Nathan has grown a lot in the last couple of months, literally and figuratively. He's grown an inch since halloween and even his nursery leaders have mentioned how tall he's gotten. He's also talking a lot more. The other night while enroute to Grandma Lee Audrey's house, he said " Oh does Grandma's house have an elevator?" He loves wearing his "superhero" costume that I bought for $2 after halloween and chasing us around the house growling. I think he's a "bad" superhero. I can't believe he's going to be 3 at the end of the month!

Lucy is now 9 months, has two toofies, stands, travels, and as demonstrated in this picture, claps! Clapping is one of her favourite things to do. She is such a little doll, is rarely NOT smiling (unless she's getting a tooth, but can you blame her? ouch!) and is so much fun. Her latest trick that she is learning is waving. She has also been standing on her own unassisted for several seconds. Usually as soon as she catches me watching her stand alone, she'll quickly sit down as not to reveal too much about herself. We can't wait to celebrate her first Christmas!

Picking Out Our Christmas Tree!

Ok, please excuse all the collages. but I love these new collage options that Picassa3 offeres. They make them a little more interesing. Anyways we took the kids to a tree farm just a few minutes from our house at the beginning of December to pick out our Christmas tree. It was a new farm to us, and although we missed our Christmas Ranch in Lumby, this one still did the trick. There was lots of snow on the ground, beautiful trees to agonize over, and believe me, Jared and I agonized, and hot chocolate in the workshop when it was all said and done. Little Lucy slept through most of the experience and looked oh so cozy in her little sled.

Our Little Ballerina!

Jorji's First Christmas Performance

Jordan and her little choir from primary performed at the ward creche exhibit a couple of weeks ago. We have a cute little primary which is fantastic because the kids gets lots of opportunity to participate. Those of you that know our little Jorji won't be surprised to hear that she rose the occasion like a rockstar and even brought her mom to tears at one point (or maybe that was just Lucy pulling my hair and the pain of watching Nathan play around all the fragile creches). Nonetheless, a milestone has been reached. She has her school concert this afternoon.

Meanwhile, Nathan has been busy being being a chetah or a tiger or something like that. I bought the kids passes to our indoor playcentre, called Junglemania and on Thursdays they do facepainting. The lady is actually quite incredible at painting the kids faces. The only funny thing is that I'll see her ask a two year old if they want their face painted and then proceed to paint the kids face without asking the mom!! It's quite funny to watch. It's probably not a big deal for most moms, but as you can see it's quite the commitment to get your face painted at Junglemania.

On a thursday morning a couple of weeks ago, I was watching out our bedroom window as the wind blew ferociously. We have this dead Aspen tree (we thought it was a birch until the arborist told us other wise, but only after I said "birch" about 15 times in front of him) in our back yard that we have been carefully watching since discovering it was dead about a month after we moved into the house last April (shouldn't an 80 ft dead tree in the backyard be something that is disclosed??) Anyways, back to that Thursday morning, I was watching the trees sway in the wind and pondering the fate of that big Aspen when all of the sudden it slowly blew over and rested on the trees behind/beside it as seen in the picture. It was amazing to watch! This picture is of Steve, our talented arborist that tackled the project.

A few weeks ago, Em, my dear friend from elementary and high school and i ventured down to kamloops for our other dear friend Alethia's surprise baby shower! I had been at least a a year+ since I had seen Alethia. She and her husband live in Smither, BC which is quite a ways away. It was so fantastic to be able to visit her and her family and catch up. I have the best friends from high school, no matter how much time passes in between visits we are always able to pick up where we left off. Lucy also thorougly enjoyed the shower and enjoyed so much attention because she was the only baby there, but not for long! Good luck Leath, can't wait to talk to you soon!

Last week Grandma and Grandpa King stopped by for a visit. It was great to see them! Grandma decided to bake some bread with the kids, which the kids loved, however, I think about half way through Bernice realized why I don't bake bread with the kids! Breadmaker all the way! But we were so happy with their efforts as Bernice makes the best homemade bread ever.

The monday morning after Halloween, I got a call from "Junglemania," our indoor play centre here in Salmon Arm to notify me that Nathan had won their ghost decorating contest and had won a webkinz! At first when she said Nathan I said "do you mean Jordan?" because Jordan had spent quite a bit of time on it and it was more elaborate but she said "no, I mean Nathan, he won." Oh my gosh, I got off the phone and had to laugh out loud remembering Nathan's ghost and the little face that he had drew on it. When we went to pick it up she said that they just loved how simple it was and thought that the little face was absolutely adorable. And I couldn't agree more. It ended up being a good teaching opportunity as Jordan was not thrilled with the situation but it was allsorted out when Jared came home and her first words as he entered the door after work were "Dad, Nathan won! We need to celebrate Nathan!"