Christmas 2011

It just wouldn't be Christmas without a gingerbread house, right? So build one we did. Of course we had to go to 3 stores to find the Neccos, but the roof just wouldn't be the same without them. The only problem is the kids lose interest after about 30 minutes and Colby is a perfectionist when it comes to building things, so he ended up doing most of the work.

The kids were pleased with the end result though.

Santa did find his way to our house last year despite all the threats made to our children.

With Christmas being on a Sunday, the kids had to wait until after church to open all of their presents.

It looks like it was worth the wait though.

Gymnastics Shows

In September of 2011, Audrey and Evan started taking gymnastics classes. In December they put on a show to show off all of their newly acquired skills.

They both love it, but they probably aren't the most graceful children out there.  Case in point.

This was the only picture I got of Evan that wasn't blurry.

This picture is from the spring show which took place in May of this year. Audrey has really improved and has moved up a level.

The Big Wind Storm

December 1 of last year there was a big wind storm. Everybody talked about it for a while and then people got sick of talking about it after a while. They called it a 100 year storm. Sustained winds were over 60 miles an hour and gusts were over 100 miles per hour. I first heard the wind around 4 a.m. that morning and of course I never made it back to sleep. I could see my shutters moving, I could hear stuff hitting my house, I swear I could hear stuff being blown off of my house, I could hear the wind in my attic, and so on and so forth. Our power went out that morning and by 5 p.m. it wasn't back on so we headed to Grandma's house. Our house took a beating. We had quite a bit of damage. Quite a bit of our fence was blown down.

The window in Evan's window was broken. Luckily only the outer pane was broken.

More fence gone and really just a mess here.

Trampoline was ruined. We also discovered that it did not have legs on it. It is pretty crazy that we didn't know that.

We also had to replace our roof and quite a bit of siding. I just realized this post should have included after pictures, but I don't really have any after pictures right now. I will need to go outside and take some when the sun is up. We just recently finished all of our repairs. It was a frustrating process, but in the end things have turned out quite well. We were able to do quite a few things to improve our house that we might not have otherwise done.

First Day in First Grade

Somehow I skipped over this event. Way back on August 22, 2011 Audrey started first grade. She loves to pose.

Alivia is a late sleeper so I didn't have time to get her dressed and all that before we had to leave. We just gave her some Gatorade and off we went.
We took her to her class, took a quick picture and we left her for her first full day of school.
One of us was not so happy about leaving her at the school.

Halloween

Just 7 months later, that's all. Last year we went with a Phineas and Ferb theme. Here is the whole gang: Linda, Candace, Perry, Ferb, Isabella, Phineas, Vanessa, and little Suzy Johnson.

Perry didn't do a very good job wearing his hat and Ferb wasn't too happy being Ferb, but I thought we all looked pretty good. Last and probably least, here is Dr. Doofenshmirtz.

We even got some pumpkin carving done last minute. Here is Evan's pumpkin (carved by his mother).

Here are Audrey's and Alivia's pumpkins (also carved by their mother).

Probably the most exciting part of all, the trick or treating. Evan had a hard time keeping his hat on, so it came off before too long.

It was really cute to watch Alivia go trick or treating. I wish I had some pictures. She would run up to the doors and yell knock knock. Evan was really funny because he would strike up conversations with everybody. He would ask them what they were watching on TV and if he could come in and watch it with them. They all told him he should just go get more candy, so that is what we did.

Miscellaneous

Hey Mom, take our picture in our new pajamas from Grandma.

Now take one in the dark.

That worked well. Audrey played soccer again last fall. She did a fairly good job of guarding the goal.

Alivia chipped her front tooth. It really just makes me cry every time I look at it. And it makes her cry every time I try to take a picture of it. I'm glad it wasn't any worse though and her tooth is still the same color as the others. And at least it was a baby tooth and she will lose it. Now I just have to wait about 6 years for that to happen.

The Circus Came to Town

And Nonnie was nice enough to take us to the Circus. I remember going to the Circus or Disney on Ice with my grandparents when I was little. They were such fun times. Now I enjoy seeing my kids doing the same thing. Only two of those kids are mine though.

Hey Evan, look at those elephants. Isn't that cool?

Evan? Evan? Apparently all the excitement wore him out because he slept through about a third of it. Oh well. Maybe next time he can enjoy all the action.