The kids wore their Christmassy clothes for church on Sunday and then got to go to the Awana store on Sunday night.



















Monday night was our mad dash to clean and finish our Christmas decorating. It's always interesting cleaning and doing stuff figuring out ways to entertain the kids at the same time. We had to move all the chairs out of the dining room to work on it and we happened across one of our greatest discoveries to date, 'the chair bridge'. Josh entertained himself for hours on this sucker. He would start at one end and walk all the way down and do it again and again and again.

The family Christmas tree (with Boyd's bear angel on top). Josh helping?

Emily continues to practice her balet dances each Wednesday. They have been working on a dance to 'Frosty the Snowman' where they use little black top hats in their routine.

On Thursday Joshua's school had Polar Express, Pizza and Pajama day. He was all decked out in his monkey sock monkey pj's and his elmo slippers.

Joshua has developed and addiction to cinnamon toast. Is it just me or does the aftermath (all of the cinnamon and sugar plastered to his face) bear a strange resemblance to the Joker? Kind of freaky.

Lastly, I have really enjoyed driving Emily to school. It's a special time where we can have Father/Daughter chats. Today we talked about my sticker collection I had as a kid and how I took stickers and placed them in a notebook. I also told her about scratch and sniff ones and she thought that was pretty cool. Then she wanted me to teach her how to whistle so we worked on that for awhile. I told her that I actually knew three whistles. The regular whistle, the Gaddy whistle (Aunt Debby), and the Grandpa whistle (the loud obnoxious one that gets everyone's attention in a crowd). She thought the grandpa whistle was pretty funny.

And for random entertainment value a Joshua video from this morning where he decides to do pantomime and take a vow of silence as I ask him questions:

We had a great couple of weeks with Whitney's parents, Bunny and Ronnie. Bunny did the Texas reading tour as she made four appearances to read including the Woodlands Christian Acadmey Chapel (as seen here where she appeared as Ima Bean), Joshua's Preschool where the kids got to read about An Orange for a Belly Button, StoneBridge MDO, and then she took Emily and all her kindergarten classmates on a bear hunt.

Hanging out near Market Street.

Riding the carrousell with Poppaw (one of life's sweet little pleasures). Nice eyes Emily!

We took the kids to the lighting of the Christmas tree at Market Street and ran into Chris and Dee Howell (Kinsey Howell is chillin' with Emily and Joshua on the blanket).

Emily and Joshua partook of an archaeological dinosaur dig under a cave beside the Blanco river in Wimberley over Thanksgiving and shortly after this dig came across some real dinosaur bones (or maybe a possum but don't tell them).

Climbin' some cool oak trees with brother brad out on my uncle Paul and Mary's property in Wimberley (sometimes if there is a tree you simply need to climb it).

On our last night in Wimberley we sat on the porch, watched the sunset, played some guitar and watched my little girl get extra cozy on the couch next to the heating lamp and gently trail off to sleep. It was one of those kind of sacred moments that God offers you that you can put no price tag on.

We all gathered together for my Grandfather's (Papa John) 80th birthday party.

My Dad and I did some wood working together and built a basic prayer kneeler (it was the perfect excuse for him to step up his woodworking shop a bit).

Santa Josh helping to decorate the tree.

Little Emily the Elf got in on the decorating action as well.

Here's a few snapshots from the last couple of weeks:

Conversation on the way to school with Emily last week: Emily says out of the blue that she now realizes that the Bible is real. Which at first I was like, um yeah, but then I guess, that's kind of a cool moment as she is beginning to see the Bible as unique and different than other stories and fairy tales.

Joshua was excited as last week it was his turn in pre-school to take Maxie the Monkey home. He was so incredibly excited. We also had a special monkey book that came with Maxie that we read a couple of times as well.

Last Friday was Grandparents day at the Christian Academy and it was very special as Poppaw, Grammy and Gigi all were able to be there. They had a special program and then Emily had fun taking us on a tour of her classroom.

Last weekend we took 6 other couples out to Wimberley with us from our Married Life class. It was a great time as we got to drop the kids off with babsitters/grandparents for the weekend and enjoy some great food, fellowship and time to renew our relationship with God.

