Reid and Stefani Adopt

Here's just a few pictures from Christmas break.  I took the kids to the mall to finish out Christmas shopping on Saturday, December 23rd.  They got to pose by the nutcracker statue.  They've watched the nutcracker every year (on TV--I'm not brave enough to take them to the actual ballet).  We also read the story book from the library this year.   I was excited about Christmas presents this year.  Isaac had been asking for a bow and arrow ever since his birthday, and finally decided to write Santa a letter asking for one the Saturday before Christmas.  Since the letter was so late, we decided to take it to our resident mailman, Al, and he was amazing.  He not only delivered the letter to Santa on time, but he managed to get Santa to return a letter to Isaac and a bonus one to Esther the next day.  It was postmarked with a  very genuine looking North Pole stamp, and had some oats to feed the Reindeer.  So When Isaac opened his present from Santa, he was pretty

Isaac got invited to a birthday party for one of his classmates at a little hidden away gem called "The Pony Express."  They have built this whole little western themed town complete with a pretend stage coach robbery.  They had dress up clothes and real pony rides.  It was super cute.

I just wanted to add a few Christmasy pics that we are starting to take.   Esther at the library next to the Olaf book display. Isaac the Snowman. This was at Lowe's, I think. Our Church Christmas party was Polar Express themed. We had a hard time getting the kids NOT to climb on the display.

Over Thanksgiving we went to Virginia to dine with the Virginia Archibalds.  To open our Turkey Day celebrations, we ran in a race.  This was Isaac's first foot race, and he was very nervous.  He was afraid of me leaving him, so I ran next to him and his cousin Devin for the 1/2 mile race.  It was a good warm up for my race that came later.  This is a picture of the Isaac and his cousins with their participation medals after the race. I was hoping that Reid would run with me since he says he doesn't care about 5K races.  But as soon as the race started, he took off like a rocket and left me in the dust.  I ran a pretty good race for myself, going faster than I had in years, but I couldn't keep up with Reid.  Come to find out he wanted to beat his older brother in the race.  I guess he does care about 5K races after all, if he wants to show up his brother, that is.  By the time the races were over, we were all thoroughly frozen.  The meal and pie warmed us up though

Last month was Esther's 4th Birthday.  We had a pool party at the pool with an Octonauts themed party.  Her favorite present was the hand-me-down Octonauts set from our friends.  She plays with them every day.  For some reason, I can't find any pictures of her actual birthday party.  We also went to Virginia to visit with Reid's brother's family.  Since Esther's actual birthday was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we got her a birthday cookie and went to a trampoline place where the kids could jump to their hearts content. She was also given miniature raccoon toys by her cousins.  She loved them.