Decorating Gingerbread Cookies

Jocelyn and Ian's school has an annual lunch to thank all the volunteers who help out in the classrooms and make the school such a special place. This year, Momma made some delicious gingerbread cookies for dessert, and enlisted Jocelyn to help decorate them.


To go with the cookies, Momma made thank-you cards with these photos attached. We thought they were so darn cute that we had to put them on the blog too!

Making Gingerbread Houses

One of the Christmas traditions that Jocelyn and Ian enjoy most is the chance to make their own gingerbread houses. We usually do it the long weekend after Thanksgiving. When they got started this year, they were very focused on the task at hand...


...but after a while it became less about building houses than about sampling the frosting and candy decorations, as it usually does.


Jocelyn came back strong to show off some nice handiwork on her house's lawn.


And Ian stripped down to his union suit to pose with the finished products!

Happy Thanksgiving

We are very late in posting photos from Thanksgiving...we've been so caught up in getting ready for Christmas! Here are a few shots, including this one, which is the closest we came to a decent family photo this year:


It's so nice to have so many of the kids in the family get together for Thanksgiving every year. We were missing Stephanie this year from the crew that normally goes to my Mom's, but the rest were kind enough to pose for a group shot.


And here's a nice shot of the ladies after we all enjoyed the wonderful dinner my Mom prepared.


It was so nice to have Julie's parents join us again this year too...the more the merrier! Happy Turkey Day everyone!

Happy Ween! (As Ian Called It)

Belle and Spiderman getting ready for the big night!

Ian's making his new angry face for the camera...

And Jocelyn and Ian with their silly faces!!

We had a blast going around the neighborhood and started with a pretty big group of kids...

 

Ultimately, one of Ian and Jocelyn's neighbor, Ainsley, showed Ian and Jocelyn the ropes around the hood! We had a great night and the kids are already asking if they can do it again!

October Snowstorm

 

 Really?? Snow in October??  We received about 3 inches and the kiddos could not have been happier...once Ian realized he didn't need to have Poppa carry him around!

He was happy to try out his new boots...

 And Jocelyn's first snow angel of the season.

 

Then Poppa decided to teach them about snow ball fights - its was the perfect snow for it...nice and heavy!

  

Once Jocelyn figured out we had a better arm than she did, she decided it was time to build a snowman.

 Ian was more interested in the grapes that I had brought out for the snowman's eyes, though.

 

Jocelyn gave him the carrot nose...
 

 And the chocolate goldfish mouth...

 

The finished product...Samuel the Snowman!

Newton Fall Harvest Festival

The third weekend of October is the Newton Harvest Festival.  This is the second year we have gone and seem to always have a great time!  We started the day with the car merry-go-round where Ian chose the motorcycle to ride solo.

Jocelyn decided to play it safe with Momma in a big yellow car.

Next we were off to get ice cream cones since we knew lunch was going to be a late one and what better to tide over the little people's appetites...

Jocelyn is playing shy for the camera right now - I don't buy it!

Ian was a happy little man post cone!

Jocelyn has a ghost sticker on her face from a festival we had gone to the day before at the Bates school..she wouldn't let us take it off!

The second ride was the dizzy dragon teacup ride - Poppa was up for this one!

Last but not least was the train ride...

This was Ian's favorite actually.

After the rides, Ian played a duck game and one a box of matchbox cars - hence the very happy face we have here!

Last but not least was the pumpkin decorating...

A very serious operation from the looks of it!

The Story Of Us (So Far)

I was playing around with the movie software on our Mac the other day and threw together a little retrospective. Fun to see how the kids have grown!