Road Trip

We went to Villisca on Sunday for the Fryer family Christmas (Ray's side). I took these pictures of Parker after we got home. He was eating a lime - he also loves lemons.

It was really sunny as we were driving home and we didn't have any of Chloe's sunglasses in the car so I let her wear mine. She got a pretty good nap in.

Christmas Morning

Family Pictures

This was the picture we used for our Christmas card. If you're thinking, wait a minute, I didn't get a Christmas card... My grand plan was to send electronic cards to everyone that I'm connected to electronically and paper cards to those who I am not. I got the paper cards in the mail but never got around to the e-cards. Maybe next year.

Holiday fun at home

Pictures from the last few days.

Parker is fascinated by the Christmas tree. It looks a little top heavy as we've had to remove most the ornaments from the bottom half of the tree since he likes to run off with them.

This is what Uncle Kim's Christmas present in going in to. Parker enjoyed playing with it first. Thank goodness it held up!

"Go greased lightning you're burnin' up the quarter mile - greased lightning, go greased lightning...."

Not surprisingly, Chloe's favorite nightly activity is opening the Advent Calendar!

School Program

Chloe had her first school program on Monday. Her class performed three songs: The Kwaanza song, We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Jingle Bells (I think). She did great - sang every song and had fun. I'll try to post a video soon.

Berenstain Bears

Our pals the Forals setup the day for us Saturday.  3 tickets to "Berenstain Bears Saves Christmas" at the ROSE (should a play - if you wanna call it that, be underlined?); a babysitter lined up for Parker and chouffer service to the play and dinner afterwards.

I think that we all thought that the play was too long.  The girls like it though and had fun at dinner afterwards.  Although the picutre doesn't show it, we got them colors from the car and they were then happy campers!
We all ended up at the Forals afterwards.  Where the boys decided to sit on my lap.  Hudson did first, then Parker got mad.  I grabbed them both and snapped the pic!

Fork? Who Needs a Stinkin' Fork?

What started out as a really proud moment for me - Parker eating food by himself, with a fork, quickly degenerated into him squishing handfuls of peas through his fingers and making a huge mess. He sure did enjoy himself, and he actually ate some peas!

Yay! He's using a fork.

Giving up on the fork...

Done with the fork. He actually doesn't like his hands to be messy so between handfuls, I had to wipe the slime off so he could go in for another handful.

A messy face does not bother him.

Weeeeeeeeeeeee!

The kids had a blast yesterday. I cleaned off the patio in preparation for winter and brought in their slide. Once Parker saw it he immediatly climbed on!

Chloe showed him the right way to go down, but he wanted to do it his way! Face first and kama-kazi style. Here's the result of one such attempt!

Beautiful November Day

Ray raked up this nice pile of leaves last weekend for the kids to play in. We thought they would have so much fun. Boy, were we wrong!

Chloe had just applied some lip gloss and was so upset because she thought the leaves would mess it up. Here she is puckering up to show Jen (who bought the lipgloss for her) how beautiful her lips are.

 Ray is the only one who enjoyed playing in the leaves.

Not having fun.

Worried about the lip gloss.

Still worried about the lip gloss.

Dance Class

Chloe's dance class had visitor's day so we got to sit in and watch her class dance around. They don't normally let us watch which is a bummer. 

Dad loves the self portraits!

Halloween

Our neighbors, the Shys, hosted the annual J Street Halloween Bash. It was supposed to be at our house this year but Ray was sick all week so we couldn't get the house ready. He is worn out from being sick and I am worn out from being a single parent all week. Parker did not sleep well for me. Ironically he has yet to wake up tonight and I haven't been able to sleep (thus, I'm catching up on my blog at 4 a.m.). At least I'll be able to listen for any Halloween mischief!

Chloe and Nick were recruiting trick-or-treaters after they were done with their rounds. They enjoyed handing out the loot and boy were they generous. Most kids got two handfuls of candy from each of them.


Parker enjoyed getting into the loot. He can't have candy yet but he did slobber on a couple of wrappers.

Chloe had a lot of fun this year. As you can tell, Parker did not like his costume.

Brandon, Nick, Zoe, Hayden, Chloe and Parker (who is trying to escape!).

My little flower.

I love my Tonka!

Parker loves the Tonka dump truck he got for his birthday. In particular, he likes to jump in the back and have Chloe "drive" him around the house. He gets upset when he pushes it and runs into something. When he can't go anywhere, he throws himself on the ground and cries. I shouldn't say this but it's pretty funny.

Parker's First Birthday

Parker turned one on October 12th. He slept through most of his party and when he woke up, he was a little freaked out about all of the commotion in the house. He had lots of help blowing out candles and opening presents.