Sebastian

This little guy cracked us up. Mariana went to get him out of bed, and he said, "Garage Open" (meaning Pawpaw and Manah's garage), then started making this motions and sound effects. He did this about 15 times before I finally decided to video him!

Ice Skating Success!

Mariana had her test at ice skating last night to see if she passed the level, and she did! So now she has passed all 8 levels of the basic lessons and can move on to figure skating lessons! Yay! We promised her that we would buy her some pretty white skates of her own if she made it all the way through (and was still interested in continuing), so I guess we will be skate shopping!

Caroling and Christmas Party/Dance

Our 4-H Club went Christmas caroling at a nearby nursing home and then had their Christmas party and dance afterward last night. Great fun was had by all! The girls are already hoping they have a dance again next year!

Christmas Piano Recital

The girls had their Christmas piano recital today. They played beautifully, including two duets.
(Mariana won the contest to have her artwork displayed at the recital and on the cover of the programs. You can see the framed picture behind the piano. The girls have all been trying to do this for some time now, so she was very pleased to find that hers had been chosen!).

Many of the students, including Mariana and Gloria, participated in a group version of the Cup Song while Julia sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Gloria

Mariana


Mariana's duet with Julia

Allia's Solo


Allia's duet with Elise

This was Stephen's first time to come to a recital, and he behaved so well! I was so proud of him that I let him have whatever sweets he wanted at the refreshment table! :0

Little moments

The children love having Pawpaw and Manah's yard across the street to play in when they get bored of ours. Anastasia and Sebastian love walking on their landscaping wall (not shown) that they had installed not so long ago, not realizing that they were making a play structure. ;)

 And there is just something about a little boy playing trains that is irresistibly sweet.

Feast of St. Nicholas

What a weekend! We celebrated the Feast of St. Nicholas on Sunday. I had the stockings all ready, and the children were allowed to open them before mass, provided that they all got dressed in time. It turned out to be a good motivator! Daddy sang a song for us beforehand.

I loved the contrast here with my tiny man whose feet don't even reach the edge of the couch (lovingly coined Daddy's "mini me"), and my big tall man!

 

It made for such nice stocking photos having the kids all dressed for mass!

So excited about his new toothbrush. :)

And it being the 2nd Sunday of Advent, we brought out all of the trees! Sebastian was Soooo excited, he kept running circles around the room and squealing! Precious!

Christmas at the Park!

We headed to the annual Christmas at the Park event Saturday evening. The kids look forward to this every year. They added some things to it this year, and we way underplanned our time there. So they were only able to do a few things, but everyone still really enjoyed themselves.

The petting zoo for younger ones. They even had a baby Wallaby!

 Cutie in her warm gear

The snow slide...it was really fast!

Sweet buddies

Me with my sweeties and the pretty lights! (Anastasia is missing because she was NOT being a sweetie at this point in the evening. We were heading to the car, and I think she was just plain tired).