Update

Josh has been so cute lately and is actually smiling for the camera. Here are a couple of pictures I have taken in the last couple of weeks.

I am really excited about this picture -- Josh puts his reading books up on the piano and then "plays" from them. Hopefully he will learn to love playing the piano as much as Brandon and I do.

My mom let us borrow this horse that my brothers played with growing up. Josh can now get on and off all by himself (although it is really SCARY!).

I thought I better get an updated picture with Josh in his new snow clothes (snow pants, gloves, boots, the works). He had a much warmer snow experience.

Christmas Cards

This year I decided to make my Christmas cards. I worked on them from the beginning of October until I finally finished/mailed them the week before Christmas. That is almost 3 months of making Christmas cards and I LOVED IT! Here is a sample of a few of the cards that I made.

Snow!!

Monday night we went out to watch/help Brandon put some Christmas lights on our house. Josh was as bundled up as we had supplies for -- a jacket and coat, thin adult gloves, and rain-type boots. He loved walking in the snow and we stayed outside for a good hour. (Of course the sun was down so in all reality it was absolutely freezing.)


I got too cold and had to go inside but Brandon played with Josh in the snow (I think this involved walking around the yard some more). In talking to my mom, who provided the boots, I found out that they are supposed to be worn over shoes. Josh just had socks on inside them. His hands and feet were FREEZING by the time he came inside.

We'll work on upgrading the snow clothes for future snow outings. Hopefully then we can have fun and stay warm!!

Crazy Boy

I started teaching piano and violin this fall. When my students come I let Josh know that I am going to teach a lesson and he needs to go play in his room. Josh now likes to put books on the stand and say "lesson". Then he leads the "music" or turns the pages to new "songs". What a funny boy.

Josh absolutely loves his daddy. He also loves to crawl in the smallest spaces he can find and invites everyone else ("By Josh?") to do so as well. This was daddy sitting by Josh reading books. I wasn't about to crawl back there.

Josh likes when he gets to play with Grandpa. They are making music/messes with empty perscription bottles. Safe? We'd like to hope so. He had a good time anyway.

And this picture is the reason that I titled this post crazy boy. What other kid tries to stick to cups in his mouth at the same time to take a drink? "Look ma, no hands!" Josh really is a crazy boy!

Halloween

I recognize that Halloween was almost two weeks ago but I am still posting our pictures. Brandon and I carved these pumpkins for him to take to his work pumpkin carving contest. My 'wicked' pumpkin even won a prize!!

Josh was the cutest lion for Halloween. We went trick-or-treating to Brandon's work and Josh quickly caught on to "trick-or-treat", take a piece of candy, say "thank you" and move on to the next office. He brought in quite a load of candy.

Brandon's work really gets in to Halloween. He wore his crazy witch doctor costume to work all day and then to the party we went to that night. Talk about uncomfortable. Here is our family picture at Jenny's Halloween party.

We're Having a Baby!!

We are having another baby in March of next year. Today we went in for our 20 week ultrasound. Everything was really hard to see on the ultrasound but as far as the tech could tell we are having another boy. (I guess we'll know for sure in a few months, right?) If it is a boy we already have all we'll need since Josh was born at the end of February two years ago. If it turns out to be a girl -- we'll go shopping!

This was probably the best shot that we got from the ultrasound...a good profile of the baby's face.

We have a little bit of work to do to get ready for the baby. We are going to finish one of the rooms downstairs to the point of mud/texture. We'll move the office down there and then the kids will have separate rooms (none of this waking each other up all night long). Everything is going well and the baby looks good so far. We're looking forward to having another little boy around!

Putting in the Yard

I am finally taking the time to share some pictures of us putting in the yard. It was a lot of work but anyone who has done a yard knows that. We got the grass planted right before the weather turned really cold so we'll have to see if it grows or if we replant in the spring.

The first picture is of Josh being cute. He loves to climb on the chairs at sit like a he's a big boy. He is growing up pretty fast.

Brandon and Josh spent many nights out picking rocks while I was pulling the HUGE weeds between our yard and the neighbor's. Josh was pretty good at filling the wheel barrel with dirt.

Brandon's dad was a huge help in leveling out and grading the yard. He was here many days/nights working on the tractor or 4-wheeler to get everything ready for planting grass. Josh really liked to ride on the tractor with (or without) Grandpa.

We had curbing put in around the house. Then we mixed in compost (thanks for the free compost Dad) and covered the flower beds with landscape fabric (thanks Lynne and Jess for all of your hard work). Hopefully the fabric will keep the weeds and the newly planted grass out!

We only have one flowerbed in the yard. I think it will be lovely once we get some trees planted in it.

We actually finished the flowerbeds and planted grass the weekend of September 26th (it takes me forever to post about things). Even though we have had some pretty cold weather, when we look closely we can actually see blades of grass! Hopefully it will keep coming in and look good this spring.