Christmas Afternoon and Evening

After we had lunch at our house, we went over to Christine and Eric's house for the Williams Christmas.  Mark and Barb and their three daughters are in the same place very often, so we tried to get some pictures and ended up with some pretty nice ones, including one with them and their three grandchildren.

Eric and Christine prepared an awesome meal for us, and after that we exchanged gifts.  Joshua especially liked his military set with a tank and some Army guys.

Mark and Eric stayed upstairs to chat, but the rest of us headed downstairs to have some game time.  Hannah, though, couldn't stay awake and crashed on Meghan's lap.

We played Taboo, which is kind of a retro game at his point, but it's a favorite in our family.  Michelle and I emerged victorious, and the Taboo champs are memorialized here in this photo that you know is from Michelle and not me, because it has some sort of filter on it, and I'm not young enough or cool enough to do filters.

Joshua and I had on similar shirts, so I wanted to get a picture of it.  He was whispering something in my ear here (I don't remember what), but he apparently found it to be pretty funny.

When we got back to the house, the kids had a little bit of time to play with their toys before bedtime.  Hannah was excited to wear her new ladybug jammies.  These are notable, because they are perhaps her all-time favorite jammies from when she owned them in a smaller size (two or three sizes smaller than these), and she wore them even after they were way too small, but at some point it was just too much.  But Meghan was able to find the same exact ones, but in Hannah's current size, and she's super excited to wear them tonight.  Another fun gift she got was a motorized tricycle for Chicken Baby.  You can actually prop Chicken up on it, press a button, and it will drive around the floor, giving Chicken a chance to be a big kid who rides trikes.  You're growing up so fast, Chicken!

The next night Michelle came over to hang out with us and the kids, and she engaged in a lightsaber, er, space sword fight with the kids, and by the looks of it, I don't think she was winning.

Anyway, we had a really fun time at Christine's house with the whole Williams crew, and I don't know if it'll work out next year, but I think it would be a fun new tradition if we could make it happen in future years.

Early October

 After Hannah's party, I let her choose what we did for dinner. She said she wanted to eat dinner at a restaurant, but not a Mexican restaurant, just a regular restaurant. And then she wanted to go to sonic and eat tots and get a treat. So we decided Red Robin would work well for her and we finished the evening at Sonic, even though I do not normally prefer to top off my dinner with tots.

 She also enjoyed playing with her birthday presents. She liked all her gifts, but was especially excited about her ability to give her babies shots with a "pink shot" (You will note she is wearing her Doc McStuffins outfit at her birthday dinner. She takes her doctoral duties very seriously.) and also Chicken's mermaid costume, since she wants both herself and Chicken to dress up as mermaids for Halloween this year.

 The following weekend, we went to the zoo as a family for Hayden's birthday party. I hadn't been to the zoo for a birthday party before. But it was pretty fun and the kids get little stuffed animals as a favor (you can see Clara's in the photo), which made them super happy.

 Naturally we couldn't leave without a carousel ride.

Hannah had made progress in being willing to ride an actual animal on the carousel previously, but this time she was back to "Why would I risk my life like that?" so we rode together on the bench.

The first part of the party (with cupcakes and gifts) was in a room inside the main building.  The tablecloth was a large sheet of paper, so the kids (and many of us adults) drew pictures on the paper with the supplied crayons.

After the girls were done on the carousel, they came over and joined the rest of us.  There was a DJ there playing fun kids songs.  Hannah couldn't help but break it down, as you can see here.  It was a fun party, and everyone had a good time.

 The following weekend, Hannah was invited to a birthday party for a friend from school. It was at Rainbow Play Systems, which is a swing set showroom. It was a super fun venue for a birthday party. Hannah had a lot of fun.

Family Bike Ride with a Park Pit Stop

This morning we went on a family bike ride.  We have done that as much this year as last year, so I wanted to make a point to get at least one more in before it gets cold.  After some debate, Clara rode in the Burley with Mom, and Joshua and Hannah rode in the Weehoo with me.  We stopped at a park along the way, because the kids love parks, and we had a little extra time.  We played on the equipment, and while there noticed a green cicada.  It was notable, because we didn't have any of that color in our yard this year.  Hannah is too big for the baby swing, but guess who's not?  That's right.  Chicken Baby.  So Hannah helped Chicken by pushing her in the swing for awhile.  After our respite, we headed back to our car to conclude our ride.

