Christmas!

Every christmas with the kids is fun and they just keep getting better and better! this year was especially fun since they understood who Santa was and what sort of things he leaves for good girls and boys. Neither one of them really expressed what they wanted but sulley said she wanted "NERDs" in her stocking and a "purple present." When we asked colton what he wanted, he sorta just stared at us. We suggested a train table and he agreed. So that's what he got - trains and a custom handmade table by Dad Allen.

The big gift that has already gotten hours of use

Once the first gift was opened, no one really cared about the others

Sprinkling Reindeer food on the lawn christmas eve

post church photo - you'd never know from this photo how awful they acted in church

Hope everyone had a fun christmas!

Happy 31st Birthday!

No birthday in this family is complete without a chocolate eclair cake! so in addition to all the other holiday goodies that were floating around the house, we had a chocolate eclair cake too! no worries though - it was gone in a mere two days!

colton assisting with the candles

big birthday wishes for a great 2011

all smiles and ready for cake!

Being silley with Rowan

We had fun hanging out in greenville before Christmas! We didnt do much except visited with friends and family, did a little shopping, took a trip to the Children's Museum, and ate...

Rowan

they sat still for approximately 10 seconds and we didnt even get a good shot

silly sulley

trying to tickle Rowan's feet or pull them out from underneath him?

Claude

WE MISS YOU AND LOVE YOU!!

Festive Oreo Cookie Pops

There hasn't been much time for baking this holiday season but i managed to squeeze these in while the kids were napping post snowfall. They're pretty easy and pretty cute. I never actually sampled the finished product but have been told they're delish.

First Snow this December!

not so happy to be outside

happy to be outside

New Toys

After spending the day with friends in Richmond, Colton and Sulley came home plus one new toy each! Colton loves his new drill, tools, and toolbox while sulley is keeping busy these day making apple pie... or as she calls it, "pizza!"

examining the new saw

part chef and construction worker....

releasing all his aggression before bed

one serious chef

order up!

Gingerbread House and Giggles

VOILA! our gingerbread house is complete! It only took us 3 days, one to build and two days later, we finally found time in the afternoon to decorate it!

The ghetto window on the right side accentuates the curb appeal

The Aftermath- after trying to eat the candy all afternoon, my two crazed kids enjoyed running around screaming at "waldo the elf" and enjoyed being filmed by greg. They thoroughly enjoy watching the videos of themselves acting like hoodlums. Note - look at sulley's shirt - you can see crusty icing and icing stains left from her work on the house. ATTRACTIVE!

Out with the old and in with the new

We started decorating for Christmas on Saturday and soon realized that our faux fir looked pitiful so we quickly ran to the corner and picked out a lovely Fraser Fir! yay!! WE FINALLY HAVE A REAL CHRISTMAS TREE!! and no allergy problems yet!! 120ft of lights later and all the decorations we own, our tree is complete! well...we're still lacking a tree topper...

Sulley's newest ornament, handpickd by her little hands at Merrifield.

And...Colton chose the firetruck! No suprise there!

Children's Tea

We kicked off December by attending a Children's Tea with some friends. There goodies and snacks galore, crafts everywhere, and a huge scottie dog and a santa. Colton and sulley loved following the dog around and loved looking at santa from afar, but neither of them would sit for pictures. On the other hand, Connolly, Bobby, and Nattie, all posed for pictures.

Connolly and some random girl

Bobby running away from something

Colton and his cupcake

Sulley and her plate full of goodies

we are all part alexander!

It's been a fun week and spent the evening of black friday hanging out with 2nd and 3rd cousins. It's definitely a rarity to know your 2nd cousins, much less communicate with them and even more rare for your kids to know their 3rd cousins. So the common denominator here is that myself, Lilli, and Kate (mom's of the kids) all shared the same great grandmother because each of our grandmothers were sisters...

Third Cousins:
Sulley, Benjamin, Simon, Jane Bell, Rache, Colton

Thanksgiving 2010

thanks to gigi and big d who spent almost a week with us leading up to thanksgiving. we had fun even though we didnt do much. i was out of commission on monday and sick the rest of the week. we did make it to the mall and to merrifield for some flowers. dad did some yard work and blew the leaves and cleaned out our garage so that was awesome. not sure how we managed NOT to take any pictures except these two crazy pics from Thanksgiving at Aunt Martha's house.

yup, this is our child

this is what happens when you...

1) have a daughter obsessed with fashion accessories and
2) you disappear long enough to get breakfast together

This is not Kansas, it's North Arlington

It's been an exciting 48 hours around here...because we experience our first "mircoburst." Greg and I awoke at approx 12:45 am Wednesday morning to high winds. the next thing we knew, we heard branches hit our window and glass come flying through our bedroom window along with leaves and other debris. Power went out. We just both sat there in bed saying, WTF just happened? so next we naturally went downstairs to grab the broom to clean up some glass in case the kids tried to come inside our room during the night or early morning... that's when greg decided to look out the door and realized we couldn't even open the storm door because a tree was blocking it. yes! you guessed it! - our neighbor's tree fell on our house and my car. So at this point, we run to put on our shoes and go outside to assess the damage in the dark and as we make our way over the tree, we see our neighbors standing directly in front of us looking dumbfounded. as we all left the yard, we realized our OTHER neighbor had TWO trees fall and come entirely uprooted. it was a warzone. thank god no one was hurt and in the grand scheme of things, there was minimal damage done to houses. any house could have been easily chopped in half by these big old oak trees but for some reason, everyone was spared major damange. Most of the damage is roof repairs, gutter replacements, screen repair, and window and car repair in our case.

our neighbor's mama jamma tree that fell...
went almost to the end of our street into a total of 3 yards.

part of "the tree" that totaled my car and wrecked our house

aftermath

More fun with leaves!

Fun with leaves!!