Christmas

Christmas Eve afternoon we dropped off gifts at Nancy and Brian's and visited with them and Katelyn for a few minutes.  They were opening their gifts in the morning.

Nancy sent this picture, Katelyn likes being photographed about as much as I do.

Then we went to Charb and Kelly's.  It was fun watching Ava and Harper open their gifts, I told Ava to smile here, why do I still tell everyone to smile when they have masks on?

Harper showing off her new unicorn socks.

Posing later with their pandemic teddy bears.

We delivered Christmas biscuits and gravy to the Gourde's house Christmas morning since there's more room to distance there.   

It was a quieter Christmas this year, but with just as much love.

 

Slime, wood crafts, Oculus

Harper tried adding lots of glitter into her slime with shaving cream.  It looked pretty initially but not so much when it was all mixed in.

Ava added a whole lot of shaving cream and just a little gold glitter, it was some of the best, fluffiest slime she's ever made.

It was a mild and sunny Sunday morning so Papa took them for a walk and to check out the water in the stream.

They ended up in the shop where he helped Ava build a little bench and Harper made a little bed out of scraps of wood.  They had fun painting their creations.

They brought up their Oculus VR game and let Papa and I try it.  Wow, that was a wild and fun experience!  We tried roller coaster games, Harper was playing a game where you're on a space station as Ava followed along on Daddy's phone.

 

Ava's award, Josie, friendly Lucy

Ava won the HAWK award at school!

It was delivered by one of her Associate Principals.

Emmy sent this picture of Josie-she looks so grown up sitting in her highchair eating toast, not a little baby anymore!  

 

Speaking of growing up too fast - 6th grade pictures, how did this happen?

Wednesday - Lucy really missed her Mamas and came to them for lots of petting.

Ava Harper at home

Last week, after going to Costco, we had a short visit with the girls.  They were hanging out, working on science assignments.

Oliver and Murphy weren't too interested in having their picture taken.

 

Wednesday visit

The girls came up the day, they got busy with some crafts after breakfast.

They also made some cute pipe cleaner animals.

They enjoyed the hot tub even though it was only 40 degrees outside.

Rielee came over for a fire pit lunch with us, Papa took Sadie and worked on 

leash training with her while Rielee ate (she was a little too hyper around the fire.)  

Sadie knows lots of tricks but walking on the leash

isn't one of them.  She starts obedience training soon though.

Parker's project, Thanksgiving

Parker has been busy this week.  He had 11 trees cut down and rented an excavator to clean up the limbs and get the logs ready to be loaded. 

We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner with these kids and Gabe, Des and Denise.

Early Christmas

Since Ava has another game on Sunday, we got the girls for Thursday-Friday night instead.  We got out the Christmas decorations and put up our first artificial tree because, hey, it's 2020 and we really needed something festive.  

Friday, Kalyn brought Josie over to visit, she was in such a good mood.  

Ava read her a book,

and we showed her the light up toy with lots of buttons to push, she was fascinated with that. 

Keeping with the early Christmas theme, we made cookies, too.

Rielee came over and helped with the tree and they spent some time in the hot tub.

Saturday they went to play at Aunt Cathy's then Jillian and Bridget came up and they played Whoonu.  I just love how well these kiddos get along.

 

Josie's fans, Papa's birthday

Saturday I took Josie's cousin fan club over to visit.  It's so cute how they are all so enamored with her.

I 

Later I offered them jobs picking up cones for a penny a cone, they all worked hard and we had a full wheel barrow when they were done.

Sunday morning the girls wanted to make Papa a cake for his birthday.

It turned out really cute.

Kelly came up to get the girls and brought Luke and Lexi along so we all got together and celebrated his birthday a day early.

 

Friday night fun

It was girls night in the hot tub, then they made a fort and slime, doesn't get much that that.

 

Josie, Rielee cooking, Ava & Harper's school pics

Josie came to stay with us this afternoon, well, mostly me, she's still gets nervous around Uncle.

I found a picture of Emmy at about the same age, I see some resemblance except I think Josie has her Daddy's eyes.

The way Josie is trying to crawl reminded me of her Mama.

Nose down, like she's pushing a peanut.

She's getting her knees up though and trying hard, she managed to wiggle and stretch and make it to her toys.

Found this picture of Charb trying to get Emmy to crawl, or maybe he was talking to her during tummy time.

We went for a walk and she conked right out, that crawling business is tiring!

Rielee asked me to help her make Cocoa Mounds for a presentation for school.  We had a lot of laughs doing it, and they turned out good.

Kelly took the girls to school today to get their pictures taken, how can they be sixth grade already?