christmas wishes

we are growing closer to christmas each day, and we have been busy!

jack has enjoyed his advent calendar this year, but we were unable to find a countdown to christmas candle. 

my mom bought him the calendar this year (this one is by eric carle) and he loves it.

claire has learned to sit, but is nowhere near interested in rolling or crawling.

someone (jack, perhaps?) clued her in on christmas, and as you can see below, she is psyched.



from us to you, a very merry christmas and a wonderful new year.



zoo lights

one evening lastweek, it was warm.  as in, 70 degrees!  we made a last-minute decision to head to the zoo to see the zoo lights!  it was perfect, except that jack fell asleep on the way there. translation = hard to get to bed. oh,well....

we rode the train and peeked at some critters who were fast asleep.

it was a fantastic night.  sometimes, spur-of-the-moment ideas end up being the best ones of all.

sweet baby girl

play

marlie

I packed up the kids today and headed to the vet.  Taking an {active} preschooler, an infant,  and a whiny dog to the vet is no easy task.  But Marlie needed her lump looked at and we needed an estimate of how much it would set us back, money-wise.

The doctor told us it was not a fatty cyst like we thought it was, but instead, a tumor.  She won't know if it's malignant or not until after she takes it off.  She did say it could lead to various other potential problems. 

Great. 

We feel terrible, and are hoping it's nothing.  We can't even fathom losing our dog right now.  Especially to cancer.  Jack takes her on a walk every night and feeds her dinner.  Jack and Marlie have a pretty good system of helping each other out with food.  Jack feeds it to her, on the sneak, and she eats it.  Win-win.  He really loves her.

family fun

happy halloween!

from our family to yours.

costumes!

jack's first field trip

 i had to leave this little sweetie for the morning to take jackson on his field trip to a local pumpkin patch with his preschool.

jack found the perfect pumpkin!

then he was on to gourds, which he LOVED.  he has a fascination, and has since he was little, with pumpkins and gourds.  he found gourds that looked like pumpkins, not to my suprise...

and of course, diggers in the corn bin!

he also loved "rocket", the 2-week old calf that lived on the farm. 

and his beloved mrs. watts.

go bucks!

little claire had this hat made for the buckeye season!  isn't it darling?

our beautiful girl

a boy and his bug

our boy loves bugs.  it's in his blood...