Apparently its time for your monthly update from us. In the last month its been a bit quiet here. Well, except for the fact that Damion has spent a little over two weeks traveling for work and the most recent trip was 8 days. During that time it was less than quiet here.  A quick warning, this is a bit long but informative.

We hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas!

We recently returned from our tour of the East Coast.  It actually all started as attending and celebrating Peter’s (Jess’ brother) doctoral graduation from NC State.  Congratulations Peter on that wonderful achievement and best of luck at the new job!

While we were in Raleigh with all of the family we celebrated Christmas.  The apparently popular present was Jack’s Play-Doh.  When you’re done reading all of my ramblings you’ll see in the gallery that everybody in attendance played with the play-doh that evening.  It was a fun night that resulted in Anna proclaiming several times that night and during the rest of our trip, “That was the funniest Christmas ever!”

I think now is the right time to mention that we weren’t sure who was going to make this trip because the days preceding our departure Anna had a low fever, no appetite, slight breathing problems, a nasty cough and didn’t go to preschool for two days.  Why mention that now?  Well Saturday after the graduation celebration Jack & I started to not feel good.  But what did we do?  We decided to extend our trip! 

Twas the night before Christmas and the kids were in their bedrooms fast asleep.  And I mean fast to sleep they went because instead of putting them in bed at their normal 8:30 we took them to the 8 pm Christmas Eve service which resulted in Anna taking herself to bed at 10:30.  Before we went to church though we pulled out the video camera to send our best wishes to you since we didn't get Christmas cards out this year. 

Merry Christmas to everybody and safe travels to those that are not staying home today.

I realize that it has been several weeks since I said I'd post pictures. Since that posting though Damion has been on two trips. During one of those trips I was sick sick sick and the other trip the kids were sick sick sick, to the point we took them to the doctors. I'm finally better and so are the kids (thanks to antibiotics to get rid of their “major ear infections”. Anyways, I apologize for the delay but I'm now ready to take time to share with all of you!

The first set of pictures is from a trip to Rader Pumpkin Farm near our home. We went there with our friends Ben & Amy and Adam & Nicole. Jack loved the animals but then he got to play in the bouncy house and air pillow and that's all he wanted to do. Anna took everything in stride and seemed to enjoy everything there, but she too loved the air pillow. The following Thursday Anna went with her preschool class. They got to do a couple of activities that we did not do when we went but she made sure to tell me in her disappointed tone that they didn't get to play on the air pillow.

The second set of pictures is from a trip to Tanner's Orchard the following day. To put it nicely it was not a fun trip. But a valuable lesson was learned, we will only go there during the week. Before meeting up with Tiffany & Amelia though we stopped at Wheels O'Time Museum. It exactly what it's name says it is. The kids seemed to have a great time there.

The final set of new pictures is from tonight. (See I can put pictures of timely sometimes.) About a month ago Anna declared she was going to be a scary pumpkin for Halloween so she could scare Adam. The search was on. Apparently they don't make pumpkin costumes for anybody between the ages of 2 and 15, let alone a scary pumpkin. Because of everything laid out in the first paragraph it wasn't until Oct 22 that I was able to get to the fabric store to find & purchase a pattern and fabric. Oh, and it wasn't until the following Tuesday that I wasn't able to really work on it. BUT I was done with it by 10 pm on Wednesday night, which was good since she needed it for her preschool Halloween parade and party.

Now Jack's costume was a whole other story. Anna tried to convince him to be a pumpkin and he firmly said no. He kept saying he wanted to be a ghost, which I attribute to his watching Little Einsteins Halloween at least twice a day and the ghosts on it. Last night we attached a white sheet to a bucket hat and he refused to even put it one but we did and he screamed and threw it off. Later that night it was decided to make him a pumpkin costume from the left over material. After about 5 hours of work he was a pumpkin. Well, lets just say the pictures will show exactly how much he did not want to be a pumpkin. He wouldn't even wear the pumpkin hat either. At the first two sets of trick or treating locations he was just a cute boy wearing a baseball hat OR a little boy who thinks he was a vampire because he might bite OR a dressed like a teenage. At the next area we put Anna's Bears jersey on him to be a quick made football player/fan and when we were done he didn't want to take off the jersey.

As a random side note, after going trick or treating we decied to go do a bit of grocery shopping at Meijer.  I have never seen that store so quiet before, and I've gone several times after the kids have fallen asleep.  Anyways while there, Damion & Anna looked at a couple of items while Jack and I went to get the food.  I picked up a box of Kix (they sounded yummy) and moved kept shopping.  When we met up with Damion & Anna I saw Anna carying a box of cereal.  Yup.  They too picked out Kix.  Seriously, does anybody else go shopping with their significant other and end up picking out the same cereal while seperated?!?!  Oh, and we bought both boxes because we decided that since we both got the same thing we'd likely eat all of them.