Christmas Whirlwind!

We've had a great Christmas 2009 and New Year 2010... below are some of the 222 pictures I just spent 40 minutes uploading to the computer!

We started our celebration with the neighborhood "gang" - we had a donut party at the Rhea's and followed it up with the kids' Christmas exchange. Tara Rhea watches the kids during the day and she had them perform some Christmas Carols they had been working on. It was cute. The parents also got some "works of art" from our kids that will, of course, be cherished for many Christmases to come.

Kids singing with Tara - I think Noah was pouting and not singing, so just Izzy, Leo, Tara, and Nicholas are shown here.

Here are the kids using water bottles to punch out the middle of their donuts - Brian then fried them in oil on the stove... they were extra yummy!!

Our next celebration was our annual Christmas Eve with the Goods. Izzy, Gran and Mommy embarked on our first gingerbread house decorating mission... we learned many things and are now prepared for next year! Here is our creation... it is a "church" made of gingerbread.

The biggest hits of the night were Maddy's shape sorter and Izzy's marble maze... I think this may actually be a bigger hit with Izzy's daddy, but she loves it, too. We've spent many hours playing with it already!

Maddy and Gran figuring out where things go...

Grampy and Izzy watching the marble travel through their first creation!

Christmas morning, the girls found their gifts from Santa in personalized bags by the fireplace! We're so happy that Santa was thinking of the mess of toys in our living room and how we could best organize them in the coming year! :-)

Then, we spent a fun Christmas day with the Fry family at Grandma's house in Greenville. It was so nice to have everyone together and be able to spend a nice relaxing day together.

Izzy and Leah are really at good ages to play together and they spent hours dressing up with Izzy's fairy and princess dress up clothes. Colleen even helped Maddy get in on the action - this is her new face that has emerged in the last couple weeks... she thinks the crown is hilarious!

Izzy and Leah also spent quite a while cutting and taping and coloring at Grandma's bar. (This is what they did while Tammie and I watched the new Tinkerbell movie... ha! They were too tired to sit through it at that point, I think!) Apparently post-its and scotch tape are quite fun, though!

Following our visit in Darke County, we headed north to Van Wert for a day at my Grandparents' house and a quick visit with Josh and Laura Gross, who were in town from Florida. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures from either of those visits... hopefully we'll remember to take more next year!

We rang in the new year back at home with our neighbors, the Holland family. After getting the kids to bed, we tested out our new Wii Sports Resort, which was a lot of fun. It's probably best that we didn't have any pictures from that event!

Family and friends joined us New Year's day for a "lucky" meal of pork, potatoes and sauerkraut, accompanied by a big Buckeye Win!

The Frys had a great holiday and are so looking forward to what the new year will bring our way!

Santa!

We had cancelled our trip to Santa last weekend because both girls were sick and snotty... so, we got to do it this weekend, finally! Maddy looked a little unsure, but at least she wasn't crying or fighting to get down. Izzy did a great job and suddenly decided that she wants a Barbie... too bad Santa didn't know about that sooner! She's been saying she wants a jewelry set for weeks. She did mention that to Santa, too, but only after saying she wants a Barbie. Ha!

Winter Family Photos...

In mid-November, we did our annual "photo shoot." With Maddy on the move, I wasn't sure how things would go, but we were able to get a lot of good shots. The photographer changed the background and things went quickly down hill after that, but here are some of the good ones we got with the Christmas background.

Time for Catching up!

Oh, my! It's been way too long... and many of you have pointed that out to me recently! So, I'm going to try to do a quick catch-up.

For most of the month of October, the princess tent was in our living room and the girls loved playing in it. Izzy seems really happy that Maddy is starting to get old enough to actually "play" with her sometimes.

Izzy dressed up like Violet Incredible for halloween, but wouldn't leave her mask on - you get the idea, though. The kids were all pretty squirly, so good pictures from Trick-or-Treat are scarce! Maddy wore Izzy's silver leopard outfit, which was cute, too! She learned that she likes M&M's on Halloween... but who doesn't, right?! :-)

Maddy celebrated her first birthday on Nov. 1st! She loved her cake and was really interested in the big kids bobbing for apples. She even made quite a dent in her own apple - she's got all of her 1-year teeth, so she can eat just about anything she wants these days. The weather was mild, so we were able to play outside quite a bit.

10 months!

The same day Izzy started preschool, Maddy turned 10 months old! It seems absurd that her first birthday is already right around the corner! She is doing great - she has even taken some steps on her own, only about 3 or 4 at a time, but it's clear she's getting braver.
In honor of the first Buckeye game of the season, she sported her first "pigtails" or "horns" as daddy called them! In any event, they were stinkin' cute! :-)

Preschool at Daniel Wright Elementary

Izzy has started the preschool program at Daniel Wright Elementary in Dublin! What a big girl! She has only had one week so far, but she loves it. She was very sad that she didn't get to go to school today because of the holiday! She entered the program as one of 4 "typically developing peers" in a group of 12 kids. The other 8 have some type of disability or set back. Most are pretty mild, like hearing, speech, etc. with only one obviously physically disabled child in the class. Her friend, Nicholas Rhea, is also in the peer group. They are doing great so far! They look like such big kids... it seems like just yesterday our little ones were just learning to talk! Time flies!

Izzy had to get a picture with her sister on her first day of school...

Finally!

Finally! We have figured out the technical problems with downloading pictures... well, not really figured it out, but figured out how to maneuver around the issue. Anyway... a short recap of July and August:

Grandma brought Tammie and Chris and the kids to Columbus for a trip to the zoo - that's Brett's brother and sister-in-law and their kids Nathan and Leah. We had great fun! And, we even got to see an "Animal Encounter" with one of the female tigers.

We visited Greenville for Chris' 40th birthday party, went to one of Nathan's baseball games, and saw Tiffany and Jeremy Fine and their girls, Tessa and Addison. They also came to Columbus to the zoo (It was Buckeye day)! We learned a new trick from them - making a single stroller do double duty!

Izzy started ballet class over the summer and loves it! She's in the fall class, which will last until a recital in the spring. She's got a much larger class now, which is taking some time to adjust to, but she still enjoys seeing Miss Meredith each week.