Pop Goes the Monkey

So I installed a new version of my blog software today and in the process seemed to delete all my pictures from my December posts. Oh, well. It’s to late to fix it right now. It’s getting late and Santa should be here soon, so it’s time to start getting ready for bed.

I thought I’d hurry and post some pictures from last Christmas. Last Christmas, Sandy’s parents and Ellen came to celebrate with us, which was fun. Since I only seem to be producing run-on sentences, I’m just going to get to the pictures.

Merry Christmas!

With Christmas rapidly approaching, I thought it might be fun to look back at a couple of recent Christmases. Here are some pictures from Christmas of 2006. I’m hoping to post 2007 tomorrow, but we’ll see if I get around to it. I have to work, and then we have a big dinner and a bunch of other stuff planned, so who knows.

So we haven’t been the best at updating the blog the past few weeks. As you all know, this is a terribly busy season and thus, sometimes the small things like blogging get neglected.

We’ve definitely been keeping busy the past few weeks with shopping and wrapping and cooking and preparing neighbor gifts, etc. For the most part, these have been fairly mundane activities with few snapshot moments, but we have accumulated a few photos.

I’m sure with Christmas coming, there will be plenty more blogging opportunities before the end of the year. But until then here is Thanksgiving through this weekend:

Here are some more of my favorite family pictures we took this fall. My friend Amy took them again and I think she does a great job.

As we previously mentioned, we recently stayed with Sandy’s family in Appleton, Wisconsin. We packed the kids up, headed to the airport, flew to Chicago, and then headed north for a three hour drive. Traveling with two little monsters can be exhausting, but for the most part, the kids did pretty good (I’m going to overlook the 30 minutes Cassie spent screaming at the top of her lungs in the airplane).

Our time in Wisconsin was pretty quite, which is nice. We did get out and do a few things. We took the kids to see Aunt Ellen’s story time at the library. We went to the Appleton’s Children Museum. We went out to dinner with Ben, Michelle, and Ellen. I was able to take Sandy to see the new Bond movie and grab a bite to eat. We also stopped by Simon’s and spent a bunch of money on cheese.

All told, we had a really good time and are grateful for Sandy’s parents for putting up with us for a week. It was really nice to visit since most of Sandy’s family has never seen Peter and some hadn’t seen Cassie for two years. Hopefully we get the chance to visit again soon. But maybe we’ll go when it’s a tad bit warmer.

Hey everyone! We’re out in Appleton, Wisconsin enjoying the frigid weather, visiting with family, and the cheese. Yesterday we took the kids to the Appleton Children’s Museum and I must admit, it’s a pretty cool place. There was TONs of stuff to do. I’ll let the pictures below do most of the talking, but on the whole, it was an enjoyable experience. We went fairly early in the day, so for the most part, we could do all the activities without a hundred little monsters trying to push their way ahead or us.

Anyhow, the pictures are below. They were taken on my iphone so the quality isn’t all that great. We have some other pictures from our trips, but they are all across our three digital cameras so I’ll probably get them all together once we get home.

Halloween was pretty hectic this year. At 4:00 the family came up to my work for some Trick-or-Treating there. Sandy has never been inside my new office, so that’s nice. Cassie was so funny cause she wouldn’t get within five feet of anyone passing out candy. And no matter how much we prodded, she wouldn’t say “thank you” much less “Trick-or-Treat”.

After my work, we had to be a Trunk-or-Treat at our church building at 5:30. Funny story, on the way back from my office, Cassie asked Sandy for a sucker. Sandy said, she could have one and handed Cassie her candy bucket. A few minutes later Sandy heard Cassie giggling and looked back at her, only to find that Cassie had shoved as many suckers in her mouth as she could. Little white sticks were going in every direction.

After the Trunk-or-Treat, we headed home so that we could give candy out to the same little monsters we saw at the Trunk-or-Treat. I took Cassie around the block so she could gain some valuable Halloweening experience that is sure to come in handy later in life. We started out going at the same time as Cassie’s friend Winston. But Cassie was a little bit slower so she kept losing sight of him. Then a few minutes later we’d see him again and she’d get so excited and demand we followed him until we lost him again.

After the last of the tikes came knocking on our door, my mom, Sophie, Michael and Emily came over so they could see Cassie and Peter all dressed up. Cassie had a bit of a sugar buzz, as I’m sure the vast majority of American children did. She was bouncing all over the place and somehow kept showing up with more candy she had hoarded somewhere.

On the whole, it was pretty fun. More pictures are provided below for your viewing pleasures.

I just wanted to take a second to wish my wonderful wife a happy birthday. Sandy is such an amazing person. She works 20 hours a week to help pay the bills. She watches our kids every day. She also does the vast majority of the cooking, cleaning, and other various chores. She’s a great friend to everyone who knows her and always considerate of their needs.

Anyways, I really am grateful for all that you do Sandy. You are my best friend and a great partner in this journey. I couldn’t do it without you. We all love you so much.

Sandy came and brought the kids up to my work tonight so that we could drive over to Thanksgiving Point. They’ve got a lot of fun stuff going on right now. We decided to do their Barnyard Boo since Cassie’s still pretty young and we had to lug Peter around.

We did the the Barnyard Boo last year as well with Sam and Jessie for Cadence’s birthday. It’s pretty fun for the little ones. There’s a lot of random activities and lots of animals to look at. It’s fun because Cassie knows how to say the names of all the farm animals, but this is the first time she’s seen them all in person while knowing what they are.

She’s pretty bashful around them, though and she never really wanted to get too close. She also didn’t want to try the pony rides again this year. She just likes to keep her distance and name the animals from afar. She does pretty good with the names and sounds, but for some reason she thinks pigs are really pirate piggies. Weird?!

My wife and I have a large library of family pictures sitting on our computer. As I go through these pictures and arrange them, I’ll post some of the more significant ones here. The first of my “Looking Back” series is actually only goes back a month to the birth of our son Peter.

Peter was born on July 22nd, 2008. He weighed 7 pounds and 1 ounce, and he measured 18 and a half inches long.

The hospital story was pretty unexciting. Sandy had a doctor’s appointment late in the afternoon on the 22nd. I was at work and received a call as I was about to leave for the day informing me that we were going to have the baby that night. I came home, helped Sandy carefully pack her bag, and drove over to the hospital. This led to that and around 8:30, Sandy went in to surgery and at 9:22 Peter entered the world.

For the most part, there were little complications. Peter was having a small problem breathing, so they sent him up to the NICU for about 3 hours. After that though, he was completely fine. They say that sort of thing is common with babies who are premature (Peter was three weeks early).

The next day I brought Cassie to the hospital to meet her baby brother. Cassie was very excited and even got a chance to hold him (with some strict supervision). For the most part, she has been very accepting of Peter, even though it must have been a huge adjustment for her.

Well, that’s the story behind Peter’s birth. He has been such a blessing in our lives and I’m definitely excited to see his story unfold. Below I included a few photos from Peter’s stay in the hospital. Enjoy!