My New Years Resolution is actually mention my kids in our Christmas newsletter this next year.
Well, Alex warranted a mention, with him being in a hospital and all but it wasn't until after I had printed them all and addressed half of them that I realized I hadn't mentioned Will at all! Whoops! Sorry about that boys! I won't be expecting that Mother of the Year Award anytime soon!
We hope you all had a great & Merry Christmas. Our was nice and low key. Considering we'd been celebrating it on and off since Thanksgiving, it was a nice culmination of all the celebrations (Christmas #4!).
This year Will got into Santa. Last year we didn't really do anything with Santa, just started telling him about this guy in a red suit so when people asked him "What's Santa bringing you?" he'd have an idea of what they were talking about. (He still didn't.) This year I told him Santa fills the stockings for us with presents. And we leave him cookies & milk and carrots for the reindeer.
So, Monday night, after the Christmas Eve service, Will and I iced the cupcakes we made to celebrate Baby Jesus' birthday. We decided to share one with Santa. (You don't think Jesus minds, do you?) We gave Santa some milk and put carrots out for the reindeer. Will was very excited!
The next morning I woke up to hearing him say by my side of the bed. "MOMMY! Santa came and ate the cupcake and drank the milk and he filled our stockings! And the raindeer ate the carrots!" He was so excited, I have to admit it was cute and I'm glad we did it. He and I went and we opened our stockings while James and Alex slept. We played with things he got, ate chocolate and FINALLY, at 8, we woke them up so we could open gifts. 
Both boys got various cars and trucks and airplanes and helicopters. Alex got a big ladder fire truck from Great-Grandpa Harbin that is popular with both boys. He also got his own "race car driver" semi-truck. (Will got a Jimmy Johnson semi-truck earlier and it was causing some problems with sharing. Now they have the semi trucks race. For those who care, Alex ended up with #12, Ryan Newman because it was the only one left at the store). Will got a remote control digger and LOTS of games. He's been playing Sorry, Go Fish!, and dominoes 
with James and I over the last few days. He is just like his Harbin & Miles family members, a game lover! Not that we're doing anything to discourage it!
My favorite gift had to be this cool thing I didn't even know existed! It's a device you can hook up to your computer and then it'll play the music on your computer through your radios in the house. So I can listen to the cds I've stored on the computer, or songs I've downloaded, or (mainly) to internet music sites and hear it in the kitchen and the rest of the house (instead of blasting the music from the corner of the living room). It's been great! I loved my Finetune.com Christmas mix I'd made, but was sad I couldn't listen to it far from the computer. Now I can play all the different types of mixes (and have made a few more). James got boring gifts like a Colts fleece and a book. But seeing as he put the fleece on that day, he seems to have liked it.
With it just being the 4 of us, lunch was pretty simple. (I didn't want to do all the work to do a feast the boys wouldn't eat anyway!) That afternoon, everyone but Will took naps. It was warm enough we went for a nice walk after that. We found out it was the warmest Christmas (in the mid-40s) in a number of years, so I'm glad we got to enjoy it.
Wednesday was even warmer so we spent more time outside, walking and throwing rocks in the near-by partly frozen pond. The last two days have been cold and rainy so we've stayed inside more and had fun with the toys. Thank you everyone for helping make all our Christmas celebrations so nice!
Last weekend we went to St. Louis for the wedding of James' brother Teri & his new bride Rachel.
We stayed in The Water Tower Inn (a hotel we do NOT recommend, but I won't go into that). The one nice thing about the hotel (a hospital that closed down about 15 years ago and then was turned into a hotel–yes, parts still had that hospital smell) was where the nurses stations had been were now large open lobbies so we could hang out with the rest of the family very easily. (It would have been easier if we were on the same floor as everyone else, but as I said, I won't go into that here!). Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I thought I'd just share some.
First, another one of James' brothers (Karl) officially announced his engagement to Cori. (We knew the wedding date, but now there's a ring to make it offical).
First, here are pictures of things that happened during the wedding, from our prespective (which was Row 3, with all our kids…we thought that might be funny…probably wasn't, but they–thankfully–didn't notice all that was happening so I had to document it). There are the silly ones as well as some nice ones from before the wedding. You'll need to click on the picture to see all the pictures.
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| What Happened During the Wedding, From Our Prespective |
Here are a few of my favorites from the reception:
That night we hung out, ate pizza, played games and were social. Here are a few more pictures of that:
Sunday, everyone left. We had a lunch date with my sister, so to kill some time, we went to the zoo (it's free!). It was really cold out! But the different buildings were heated. So we warmed up between quick walks. It was perfect weather for the penguins & bears. Then we had a nice lunch with Heidi. We went back to her apartment and had Christmas #3! Then we headed home.
