HO HO HO, Santa is in town

This Saturday we made our annual trip to the Hooksett library to see Santa. The kids had a great time and got to make some crafts as well.Emma is never sure when it comes to big things that are dressed up. Actually she is afraid of bunnies so it has nothing to do with big people.

Sam

Nate
Emma

She didn't cry this year as she did last year however she did keep some distance between herself and Santa.

Most Santas I know about come in sleigh. Ours come by pickup truck.

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X-mas cards

As you can see in the picture I got some of our 101 card out this weekend. To be exact it was 67 that I fit into our mail box. The rest will have to wait until Monday since I ran out of stamps. I am sure our mailman loves me by now (should we get him something for X-mas?). I cannot wait to see some more of yours in our mailbox soon :)

Birthday Boy Nate

Happy Birthday NATE!!!

Nate officially turned 6 and he made sure we didn't forget. He was jumping around all day long and singing that he is now 6 years old. We cannot believe our eyes when we see how much he has grown since he was born on a Friday night 6 years ago. I made him a little cake just for our family and as you can see I ran out of food coloring except for green (he didn't care and said that he liked it).
I believe Fil is fulfilling his childhood dreams and wishes by the gifts he buys for the boys. Nate got a roller coaster. I thought I couldn't move around in their room before. Now there is no room for sure.
They love it and they are now waiting for uncle Vit to help them build the loop.

Many Faces

It is always fun to take pictures of your kids right? This is true until you try to take pictures for your Christmas card. Here you can see how much fun we had. I ended up taking too many pictures. Don't you think they all turned out great? Anyway I did manage to get few good ones and the Christmas card is done. I just have to go pick the cards up this afternoon and finish the letter to go with it (Dad's job). I was busy last night writing addresses until I ran out of envelopes. We are easily going to send close to a hundred cards this year so I better finish soon in order to mail them on time.

SAM
I am glad I did this a few day ago since Sam got a big scratch on his face from playing outside yesterday.

NATE
I took the least amount of pictures of Nate. He doesn't enjoy it and lets face it he just doesn't like to pose for the camera.
EMMA
That girl will pose in her sleep. She is a cutie and I got tons of pictures of her. As you can see she got silly at the end when she saw her brothers.

Goodbye Grandma

I am writing this blog entry a few days late but I wanted to post a few more pictures from last weekend. It was a little bit crazy in our household. On Sunday night we said goodbye to grandma who stayed with us for the entire month of November. It went by so fast I cannot believe she is gone already. We had a great time together and I cannot thank her enough for all her help. We did some cooking and baking to fill my freezer so I will not have too cook for a whole month after we come back from Ethiopia. I still have to add a few things and then I will take a picture of my full freezer. Grandma also enjoyed our busy kids and I am sure she has many stories to share. Since we got to celebrate Sam's birthday with grandma in November we took Nate out a week early to the Rainforest Cafe to celebrate his birthday with grandma before she left.
Our birthday boy. Looks good? It was very good.
Here is grandma and Fil enjoying rack of ribs (I am not rib kind of girl).

Snow on Monday

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!We all have been looking forward to the first big snow storm of the season. First we were glad that Fil's mom's flight left on Sunday night before the storm and that Penelope made it home without getting stuck. When we woke up on Monday all we saw was white. We all were very excited especially Fil. Since it snowed Fil didn't go into the office and worked from home. The boys first did school. Since we home school they don't get a snow day. However, they were done by 10am and then spent the rest of the day outside. They came back inside briefly for lunch and then went back out until around 4pm when it started to get dark. Most of the neighborhood kids were outside busy sledding down a hill across multiple front yards and building luge track. There were also a few snowball fights. I am surprised that they did not freeze. They had a great day outdoors.
Even Emma enjoyed the snow. First she complained about her boots. However, after she figured out how to walk in them she was fine.

Sam going down the hill.
Sam with Abby across the street.
Emma was the only one willing to pose for me. Everyone else was to busy to stop.

We even got Sam's new bibs and his winter jacket in time for the storm. Hopefully we will get some more soon. I will have to ask Fil, my personal weather man.

Sunday

Lord Christ, we confess our willingness to be loved but also our reluctance to love. We confess our readiness to accept your forgiving love but also our refusal to forgive. We confess our eagerness to grasp your offer of redeeming love but also our resistance to follow you without question. In this Advent time, forgive us our failure to respond as we should. Come to us anew, and by your grace, assist us to receive you with joy, as the shepherds; with gratitude, as Simeon; with obedience, as Mary; with love, as you have loved us. Even so: come, Lord Jesus.

Guess Who?

Do any of you recognize this person with us? Yep that is Penelope Carpenter or Mrs. Carpenter to our kids. She came up to visit her friend in Boston and ended up spending few night with us and we spent our entire Saturday with her. Most of you from our adoption agency Yahoo Group know who Penelope is and some of you know her from her blog. We first started getting to know the Carpenters online back in January and have stayed in contact pretty much ever since then. It was a great treat to finally meet her this weekend and we had a great time together. We're sorry that we missed Gabe (her husband) who was busy working on his farm but we hope we will get to meet him someday as well. Since it was very cold and windy in New England this weekend we decided to go to Ikea instead of browsing through the streets of Boston. We also met Penelope's friend in Boston and we all went out to an Ethiopian restaurant. There are 3 in Boston and we choose this one because we liked the menu prices online and they did have kids menu. I am not going to post the web site since the online menu was different so were the prices (and no kids menu). However, after we sat down and said grace my two boys just digged in and they LOVED Ethiopian cuisine.
We got a little bit of everything and we liked it all.
Here are the boys standing up and eating.
Emma enjoyed mainly injera which is Ethiopian version of bread (we all like it).

Both nights I stayed up with Penelope gabbing until at least 1 in the morning and I am going to pay for it the next few days. We had a great time and we hope we will get to do this again. Thank you Penelope for the visit. We can not wait to hear the good news on Friday.