12.26.2006

Feliz Navidad!

There's nothing like spending the Holidays surrounded by those you love. Olivia is waking up with her morning joe and some furry friends.Thanks for the bake set grandma!!
Even though our family is very young, traditions have to start somewhere! This year, we invited all the folks from our Spanish ministry over for Christmas dinner. I made a HUGE pot of pozole and bread pudding. Pozole is a Mexican soup that is very simple but comforting and delicious. The soup consists of broth, chicken, and hominy, but then you serve it with shredded lettuce, chopped onion, cilantro, oregano, red chile sauce, avocado, lime, radishes, and tortilla chips. It is a delicious combination of spicy and tangy, hot and cool, and soft and crunchy. The bread pudding was the traditional American touch I had to squeeze in there.
Olivia had fun all day. She was all over the place! People were handing her cookies left and right. When I looked at her chocolate covered face, sticky hair, and stained shirt, I had to laugh because she reminded me of Templeton the rat in Charlottes Web when he went to the fair.

God has given us a tremendous opportunity here in Charleston. We are able to minister to people from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, Columbia, Equador, and Puerto Rico all in this one city in the southeast! Praise His Name!We pulled out Catch Phrase later on that evening. That was interesting! The game is in English, so Alex started off by going around the room and whispering the word in the person's ear in Spanish. After one very unsuccessful and confusing round, we changed the game to where Alex described all the words and the teams got points for each one they guessed. We were all laughing, and I even guessed a few myself :)

12.22.2006

Our Pathetic Attempt at Christmas Pictures

Everything seemed to start out just fine....


Olivia was holding little AJ...

The chair wasn't working, so we decide to move the photo shoot to the floor...

Then Olivia lost her shoe and AJ was removed from the picture for a minute...

When AJ returned, he started crying, and Olivia quickly shoos him off her lap...

Hmmm.. Maybe he should sit next to his sister...

Maybe on the other side....

Maybe we should just try pictures another day!

12.20.2006

Magical Basket

O.K. maybe I am getting a little too transparent with this post, but this cracked me up this morning! I started sorting the clothes out of our laundry basket, and the clothes just kept coming and coming and coming. It was like Mary Poppins' laundry basket!
Laundry is like the big black hole on my to-do list. Have you found any good strategies to keep the piles under control? Perhaps the most obvious one would be to end this post and go throw in another load.

12.18.2006

Li'l Cuties



Olivia loves her new snowman puppet. Thanks aunt Stephanie!

AJ has finally grown into 0-3 month clothes! This is a picture of him wearing his first big boy outfit. Yeah!

12.17.2006

Weekend in Review


This weekend we went to the Holiday Festival of Lights. It was so much fun driving through the park oooooing and aaahhhing over the beautiful light displays around us.
We stopped halfway through the park to ride the carousel. Olivia got to ride the zebra :)
There was also a huge roasting pit where Alex and Olivia "roasted" (burned would probably be the more accurate word to use) marshmallows.

This is a bonus picture for grandma. We received our package of the cookies she makes every year, and I caught Olivia helping herself to a few cooKEYs that I left by the computer. She just sat there so still like "if I don't move then maybe mom won't take my cookie away".

12.14.2006

AJ Visits the Doctor



You'd think that getting 3 shots would be bad enough.....

. . . mom also made me wear my Monkey Sweater!

AJ went for his 2 month check up today. All is well, and he weighed in at a whopping 8lbs. 10 oz. He is such a tiny little guy. The doctor wants to do a weigh in in 2 weeks and then decide if we need to supplement with formula.

12.12.2006

Dad's Day Off

I love this man!

He spent his day off painting Olivia's room and moving the furniture around and around!

Olivia loves riding with daddy when he goes to pick people up for church on Sunday!

Even little AJ already knows that his dad is pretty great!

Seriously!