Today I was washing dishes and I realized Alex was no longer playing in the kitchen. Nor was he making noise. (A quiet Alex = BAD…the last time that happened I discovered he'd climbed up the desk chair to find a red sharpie and had colored on some paper and the couch. By the way, if any one has a couch they'd like to get rid of, we're in the market for a couch but have no money for one, so we'd take it for you! 
)
Anyway, I went looking for Alex and found him like this:
He was pointing to the letters in the book. (He doesn't know letters yet, the title is a joke, he was just seeing them, pointing and saying "I", "E" and a few other favorites). The book? Michael Criichton's Next. He now calls it "my book". When he closed it, he said "The End" and snuggled up with his blanket.
As much trouble he can be, I think we'll keep him! 
Will discovered our dress up box. It's a box I've thrown different types of clothes in, most in the thought if we ever had a girl, she would enjoy it. What was I thinking?!? Boys like to dress up too!
That first one? I can't believe it was a prom dress I wore! Mainly because I fit in it at one time, and now it zips up around Will with not much extra room.. Second one is a football jersy from where I used to teach. I have to admit I added the pink scarf for an accent touch.
Alex just walked up to me and said "I get boop boop" and pointing to his cheek. It took me a moment to realize he was meaning "Boo-boo". I gave him a kiss on his cheek and he was all better.
It's been fun to see his verbal skills grow, to the point where he can ask "Wha Daddy doin'?" or "Eat sausage I get cookie?" (that was during dinner–the number of Christmas cookies we have has allowed boys to get desserts after dinner…something we don't normally do. But it has added an incentive to eat a bit more!) or my favorite, "I wuv you!".
The new game invented by the boys is called Crash. Where they run around and crash into each other. Yeah, we have great entertainment here!
Saturday (inspite of the impending snow storm) my parents came down to celebrate another early Christmas with us. We exchaged a few gifts, had fun eating pizza, and decorated Christmas cookies. Oh, the Christmas cookies!!! Those stuipd things! Growing up every year we would make sugar cookies and decorate them with my dad. My mom always HATED doing them. I'm beginning to understand why!
We made the cookies last Thursday. That in itself was an adventure. Alex is now at the age where he wants to help. But he's not so helpful! He had fun playing with a bowl of oats. Will started helping me but began to have more fun playing with Alex. I took advantage of that to get them mixed up. Then we let the dough chill all afternoon. (This picture was supposed to be showing the messy faces from licking the beaters.
That evening we rolled them out, cut and baked them. We started with Alex awake and that was really difficult, so he got put to bed and then it was a nice time with Will. We were going to ice them Friday but we had our adventure at Conner Prairie instead. So we waited for Grandpa to help us. Then we got to enjoy a few!
The boys enjoyed the gifts they got–one thing they each got was pair of Monster trucks and those have been THE toy to play with right now. It's been nice to have a few new toys, made missing church and preschool the next few days a bit easier. Maybe this spreading Christmas out over a moth is a good thing! I'll put up a picture of them in their pjs soon Mom!
I'm taking a break from Family Calendar Making & Christmas Card Addressing (they aren't mailed yet…but we're getting closer! Of course, if you read this, you probably don't need the card because it's all review, but we are thinking of people!) to share a few quips of the day.
Will came running in from the garage and I said "WAIT! Close the door!"
He said "So the skunks can't see us?" (Um, we do NOT have skunks in our garage!)
I had to reply "That and I don't want you letting the cold air in."
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We were playing a Twister-like game. The combination that came up was a bit tricky and I heard Will say (in a tone that matched me EXACTLY) "That's not going to happen!"
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I have had so many things I've wanted to share–just no time. So, as a lame attempt to update you on a bit, here are some picture of a wonderful opptertunity we had last Friday. Someone in our church works at Conner Prairie and we got a general email inviting anyone would could come with kids 2-10 to come Friday afternoon for a photo shoot. We got in free and just had to play while they took pictures. Since I'm all about the free, we went and had a fun time. Here are the pictures I took while we were there. (Click on the picture to see many more.)
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| Conner Prairie |
As we read the Christmas story, Alex sees a baby, points, and says "Baby Jesus!"
As we play with our Nativity set, Alex sees a baby, points, and says "Baby Jesus!"
At the store, Alex sees a baby, points, and says "Baby Jesus!"