On Wednesday Emily got to help Daddy teach the all the kids at chapel a new song from our church. She was pretty excited as she pointed out in the car on the way to chapel all the other kids who had gotten to get up on the stage multiple times and she had never had a chance to get up there.Whitney grabbed this video of Emily at Ballet on Wednesday doing her new umbrella dance.

On Monday Emily's school had a storybook parade where they dressed up like a character in one of their favorite books. One of the new favorites for our kids (and for us) is a series of books called 'Skippy Jon Jones' who is a Siamese cat who thinks that he is a Chihuahua. Skippy Jon Jones imagines all of these adventures like going to Egpyt to discover Mummies or going on hunts to discover dinosaurs. The book is crazy to read as it has English, Spanish and my favorite Spanglish interspersed throughout. So Mommy spent hours and hours (till about 1:30 AM) on Sunday night completing the costume. The basic framework was Emily's black cat costume (as you can see the black cat tail), the Whitney converted bunny rabbit ears into Chihuahua ears (painting them black and bending them down). She then untilized a cape Emily had recently got and painted 'El Skipito' on it (one of the titles Skippy takes for himself). So all in all it turned out to be pretty fantastic.

The kindergarten girls sporting their costumes together (Emily, Amelia and Reagan).

Josh's pre-school had their costume parade yesterday and Joshua transformed into the legendary 'Buzz Lightyear'. Mother Goose happened to stop by as well and read some nursery rhymes to the kids. Josh, I mean Buzz, is seen here posing with Mother Goose.

Joshua, like many kids his age, has now hit the 'fake smile' stage. He has developed his own unique brand of fake smiling we now affectionately call the 'Chipmunk' as you can see by this picture here.

Well when we got home from church our kids were excited and wired and they set up an interesting stage out of our kitchen table chairs and gave us a little concert where they sang a new song from church. They are currently studying about Joshua right now and the battle of Jericho.

Emily took a moment to share her memory verse from school.

Last Thursday was 'wear your favorite sports' gear day at Joshua's pre-school so Whitney went with the casual/spring ivy league look. He is 2/3 Georgia Tech (hat and sweatshirt wrapped around his neck) and 1/3 Texas A&M (as prominently displayed on his shirt).

Thursday was also 'Doughnuts with Dad' day even though my son claims he does not like doughnuts (he also does not like ice cream but he does like the cone so when we have ice cream he sometimes will simply eat the cone by itself - yeah I have no idea where that comes from). So being the good Dad I am, I ate my share of doughnuts as well as his and Joshua enjoyed a Capri Sun or as he says it a 'Pree Sun'.

Sunday night was 'Crazy hat' night at Awanas. Emily wore her 'Tsi Yang Yang' (Happy Lamb) hat from China with random small stuffed animals pinned to it and Joshua sporting a funky ski hat (because we had a Texas cold front as it got like in the low 70's)

One of the songs I've been singing at chapel with the kids is 'Every Move I Make'. From the first moment I started singing it, Joshua latched on to it. Then the other day Josh found an old worship CD that had the song on it. So now one of his favorite things to do is put the CD in and get his jam on as seen in the video above.
Emily has been thoroughly enjoying her music class with Ms Casey. This is one of the songs she has been learning from the Sound of Music.
The kids often enjoy a good biblical discussion. Here Joshua is attempting to describe the time when Jesus and His 'siples' fed the 5000 although according to him it was even a more fantastic miracle because Jesus fed a million people that day. Even though sister chimes in and tries to convince brother that it was actually 50000.

Lastly, one of Emily's favorite things to do lately has been writing and illustrating books. Basically the process works like this: Emily comes up to Daddy or Mommy and indicates she wants to write a book. She then tells us how many pages her new book will be and we grab the appropriate number and staple them together. Next Emily goes through and completely illustrates the book. Then she explains the title and script for each page as the plot unfolds. So far I think she has written 5 books. Some of the books she has written are Emily's Birthday, Emily's new job, Emily's present, etc. We have been quite amazed that her illustrations convey so much emotion with facial expressions changing from mad to sad to happy. Also, she draws her little dogs in each picture and they will change emotions at times. There was one book where she was taking out some trash and she drew in the cartoon 'stink squiggly lines' going up from the trash bag to indicate 'stinkage.' I'm not really sure where she learned to do that.