This Kleenex. Brock had snot, so I wiped it for him!"
Me: "Ummmmmmmmmm.......... I'm sure Brock appreciated that."

I guess it's good to have a twin brother to wipe your runny nose when Mommy's not around:).

If I'm lucky...........

.........this will last until about 8:30am:). It started at 7:20am - their attention span is definitely increasing!! Their new favorite programs on PBS are Caliou and Super Why, both of which are okay by me. They are learning more and more about letters, words and how they sound with Super Why, and I can see more pretending going on since they have been watching Caliou (the little boy with the big imagination:).

They needed their "special beds" this morning - it was a cold one!!

Brock is focused, but still sees the camera and smiles:).

"Shhh, mom, I'm sleeping."

"Please!! I'm watching my show!!"

Maybe this could be a daily occurrence this winter when we don't have to be somewhere early. That would be okay by me - I might actually get to drink my coffee while it's still warm;).

Wind Song

In honor of this very, VERY windy day, Kyle sang an original tune at breakfast this morning:

(sing to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus")

"The leaves on the tree go blow, blow, blow,
Blow, blow, blow,
Blow, blow blow,
the leaves on the tree go blow, blow, blow, all around the town"

Ahhhhhhhhhh......I love how his little creative mind works.

Yep, the leaves are blowing, and everything else as well:).

Lovin' the carmel-n-apples!!

Some of my favorite things about fall are the special treats that we only make this time of year. I'm not sure why we don't make them year round, but I guess it makes them taste extra special when we do!! Grammy made us a batch of caramel to dip apple slices in, and the boys are loving every drop of it. They've always liked apples, but boy, do they REALLY like apples these days:).

This picture may not be focused, but the boy sure is!!

Take a look at those sticky hands. This guy knows how to get into his work!

"Could you please stop with the pictures?? I'm trying to eat here!!"

Cheese ball!!

"I think my lips are stuck shut from this sticky caramel."

Closer look at the hands. "I'm saving this for later:)."

Open wide!

Watchin' my brother in action.

"Really, no more pictures!!"

So good, you don't even need apples - especially when you have fingers:). Thanks Grammy!!

CornBelters Game

In late August (I know - I'm a little behind in the good ole' blog:), we went to a Normal Corn Belters baseball game. It was the boys' first real baseball game, and they loved it!! We were blessed with some awesome tickets from friends, and since it was on my birthday, my parents came along to help celebrate. It was a great experience, a nice facility, and we'll definitely go back again next year.

Here's a cute pic of Grammy and her boys.

Papa and Brock, enjoying the beautiful day. The weather was wonderful!!

Daddy, trying to explain the details of the game. Love his expression - he looks thrilled, don't you think?!?!

Brock and Kyle got their first taste of cotton candy at the game. They over heard someone else saying that they were getting some cotton candy, and all we heard from there on was "I need some candy, too!!". They weren't too sure about it at first, but they did enjoy it after they got past the texture. It does kind of feel like a sugary cotton ball at first, if you think about it:).

Brock was more eager than Kyle, which isn't usually the case with new things - except for when it concerns food!!

Mommy and Kyle, enjoying the game.

Trying to get a good pic of the 3 of us proved to be futile. The boys were much too distracted:).
I guess they've inherited their father's love of baseball!

So cute - intrigued by the action on the field. The hardest part of the whole experience was explaining to them why they couldn't go down and play ball, too. They did get some satisfaction after the 4th inning when they let the kids go on the field and run the bases.

More watching:).

Go CornBelters!!!

Love this funny face!! "Did you see that, Mom?? He hit the ball!!"

Just hanging out, watching like a gymnast:).

Their favorite part was jumping in Corny. They thought he was so cool!!

Thanks, Michaela for jumping with them:).

Daring boy!!

Loving the jump!!

A rare family pic.

Here they are after all of the fun activities. All tuckered out from running on the field and jumping in corny, they were finally content to sit and watch the game - for a little while at least:).