Ball blowing toy is still the best

Ever still thinks that his ball blowing toy is still the best.

Hours are spent at this toy watching the balls come out and catching them and putting them back into the toy.

Ever's First Birthday!

Today was Ever's first birthday.  We made him a lego cake which came out pretty cool.  

The little guy got a dump truck that he can sit in!  Rhiannon thinks that it is the coolest thing also, so we will have to keep our eyes on them for when the figure out that they can take each other for dump truck rides, them dump each other.  That should be interesting.

Rhiannon was alot of help with the unwrapping of the gifts, and yelled "mine" a whole lot during the ordeal.  So I am not too sure if she has grasped the idea of a birthday party yet.  She has though, grasped the idea of "if there is a toy in the house I am claiming it as mine"  

  All in all the birthday fun went pretty well and Ever got all kinds of trucks and trains and boats and one year old fun things.

Ever was having a wonderful time as Dad and big brother in the background attempt to unchain toys from their packaging.  Al did a pretty good job of using the wire-cutter to free the toys from their confines.

This photo was pre-everyone-showing-up so the house was still pretty much clean and tidy.  Ever has the look of great things are to come.  

Half way through January ---Already!

Wow how time flies!  We have had some snow and some outdoor fun, although Berks County has pretty much dodged every storm that has come our way so far this winter.  Rhiannon loves to go sledding in the backyard, while Ever had a good time too, he wasn't showing as much enthusiasm after the sniffels started.

Rhiannon going  FAST

Ever all bundled up.  He looked like a tick about to pop.

Our little snow bunny

Ridin the sled together

We had to bribe Rhiannon with hot chocolate in order to get her to go back into the house, but then she was not interested in actually consuming the hot cocoa.  

George is back at school after work two days a week, and Jennifer starts up next week for another fun semester of nursing school.  Wish us luck!  and lots of naps here and there and everywhere.  I already cannot wait for summer.  :)

One of Ever's Christmas gifts was a set of blocks that are made of some hard, yet soft foamy stuff and quite cool.  The following photo is George's masterpiece using every one of the blocks that came in the set.  It stood erect for all of like 30 seconds before King Kong Rhiannon did her Godzilla impression and turned it into rubble.  Her Godzilla giggles alot while destroying things.  ha ha ha

Ever has found that being able to walk around and chase his sister, and be chased by his sister is very draining and naps must be taken at any opportunity!  

Walking at 10 months, 25 days old!!!

Ever is taking his first steps already.  A few days ago he showed some promise and has been nudged a little to keep trying to walk upright.  He has been successfully coaxed to walk in between people sitting on the floor, and has been caught taking his own steps between thing in the house without coaxing.  His first "walk" on his own lasted about 5 steps and was in response to Rhiannon taking something from him, and he trying to follow her to get it back.  Lets hope that doesn't foreshadow the next 17 years.... although, we know it will.

Tree trimming, cookie baking, house building

It has been a while since the last post.  So much has happened.  The sippycup gang has been rather busy.  We trimmed the tree.   Jennifer and one of her girlfriends, Karen, made cookies with the kids.  We also built a gingerbread house.  

Alaric had his hands full with trimming the tree, as Rhiannon wanted to hang all of the ornaments and could only reach the lowest branches.  Rhiannon did have a blast putting the sprinkles on the cookies, though now we are going to be finding sprinkles until summer.... sprinkles everywhere!

     

Building our gingerbread house was a fiasco.  The icing was a little thin, so glueing the house frame together was sketchy, but finally it worked.  We let the design up to Alaric and Rhiannon and they did a pretty good job of decorating the roof and the front of the house, worked very well together, and Rhiannon got pretty sugared up on confectioners sugar.

    

Totally Dr. Seuss, if you ask me!

  

We have been trying to eat a little healthier, plan meals better than we have been over the past few months and keep the junk food out of the house, but we had ice cream over the weekend, Ever seemed to enjoy it!  I think he had an ice cream headache about half way through.  Check out the moooovie:

Other than that fun, we pretty much lounged around and Jennifer got to get in some quality time on the sofa with Rhiannon in between bouts of studying for a big test at school.  Rhiannon looks like she just totally is enjoying sitting with Mommy:

Ever and Rhiannon had the best of times cheesing it up for the camera too.  

      

decorating

Well, we have accomplished setting up all of the indoor Christmas crap.  Yup, took it all right out of the box that said Christmas Crap.  George still has to tackle the outside Christmas crap and was totally up to it before this weekend got a little complicated with family stuff and snow.  So he will have to do it later.  He did get some new outdoor lights that have some function that you can change how they flash.  It has 8 settings and he took the time to change the settings and then write down what each setting blinked like....only to find out that the same information was written on the back of the setting dial.  Genius maneuver there.

We got a tree at Lowe's, totally cheap, totally just picked the one that looked kinda the right size.  This because I (George) went with all three kids and really didn't have the time to be super picky.  Well the cool thing is that two people have said that it is a really nice fake tree.  So I guess we got totally lucky and got a fake looking real tree.  

Rhiannon had a good time dancing to a little Santa doll that would play music if she squeezed his hand...never mind the streaker half way through.