Will you take pictures of me?

My boys ask all the time to have their picture taken. Is that normal? After their most recent questioning, I sent them to daddy for a professional posing session!

Nana's Cookie Day

Yesterday we enjoyed spending the day at Nana's baking cookies, playing games, decorating their Christmas tree, taking lots of posed pictures and eating tons of food! A great way to begin Christmas celebrations...

The anxious (yet patient) cookie decorations.

Can you tell the kids got excited using the sprinkles?

The younger cousins

The older cousins

Poor kids on the chairs - Andy posed them... :)

Old Friends, New Joys

A dear high school friend gave birth to her first, Sophie Louise, last Sunday. They were kind enough to let us ALL come visit on Friday night. Sophie was just precious to hold and snuggle up to! Congratulations Chris and Gabby!

It's snowing!!!

Hard to tell by this picture, but it's flurrying outside! We went out for a little bit and the kids stuck out their tongues to catch flakes... They weren't satisfied though, they wanted to build snowmen....


Josh had his first gymnastics show on Tuesday. He was AWESOME!

Happy Turkey Day everyone! We are so very thankful for all of our friends and family!

Uncle Pete and Aunt Victoria - there's a special message for you at the link below...

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1061167123244&saved

Halloween night.... ooooooooo.....
Grandad, the biker, showed up mid-trick-or-treating to scare the kids! While they weren't very scared, they spent a lot of time trying to figure out who the "wierd man" was.

The painting of our living room is done!!!! And we have Josh to thank for it! Well..... not really. We let him paint in the pantry one evening - and it was just primer, but he had a GREAT time! He looked so cute in his underwear and t-shirt, throwing lumps of white paint onto the wall.

an interesting hamiltopia...

Maddie and Alex had some interesting ideas last Thursday night. Tina had a great time dressing up their ideas. (Alex(ander) - your video wouldn't load... sorry! )

And can you tell that this little girl has two big brothers?

it's the batman theme song if you couldn't tell... :)

The last of them

For the first 6 of our 8 Disney days - without fail - we hit rain. It typically hit in the evening, just before a show would start. We would get drenched and then proceed to run to the vehicle with the kids bunched under umbrellas. We were only able to capture pictures of that happening once - and only half of us were there.

Goofy's Rollercoaster, Josh's new favorite ride. I tried posting a video - but it was too long. Ask to watch if you come over... :)

Waiting in a line with the kids and our final family picture with Mickey!

Promising Dancers

Joe attempting to dance with Chip....... or Dale... and Ryan following the dance leaders instructions!

Tired of VACA pics yet???

So.... I accidentally dropped our camera into the wave pool on Tuesday, destroying everything but the pictures and videos on the memory card... As a result, we had to buy a new camera (quickly) and we now have sound with our videos!!! (We're joining the club Tina!) Look for videos (with sound!!!) later this weekend...

Day 3

The boys in the wave pool. Ryan did a great job diving into the HUGE waves! This was shortly before I dropped the camera... :(

Christine and Josh liked the mini-tube ride.

Free face painting at the Halloween partyDancing with the characters at the party...The kids with Marie (from Aristocats) at Epcot on Wednesday.with Mulan and Mushu

Disney

Our first day at Magic Kingdom!

Don't Uncle Alex and Uncle Tony look so cute on the teacups???
Mohawk boys...
Day 2 at Animal Kingdom

A character breakfast with Donald and friends.

Petting a baby alligator

Josh's eyes...

Vacation Part 1 - TEXAS!

The 24 hour drive to Texas couldn't have gone more smoothly - thank you Lord!!!

The on-site waterpark provided lots of fun for the kids and adults... Pete and Andy ask the crowd who won the water slide race.

Ryan venturing into the "big boy" slides! Christine's only happiness was the lazy river - the one place she didn't have to get wet...

Ryan had TWO hole in ones on his first go-around at mini-golf. A future partner grandad???

Jess and Victoria went horseback riding in a pasture one morning. The paparazzi family followed us around via minivan and snapped far too many pictures... Much to the ladies' happiness, few turned out!

And, of course... pool time! Uncle Pete did a great job of pool entertaining. Below he's letting Josh and Christine push him down, causing lots of giggles. :)


On Wednesday, we drove into Dallas to go to the State Fair and visit with Victoria for one more night. Uncle Pete, Ryan and Big Tex at the state fair...

We leave tomorrow morning for Orlando - the second half of our vacation. The family time has been a real blessing! We look forward to another week of it!