More Christmas Pics

Christmas Moments

To celebrate Christmas, Denver was invited to a friends house for a Gingerbread Party. Each child got to make her own gingerbread house and take it home. Denver happens to LOVE gingerbread houses, the making, the decorating the eating, so we did one at the party and one with Willa at home.

The Perfect Picture

Every year I try to capture that perfect picture to use for a Christmas card. For some reason, after the first few clicks, my children find this endeavor much less fun and important than me.
So in the spirit of imperfection, which if you have or have had small children in your home, you understand, here are some runner ups of the ones that didn't make it.
And to be honest, the ones I ended up using are not very Christmasy, but they are ones that were spontaneous without the maniac with the camera telling the small models how to smile or what to do.

Holiday Show

Here, Denver is second from the right.


This fall the girls started taking dance lessons through a little studio in town. They have been really enjoying it and have learned quite a bit for such a short time period. This year the studio put on a Holiday Show for the first time. This definitely seemed like a large undertaking especially for my 3yr. old and 6 yr. old to remember a dance that was just taught to them. Denver danced to "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and Willa was to perform an enthusiastic rendition of the Hoky Poky. The day was a long day with regular class in the morning and then dress rehearsal at 2:45 followed by the show at 6 pm. After they both did well in the dress rehearsal, I'm afraid the day was too much for Willa and by showtime she was done. So, while we got video of her performing on stage during dress rehearsal, she did not actually make it on stage to do the Hoky Poky for the show. Denver, however, had enough energy to do 5 dances. She just loved the whole thing. I had to do the whole hair and makeup thing and I really hated to tart them up, but they did look adorable. Willa was against any makeup and I was lucky to get a dab of lipstick on her. Poor thing, it was just an off day for her. I am working on getting the video posted so you can see the whole dance but I think our video camera is a bit dated now and not sure if it will work. Until then, here's some pics.Here is cousin Rebecca, the famous Aunt Tia, and cousin Sarah who were all so nice to come to the show and make the girls feel extra special! Gran and Papa were there too but managed to escape my lens.

The Death of a Toy

Needless to say, this one didn't make it.

Library Card

Now that she's 6, and can write her own name, she can have her own card. This was actually a really big thing for her and she was so proud to be able to do it. I wonder what kind of importance it has in her little brain. How many times does she see me use a plastic card like this and now she has her own. If I let her she would have taken out the entire children's section. But I think we'll stick with 1 book at a time.

Fall Birthdays

We had our Fall Birthday party at our place and it was a very full house. Celebrating their birthdays were Denver, Tyler, Mikayla, Uncle Paul, and Aunt Chris. Along with my parents anniversary, congrats Mom and Dad, and my Aunt Chris and Uncle Michaels Anniversary as well. So many good things to celebrate.
Here Denver has just opened a very adorable set of Paper Dolls and has played with little else since. I think it is the first thing she thinks about when she wakes up. Possibly the funniest part of the evening was when Denver had opened up several very fun presents and came across some very cute clothes and after very exuberant responses to all other presents, my very polite daughter, pushed her clothes away and said so unemotionally, "Oh, clothes."

It's very hard to say exactly what my Mom and Michael are doing here but I'm almost certain they were having fun.

First Snow

It does not take much snow for little girls to convince Daddy that they must, must, must play outside. It has been a very chilly November here but we are trying to enjoy it. Though I must say that waiting for the bus is not fun if it's below 40 degrees.
The girls had Daddy pull the sled all around our yard (and the neighbors yard for that matter). Possum really enjoyed this fun new experience and behaved reasonably well for about 8 minutes and then his impulse control vanished and he had to come inside.

NYS Section V Champs

For the second straight year in a row, our volleyball girls won the Section V tournament. This year we played an extremely close match with Byron-Bergen. The match went to 5 games and in the 5th game we won by 2. I was beginning to worry about the effect of adrenaline on the baby. It was a great year. We went on to win the Class C Qualifier which put us in the State tournament. We lost to a very good Buffalo area team which means we finished tied for 5th in the state in Class C. Our team also brought home a host of awards including the Section V Tournament MVP(going to our babysitter!) and 2 All Tournament players. The girls accomplished so much this year. We had graduated 5 starting Seniors last year so there were some big shoes to fill. It was an awesome group of girls that were fun to coach and had a drive to succeed more than any other group.

Now that we are done, I am home almost every night which is a weird feeling after 3 months of practices and games. Everyone on the homefront is very happy I'm done. Now it's on to the holidays, a season I absolutely love and some fun family time.

Busy Days

We have been super busy lately and I haven't kept up with posting the pictures from our recent escapades. Here we went to a Nazareth Academy picnic where the girls got to play with one of their favorite little friends, Meredith. Nazareth Academy is the school I coach for and we are in playoffs right now. We play Tuesday the 4th(also Denver's birthday) for the Sectional Title.





Willa ans I also took a field trip with her Preschool class to Cobblecreek Farms. We went on a "hay ride"(no hay involved) and picked out pumpkins. It was a little chilly but still enjoyable.






































And now into Halloween with our little flower and cheerleader. Halloween was warm enough to go out without coats, if a bit windy. They made it solidly around the block but after that their little legs were plum tuckered out. Even so, they both got hoards of candy that should last them for a long, long time