Jubilant Alexander

Alexander is such a bright addition to our family. He is ever cheerful and happy. Whenever he wakes up, we all flock around him, coo, babble, and laugh. We are always rewarded by grins, sweet baby noises, and kicking legs. We love you little one!

Please excuse the quantity of pictures...I want to remember all of his sweet expressions. I really did narrow it down...I just have an overactive shutter finger :)

This little girl...

Is so fun to have in our family! She is at a fun stage of learning and language exploration. She says the cutest things every day. I wish I could remember even half of them. I'm going to try to be better at writing them down just after she says them. The cutest thing she is still having a hard time pronouncing is her "sn-" and "sm-" blends. When a word begins with either of these, she breathes the "s-" through her nose. So "snow" is "s(mouth closed, exhale through the nose)-no". It is adorable!

Today, she was sitting, resting her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. She thoughtfully said, "Mommy, I weally want to be married."

I responded, "Oh! Who would you like to be married to."

Without hesitation, she replied, "To Aunt Jamie."

I just smiled. "That's nice, Essie."

Here are a few pictures of this sweet little girl in her favorite pajamas...too small, stained on the knees and elbows, they have just snuck their way into the trash can :)

January Group Lesson

Here are a few pictures from Jackson's January Group Cello lesson. He had a "pre-Twinkle" class in the studio...

...and a regular class in our living room because there is more room. I convinced Thomas to join in even though he has to play the songs he knows on different strings than he is used to. He did really well.

It's snowing in the house!

I bought some softboxes (did I mention that already?...it feels like I did). Anyway, there were 15 light bulbs all packed in little styrofoam cases. They were all laying on the floor and I was literally walking to get a trash bag to put them in when I started hearing squeals of delight. When I saw how much fun they were having I decided to let them do it and just clean up the mess after. I needed to vacuum anyway and I figured it wouldn't be much more work than I was going to do already. Boy, was I wrong! Styrofoam is NOT easy to vacuum up! It is so staticy that it was clinging to our hair, the sides of all the furniture, our pants, and even the vacuum. We have a super powered vacuum and it still clogged it three times. Oh well...at least we have the pictures to remember it by :)

P.S. Does anyone else have the same issue I do with extra spaces being added between the pictures? Each picture has progressively one more space than the one before.

Things to Remember

There are a few things the kids have said lately that I don't want to forget. Today, Jackson was playing his cello in the living room. Estella aparantly thought he had been playing long enough, because she said "Daddy, I'm the princess and you're the beast. Beast-es don't play cellos. Beast-es don't play cellos, Daddy! BEAST-ES DON'T PLAY CELLOS!!"

One afternoon several months ago the kids and I got on the subject of marraige. Thomas and Nicholas were pretty disturbed that they would have to get married one day. Nicholas asked if he could marry me, and I told him I was flattered, but I was already married to Daddy. Then you could see the light bulb go off in his head and he excitedly said, "I know! I can marry Essie!" Thomas thought this was a brilliant idea and said, "No! I get to marry Essie!" They argued for a while before I could get them to listen to me while I explained that brothers and sisters don't marry each other. They were thoroughly dissappointed. Nicholas even asked again the next day why we couldn't marry our sister and said he still really wanted to marry Estella.

Ceiling-high tower

This tower was literally touching the ceiling...the ceiling is vaulted...it was a tall tower!

Ouch

Every night Jackson and/or I go in and tuck the kids in before we go to sleep. This night, Jackson went into the boys' room. Nicholas is a crazy sleeper and has some silly ideas about what makes him warm and cold at night. He insists on sleeping with only a pull up on. He is sure that pajamas will make him cold. He also refuses to sleep under regular sheets. He says they are cold. I agree that they are cold on your skin when you first get in, but he won't lay under them long enough to let them get warm. I have a set of flannel sheets that he has consented to use, but for some reason, no matter how tightly I make the bed, the sheets and blankets end up on the floor by morning! I have even gone as far as buying large safety pins and pinning on the sheets. That worked until once when I was stripping the beds to wash the sheets I forgot about the pins and ripped a HUGE hole in both the top and fitted sheet...dang! So...back to the point...when go in at night Nicholas always needs major tucking. His sheets are either all balled up at the bottom of his bed, or on the floor. Jackson had a blanket and leaned in to throw it over Nicholas...he didn't remember that Nicholas is on the bottom bunk and the bottom of the top bunk is right at his nose level when he is kneeling down. He slammed the bridge of his nose right into the edge of the bottom bunk. OUCH! He had a bright red spot on his nose for about 4 days. The funny thing is that no one commented on it. I guess it looked close enough to a pimple that no one wanted to risk asking what happened :)

Light Sabers

Jackson has a new job. That sounds much simpler than it is. He is still teaching cello lessons. He is also still doing real estate, but not as much. He is now working for Waddell and Reed as a financial planner (selling life insurance, health insurance, mutual funds, 401Ks, IRAs). The plan was that beginning January 2011 this would be the main job. That is proving to be more difficult that we thought. He has a lot of real estate things that need finishing up (and with commercial real estate that takes months if not years). He will work his way into a groove sooner or later, but for now it seems like a big juggling act.

The point of saying all of that is that he is hosting a "Career Celebration Event." Which is a fancy way of saying a party for friends and family explaining what his new job is about and asking them to refer him to people they know who might need the products he offers. We decided to do a fun photo booth at the event as a little perk for coming. Of course, I can't do that in a dark building without lights, so I used this as a great excuse to buy some soft boxes (which I have wanted to do for a long time).

It was fun to set them all up when they came and play around with them. I still have much to learn, but these fun pictures are the result of the playing. I have wanted to set them up again ever since this night, but it hasn't worked out.