Season of Joy

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from our home to yours! We've had a wonderful season filled with great memories. Larry is what you might call the "Christmas GURU." Here he is setting up our tree, the day after Thanksgiving.

Johnny watches in wonder. It was truly magical to watch him interact with the Christmas tree for the first time!

James is helping Daddy put the lights on the tree. He loved being Daddy's special helper, this year!

Johnny and James in front of the newly decorated tree.

Larry set up the Christmas train, much to the delight of the boys. Here's Johnny admiring the train as it passes by.

James loves watching all trains from the ground level perspective.

Our family room at night...one of our favorite things to look at all season, is the tree.

Larry decorates the outside, too!

We finally made a gingerbread house, this year! James has been begging me to help him. So, after much research and carefully making the dough and consulting a gingerbread house expert (Aunt Nichole), we were able to make the house of our dreams!

Mommy piped the swirls on the roof and applied the frosting, while James did all the rest.

Christmas morning! We woke up and came down to see what Santa had brought us! Here's James with his gift - an acoustic guitar!

Johnny with his gift-- a ride-on scooter.

James couldn't wait to try out his new guitar!

James is watching a battery powered Thomas train - another gift.

Happy, aren't we?!

Johnny is all smiles!

Larry in his PJs!

Mindy and the boys right after we got home from church, before we changed clothes and opened the rest of our presents!

Larry and I both love Christmas! While we love the music, the lights, the stories, great movies, traditions, decorations, getting together with friends and family, we have found that the greatest joy that we've had this Christmas season was watching our two little boys experience all the "magic" and "Spirit" that Christmas has to offer.

Our boys!

Johnny loves dandilions!

What do you hear, Johnny? He's always hearing an airplane or train or car and tells me what it is!

Make a wish!

Dandilions don't taste good!

Love this smile!

Looking at something in the forest...

Time to go!

Our 5 year old is really growing up!

Funny face! We do lots of goofing around together!

Wild onions taste so good!

Norman Rockwell immitation...

We love our boys!

Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, here in NC! Lots of yummy food and great weather to play outside after the turkey! Larry's table setting was spectacular! Thanks for sharing you talents, Larry!
Can you tell I like the color orange?!

Larry, posing in front of his handiwork!

Two of our greatest blessings- James and Johnny!

Warm and Cold?!

We're riding a crazy temperature roller coaster, this fall! Some days, we're bundled up in jackets, and it feels like winter. Other days, we're digging through our dressers to find the shorts and T-shirts we'd packed away! In spite of it all, we are making it a point to play outside as much as possible!

Just to illustrate, the above picture of James playing his red guitar outside sitting on the curb by Johnny was on Thursday. The pictures below were taken on Friday!

Fun with a cousin!

A little over a week ago, Larry's mom came down for a visit. She brought one of our nephews down with her who is really close in age to James. His name is Colton. (Thanks, Jennifer, for letting him come!) James was so thrilled to not only have a chance to visit with Grandma Fox, but he also could have a 3 day play-date with Colton! Just some of the fun things they did together were: they got to sleep in the same room, play with cars and monster trucks, ride bikes outside, pay a visit to Santa at the mall, go places with Grandma in her van, eat out at Denny's, go the bounce house, and visit a cool train store near a train museum, and tell goofy funny stories to each other!

It was a great weekend, and we're so glad Mom and Colton were able to come down and visit!

Blogging will be A LOT easier!!!

Larry was able to figure out how to upload pictures from our Digital Video camera! WOW! Instead of taking me months to get the film developed, made into a CD, and then uploading them onto our hard drive where it takes about 2-3minutes per shot to upload onto Blogger, it only took me about 10minutes to make the whole Halloween post!!! No wonder everyone can post so much so often! Well, this is a new turning point in our family blogging habits...I can't promise weekly or daily posts, but at least it will be more often and it won't be so frustrating for me!

Autumn Halloween FUN!

Here are some recent pictures at the pumpkin patch in town! We've had an eventful October!

The boys helping me rake leaves in our yard!!!

The blue and red Wiggles getting ready to go to the pre-school Halloween party, last Wednesday.

Our family in front of the Young Men's Haunted House at the Church Halloween party. Larry was Greg Wiggle (Yellow), Mommy was Jeff Wiggle (purple), James was Murray Wiggle (Red), and Johnny was Anthony Wiggle (purple). It was all James' idea to be the Wiggles for Halloween!



On our way out for Trick-or-Treating! Johnny's first time! He also INSISTED on wearing the firehat, so he changed from being a Wiggle to a firefighter.

We hope everyone had a safe Halloween!

James' big month!

James started preschool the beginning of September. He loves it! Hooray! He attends 3 days a week and has "lunch-n-fun" (eating lunch at school) on Wednesday afternoons. Also, he turned 5 the end of September! He had a Disney Car's birthday party at his house with several of his friends!