Sunday Outfits

The kids looked cute and their outfits somewhat matched for church this morning, so I asked them if I could take a picture.  Naturally that meant I took like 50 pictures and still didn't end up with a great one, but these two were pretty decent.  The girls wanted to hold Chicken Baby and Cuddles, but I made them wait until I'd taken some without them.

After we were done, they asked me to take pictures of just the two inanimate friends, so here are they are, by request.

Theme Days

So far this school year, there have been a lot of theme days, particularly for Joshua.  They have been almost all color-related, which made me realize how few colors he has in his wardrobe.  Since I'm dressing the kids each day, as Meghan has already left for work at that point, it's up to me to make this happen.  Today was Yellow Day, which wasn't too hard, as he has several bright yellow shirts, and conveniently he also has these awesome mostly-yellow socks.  His orange shoes aren't yellow, obviously, but they fit nicely with the color scheme, as does his orange and gray backpack.

The girls also had a theme today, as it was pajama day at their school.  Baby Stella is always in pajamas, as that's that outfit that's sewn onto her, and Chicken Baby has a pair of pajamas, so all four girls, so to speak, were wearing their jammies.  The human girls were in a great mood this morning, so they were being silly, which I tried to capture in the pictures.

This evening I went out to the car to get something, and the girls wanted to go with me (all the kids are always excited to go outside with me whenever I'm going out, even if they have no idea what I might be doing).  While I had the passenger door open, Clara climbed in, and they suddenly got the idea that they should pretend to be grown-ups driving and riding in the car.  So I let them do it briefly, and here is a preview of what our life will be like in 12 years.

The Unofficial Last Day of Summer

The girls finished their time at NaturePlay today, and tomorrow is their first day at their new school, and tomorrow is Joshua's first day (albeit a half day) at kindergarten.  So today is pretty much the last day of summer, at least from a school perspective.  So what do you do in summer?  You go swimming.  So I took them to the pool today, again leveraging my inconveniently convenient unemployment.  As I have mentioned in the past, my HTC M9 phone is not water resistant like my previous one (Galaxy S5), so I don't really have a lot of pictures of us in the pool.  But I did manage to catch a quick pic of Chicken Baby lounging by the pool, soaking up the late summer rays.

On the last day of summer before the first day of school, we have a tradition of having s'mores.  So tonight the kids enjoyed s'mores on the deck, though Meghan and I certainly partook in them as well.

At night, Joshua somewhat unexpectedly lost his third tooth!  I think he's been working on it a lot, as it wasn't that loose very long ago.  So he'll have a cute gap in his mouth on his first day of kindergarten tomorrow.

Chicken in a Chair

Hannah sometimes likes to sleep in her chair instead of her bed at night.  Sometime recently (maybe for last Christmas?) we got her a tiny chair for Chicken so they could each have chairs in her room.  Tonight Hannah decided that since she sometimes sleeps in her chair with her blankets draped over her, Chicken should too.  So here they each are, at bedtime, ready to go to sleep in their own chairs.  Someday she will be over her love of Chicken, but for now it continues, and it leads to adorable things like this.

And before bed tonight, Hannah saw I was going through pictures on my phone and asked me to take a picture of her.  Lately the kids have been into asking me to take pictures of them and then wanting to see the resulting picture on my phone.  So here's the pic, which is really pretty cute.

What Season Is It?

Sometimes weird scenes occur in our house.  This is a good example.  The kids are on the stairs.  Hannah's in her swimsuit watching her game (which is what we call their Kindle Fires, even though they have more than games on them), Chicken Baby is accompanying her, Joshua is in his underwear watching his game, and Clara is looking on while wearing underwear, flip-flops, winter gloves, and a winter hat.  And there are backpacks strewn about.  I have no idea what's going on here.

A Simple Date Day with Hannah

 (From 4/2/16)

Today was a date day with Hannah.  We both needed haircuts, so I took her with me to Great Clips where Brandy gave us both trims.  I had Brandy do Hannah's hair afterward, and she did the low pigtail look that you see here, which is a cute look that is different than what I normally do.


I asked her where she wanted to go for lunch, and she chose McDonald's, of course.  So we went to McDonald's and she had Chicken McNuggets, which she loved.


Hannah liked the BBQ sauce so much, she decided to drink it.  I have always been a proponent of direct consumption of condiments, so I had no problem with this.  And there were actually three of us on this date, as Chicken Baby joined us and was given a seat at the table.  We then went together to run some errands.

Afterward we went to Sonic for ice cream.  The weather was really good today, so we enjoyed it outside at one of the tables on the property.  It was kind of a low-key date day without a big main event, but it was still really enjoyable for both of us.