Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas celebrating with our families. We have been very busy with lots of family dinners. Luke was totally into opening presents this year - he always knows when it is his turn to open one. We are truly blessed in this family and are so thankful to the One who has provided us with all the good gifts we have.

Ready to open presents on Christmas Eve

Look what Santa brought!

Playing with cousin Brady

Cousinly Love

Luke with Aunt Ashley & Uncle Kyle

Grandpa Ron, Luke, Grandma Kay, & Brady

Luke with Grandpa Fred & Shelby

Luke's Holiday Program

Today we had the pleasure of seeing Luke in his first program. His class and several others performed 3 songs for us - "Over the River and Through the Woods," "Jingle Bells", and "I'm a Little Snowman". The performance lasted all of about 4 minutes, but it was a pleasure to see. Brandon said we should only be so lucky that every program we go to only lasts that long! After the program, we had a reception in Luke's class. The kids got to unwrap presents that would be for their class, which was lots of fun for them. Each kid also had a special present for their parents - a pair of cut-out mittens with their handprints on them pasted on a big heart. That is something that I will be sure to treasure for a long time. I'm attaching a video of the kids singing "Jingle Bells". I wasn't sitting in a great spot to get great pictures/video, but you can see Luke occasionally singing along. What a blessing to see my child having so much fun!

New Family Traditions

Brandon thought it would be fun to start a family tradition of building a gingerbread house for the holidays. None of us had ever done it before, so it was a new experience for everyone. Thank goodness it wasn't as hard as we thought it might be - we can continue the tradition next year!

Fun in the Snow

As it looks like we might get lots of winter weather this week, I think it is appropriate to show Luke having a great time in the 1/2 inch we received last Tuesday. It's amazing how much fun you can have in so little snow. :)

"Building" the Christmas Tree

Luke & I had a fantastic time "building" (as Luke says) the Christmas tree today. Brandon even helped out too (if you know Brandon, you know he is an advocate of only putting out the Christmas tree every other year, if that!). You might notice in some of the pictures that Luke's shirt appears to be on backwards - it is. He is learning to dress himself & somehow always manages to put his shirt on backwards and then tells us it is "backwards day". Enjoy the pictures.

New Pictures

Luke & I braved the crowds on Wednesday to get his pictures taken. It had been a year, so it needed to be done. After a bad experience trying to get Luke's picture taken when he was two, I always am a little nervous to get it done. Even though we've done it successfully since then, I still have visions of him screaming bloody murder in fear, of what, I'll never know! Thankfully, despite the large volume of interesting people at Portrait Innovations, we had a good time and came away with a picture we were very happy with.

Funnies from Luke

Luke constantly amuses me with the things he thinks of. Earlier this week as he and I were walking Ginger we were talking about the Pledge of Allegiance. Actually, I was trying to get him to recite it for me since I know they say it every day in his class. He wasn't very accommodating, but as I was kind of saying some lines of it to encourage him, he tells me, "I am under God, you are indivisible, Dad is liberty, and Ginger is justice for all." How cute!

Tonight as I was tucking him into bed, we had a fun conversation about dreams. We had just read a story and at the end the teddy bear in the story is asleep in his bed. Well, the bed is on a cloud and there are stars around it. Luke says, "How can that be? That's not right." I said, "Well, the bear is dreaming." Then I try to explain..."you know, when you see pictures in your head while you're sleeping." He gives me this puzzled look and says, "No, mom, you can't take the hair off your head. That would not be good and that would make a mess." I guess he thought you'd have to take your hair off to see the pictures inside your head! Apparently, the topic of dreams is a little too abstract for now.

Count your blessings

Over last weekend, Luke had his first homework assignment from school. We had to find 5 beautiful fall leaves so he could make a "count your blessings" tree at school this week. So, we spent some time Sunday sifting through the mostly brown leaves and found 5 pretty ones to bring. When I arrived to pick Luke up from school Monday afternoon I saw the trees hanging on the bulletin board outside his class. I couldn't resist checking his out before I went into his class to get him. His 5 leaves said he was thankful for: 1. Dad, 2. Mom, 3. school, 4. making spiders at school, and 5. deer. I was like, "deer?" I mean, I know he knows what a deer is, but we don't see a lot of deer and don't talk about deer, so I'm really wondering where that came from. So I ask him about it as we're putting his coat on and gathering his things, and his response is "the deer on the road." I'm still like, "what?" I mean, we see dead deer on the road all the time, but we don't point them out to him or anything. Before we left, another boy in the class comes over to us and tells us about how he saw two dead deer in the road, and I finally had my answer to where the deer came from. I'm guessing that the teacher amended "deer in the road" to just "deer". It is so funny the ideas they come up with. I'm glad he has things he is thankful for.

Halloween Fun

Luke with the pumpkin he got at school. Dad helped him color it.

Trick or Treating with cousin Brady was fun...unfortunately,
we couldn't get them to smile at the same time!

Luke's First Fall Party

Luke celebrated Halloween with his first Fall Party yesterday at his preschool. He loves preschool every day as it is, so to have a party was icing on the cake for him. The preschool had a parade before the party began and the kids all wore their costumes. I had parent-teacher conferences yesterday, so I missed the parade, but my lunch break fell around the time of the party, so I was able to join in for a few minutes and get some pictures. He loves his firefighter costume. Brandon said Luke was the only kid still wearing his costume when he picked Luke up from school yesterday afternoon. He finally convinced him to take it off when they got to the car!




Luke is very excited to do some Trick or Treating tonight. It is his first time doing it and I have to say it is fun to see how excited he is to go. I am glad that we haven't done it before now, because I don't think he would have appreciated what was going on nearly as much as he does now.