John is reading!

John has been working on a computer program called Head Sprout Early Reader for about 9 months now. Dave's dad asked us if we would test out this 80 30-minute episode program with him. John loves it and so do we. It challenges him and he has fun too. I love how proud he is and you'll see it in his face at the end of this video. It's taken us this long to get throught the first 45 episodes, hopefully he'll finish all 80 before he graduates.

Grace's Birthday!

Now that we're well into March, here are some pictures from Grace's 2nd birthday. A Sesame Street theme.

My mom made this great pin-the-nose-on-Elmo. We kept this up for a week after the party. I found noses all over the house.

I have such a respect for cake decorators every time I attempt it. Grace recognized Elmo, and that made it worth all the work.

Grace models a princess crown from a new set of dress-up clothes.

and she was also very excited about these big-girl undies.

Thank you dad and Uncle Aaron for taking the time to untangle every wire and tag on these child (and sometimes adult) proof packages. You see Grace waiting very patiently here.

Cake and ice cream. We don't have one of these pictures from her 1st birthday because Grace had a cold for most of February last year. She had such a great time this year and so did we!

Sledding, snowman, ice skating and more!

Olivia and John had the best time last week sledding on the hill behind Centerburg Elementary School (right behind our house). The hill goes from the playground down to the football field. They were able to get that sled to go half way across the field! Grace went down a couple times too. She actually travelled under the other two on the sled and loved ever second of it.

Our first snowman this winter! Notice the four arms and two stick feet. And thank you Papa Humphrey for the perfect hat.

John jammin' in his friend Christian's room last weekend. I know the picture doesn't really fit here, but I thought it was hillarious.

We took the kids ice skating last weekend. Look at her little tiny skates!

Ice Skating at The Chiller in Columbus last weekend.

I think the look on my face says it all.

Dave, John, Aimee and friend Victoria as we moved slowly along the wall together.

Grace surprised us by wanting to skate too. They actually had size 7 skates!

John made it around the rink twice and was satisfied to say that he had learned to ice skate.

I just had a conversation, or rather listened to John have a conversation with me as he lay in bed trying to avoid the final "good night."

"Mommy can we play a game tomorrow? Not a game for little kids. A game for grown-ups. Well, big people...you know grown-ups and 4-year-olds-NOT -1-year-olds. (An obvious stab at his sister.) I know, I know! We could get out all those little things and play with them in the ....oh, no, wait. That will never work. We don't have a big enough tube. Unless...I know! We could use that one, you know that tube I'm thinkin' of. The one we played it with last time. Yeah, that will work. But we don't want Gracie to play with us because she might swallow the little pieces and then she would puke. (Who taught him that word?) And we love her and we don't want her to puke. So mommy can you make sure she doesn't play. Maybe we just wait till she's in bed. I love you mommy! (Great big hug.) Good night mommy."

How does he ever fall asleep this wound up all the time? This entire talk he gave with me just sitting on his bed, smiling at him. I have no idea what game he's talking about, but it seems he wants some one-on-one time with mom.

"This is where we are right now."

My handsome family ready for church. I love this picture!

Here are some pics of the kids in their Christmas outfits (thank you Nana Streby). Our tree this year was very much designed by the kids. We decided not to put ornaments on until Christmas Eve to avoid the obvious issues an almost-2-year-old has with leaving a decorated tree alone. Even without the ormanents the tree was quite flashy. John asked for multi-color lights (Dave and I much prefer white). There were 700 small multi-colored lights plus one strand of much larger LED lights from a wreath we had outside last year. We also put up one large strand of red, green and yellow bubble lights I inherited from my dad because mom was tired of all the color and motion on her tree I'm sure. Actually I love these and the memories they bring back. Another favorite of mine (maybe I'm the cause of this wild tree after all) is the disco style star that graces the top of our tree. I remember this gold frame, rotating shimmer of light on every wall it can reach from my grandparent's trees. Any one of these elements would be beautiful by itself, but together we found they made the tree a bit over the top. The kids, of course, loved it. Dave and I just kept reminding ourselves that "this is where we are right now." Someday I will again have a beautiful white light tree with coordinating and complimentary ornaments. But for now I'm really enjoying hanging construction paper sunday school ornaments at kid level and sharing my memories with the kids as I hang ornaments we've had for years on the upper two feet of branches.

My goal today is to get the Thanksgiving pictures up before Christmas.
Grace is ready for fun in the snow. Where is all the snow this year? She's also wearing her Minnesota Gophers hat for her Uncle Henry.

They were being so sweet with each other.

Papa Streby holding Grace and her cousin Mia Streby (Josh and Elizabeth's). We had a nice Streby Thanksgiving at Jim and Jo's this year. Josh and Elizabeth were in town from Washington. Mia and Grace don't see each other often, but get along so well when they do.

Mia and her daddy, Aimee's cousin Josh.

Humphrey Thanksgiving was at Dan and Barb's. Dave's brothers family's were all here! John and his newest cousin Lydia Jane (Aaron and Danielle's).

Dave plays our niece Ella (Mark and Kim's oldest) like a guitar.

Grace "holding" Lydia with much supervision.

John loves his new cousin. We have a very similar picture of him holding Grace. It doesn't seem like it's been that long.

We celebrated Ella's 3rd birthday with an ice cream cake.

Auntie Danielle holding Grace and her new beautiful girl, Lydia. This was taken after her baby shower. Grace had clothes on when the party started.

Super Dave!

This house is in Coshocton, OH. Dave is planning to spend next week helping a friend out with wrapping and siding it for another friend who is flipping the property. This does not sound like my idea of a vacation, but Dave's looking forward to the challenge and the time out of the office. Of course the skills he learns helping friends have come in handy around our house too. Here are some pictures of our living room floor before, during and after Dave refinished the floors two weeks ago.

This orange/brown carpet was here when we bought the house.

We chose to live with it until our kids were walking well.

Taking out the old carpet and pad.

The oringinal wood floor only goes a bit more than half way across the room because the previous owners did an addition to the house at some point. We were aware of this and planned to put carpet over the subfloor half of the room.

After sanding down to a smooth surface.

Dave and a friend/partner in large home improvement projects, Ross, stain and poly the floor.

Look at that shine!!!

This is the adjoining room the guys did two years ago.

The carpet was installed just a few days later. The kids love having thier side of the room for playing with toys and wrestling and rolling on soft new carpet.

I truly appreciate the carpet installer and his patience with our son. The man was here for two hours and was followed closely by a curious 4 year old the entire time. John knew he could not cross the line into the half of the room where the work was being done so he sat right up next to it or paced back and forth along it while asking "why?", "what's that?", "what were you for Halloween?"

Thank you so much Dave for all the hard work and hours you spend making our home better for our family.