A Real Princess

Karley has been into wearing princess dresses lately, but NOT just ONE but 2-3 at once. She wore this outfit for about 3 days straight (changing her clothes underneath the layers of dresses only) including sleeping in them. She would alternate what dress would go on top sometimes.

Here is Princess Karley sleeping with her princess crown and gloves.

Also notice the shoes... during the night they fell off once in the night and she called me in to put them back on!

Night time reading lights...

For Christmas Connor, Emma, and Josie got a reading night light from Santa. Who knew how well the kids would like them and use them!! There really is no more getting out of bed once they are in bed because they are either reading, drawing, playing, etc.

Connor and Karley using the light to draw and color before settling down for bed. Connor clipped it to the top of the bunk bed to share the light with Karley!

Josie (hiding from the camera) using her light to read herself a book.

Emma working on her book she is putting together. She received a kit for creating her own books. Lately, she has also enjoyed reading her books.

Tessa just enjoys sleeping while Connor or Josie (when switching beds) use their lights. The kids did find that Tessa does enjoy having a light attached to her car seat in the van when we are driving at night and she starts to get fussy.

Family Band

The kids have really been progressing well with their piano lessons. Since learning and memorizing some Christmas songs, they have been just sitting at the piano playing their songs. This has even continued after Christmas. On this night, they decided to put a band together. One would play the piano ( a song they knew), someone else would play the horn, the other the guitar and once in awhile someone would had some drums. After their song was over, they would all rotate positions and start a new song! I enjoyed listening to their music!

Connor helping Josie with a couple of notes on her song! He likes being able to help her out with her music.

Tom and Jerry

One of the kids favorite cartoon is Tom and Jerry. I remember watching it when I was younger so it's fun to see them enjoying it so much. Besides watching it, they also like to play it. They give everyone a character name; even as they are watching it they'll say, "That's you Mom, and that's Connor", etc. Today the girls were playing Tom and Jerry: Emma was Tom and Josie was Jerry (Karley was a visiting mouse.)

This is Jerry's house. The hula- hoop is Jerry's hole in the wall that he runs in and out of.

"Jerry" running out of his hole trying to get past Tom. "Tom" (Emma) got away before I could get a picture of him.

My...

Karley has grown up so much over the last year and brings much laughter to our family as our soon to be 3 year old!

Her lasted saying is... " My brother Connor"...."My sister Emma"....."My sister Josie".... "My sister Tessa."

She says this whenever she is referring to one of her siblings. (It's cute the way she says it, what she says with it and the face expressions she makes.) She also likes to give each one of them a hug and kiss before leaving for Becky's in the morning.

Our Flower Child...

Tessa was hanging out with girls in their room the other day and Emma called me in. She was showing me how she turned Tessa into a flower! She took Josie's pink blanket and wrapped it around as shown below and then took her green blanket and wrapped it around the lower part of her body for the stem and when she moved her hands or kicked her legs she then had petals!

Icicles

One fun part of winter for the kids is finding the HUGE icicles that hang down from buildings. They also like to break them off and suck on them! Yum!? Here are Sam, Carter, Max and Connor showing off their icicles!

First Snowman

Josie was so proud of her snowman that she built by herself with just a little help by me.

Bringing in the New Year!!

We celebrated the end of 2010 and welcomed 2011 by having a family game night and invited Grandma and Grandpa Berning over to join us. Grandma brought over some lemonade and popcorn to help with the celebration and we add some chips and salsa and some adult beverages. Terry was keeping all of our glasses filled with aged wine and mixed drinks. We played some wild games of: Go Fish, Old Maid, Sequence for Kids, Sorry and Crazy Eight! Grandpa and Josie won most of the games! Then the kids got to watch a show while Dad and I took on Terry and Mom in Spades. The game was going back and forth for a while and Terry and Mom came out the winners!! It was a fun filled night!

The Happy Winners!

Tessa checking out Grandma's hand for Old Maid and Connor with his "game" face on!