Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas! Even though we had a full week of parties and events and some kind of virus attacking every one in our family, we had a special Christmas. It's so fun as kids get bigger and understand more about the real meaning. We also live in a place where no one else is celebrating Christmas, so we have to try harder to create the spirit in our home. Here are more than a few pics from our week :

Our Christmas card this year. Thanks to Holly Kittle for taking our picture in the summer and for Becky Higgins free card download .
One of our favorite Christmas traditions - the Advent Calendar from Desiring God. My dear friend Erin parted with hers a few years ago so we could have one, and now they don't make it anymore! Luke loves this and almost had the whole story memorized this time.

Singing "Away in a Manger" with other expat kids.

We hosted a huge party on Christmas Eve and we had a blast , although exhausted when it was over! Miss Hollywood decided it was too sunny inside for her.

Christmas Morning! Luke was pretty excited! And plus this year, he can read his name and Olivia's so he was on a mission to give out presents.

The little princess enjoying all her jewelry and crowns and girly stuff from grandparents. She could not be more girly!

Christmas Day - a traditional brunch with friends. I should have taken this picture much earlier because everyone was tired at this point.

Today - the 26th. We stayed at home all day and had a family day. Although Olivia had a fever and was sick, she was still wearing her Cinderella dress.

Luke and Olivia got a tent to play in and some McDonald's toys from grandparents. Luke had a blast being the drive-thru guy in the tent. He's actually asleep in his tent in his room tonight and thinks it's the coolest ever.

And for your viewing pleasure, listen to Luke's rendition of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing"

(This was about the 5th take , so he was getting tired of the camera. But still , you can hear his interesting interpretation of this carol. )

Merry Christmas!!

November Recap

Since I'm not so faithful in posting these days, I have to do a lot of catch up posts. But at least it's something! Life is full right now and often by the end of the day I just want to sleep and not be on the computer! Anyway this is a random post. Here's a bit of a November Recap:

Luke learned how to write his name! He was so thrilled and proud of himself. Sorry for the poor quality picture but I decided not to scan but just to take a quick pic.

Luke also one day started coloring like this. Up until now, he has not cared anything about coloring and just scribbled. But one day (in Luke fashion) he just changed his mind and decided to take it seriously. This picture is on our fridge and he regularly looks at it and says" Mom, I did a great job didn't I ?" Guess he has a high need for verbal affirmation!

This is a scrapbook page I made of Luke hammering outside. He loves Handy Manny cartoons and also is interested in anything to do with tools. While Forrest was putting up plastic on our windows for winter, Luke took the little hammer and went to town. He was so serious about working. He told me "I really need to go fix something."

Olivia just being herself while Luke was busy hammering away.

I'm not sure I'm very good at this digital scrapbooking thing ,but I do like this page! And even though it's trying at times, I am really enjoying Luke at age 4. It's so fun to watch his little mind go and try to figure things out.

Here are some other random things about us right now:

*Luke is doing really well in Russian preschool and loving it. He thinks he's hot stuff for knowing some Russian. Olivia basically repeats everything he says (and we've been told with a good accent!). I guess we won't have to pay for her to go, she can just learn from him! :)

*Luke is really into playing with our neighborhood kids and it's really fun to see him try to talk to them in Russian.

*Olivia is OBSESSED with jewelry, purses, headbands, lipgloss or chapstick, babies, feeding babies, putting babies to bed , etc. Wow. When she was being sassy the other day I said "Olivia , you are not he Mommy. I'm the Mommy. " Then she said, "BUT I'm Baby Ruth's Mommy. I'm a mommy and you are a mommy." (Baby Ruth is her beloved doll). And that girl has some serious emotions. Talk about drama. Luke is basically a copy of Forrest and I'm often told Olivia looks like me. I asked Forrest last night if I'm as emotional as Olivia. He just laughed and said yes. Oh dear !

*And last but definitely not least, I'm ready to say on here , that my belly is growing at a rapid pace. No , I didn't eat too much smoked duck on Thanksgiving, but #3 is on its way! I'm actually already 19 weeks , almost halfway there, due at the end of April. Because of my late miscarriage in March, this has been a different experience for me. But we are so thankful for this new life and gift from the Lord.

Thanksgiving 2010

We had a nice Thanksgiving with a few American friends here. Luke was thrilled as usual to have guests over. For days before he was talking about how much food he was going to eat!

As this year comes to a close, we are thankful that it's ending a lot better than it started! We experienced a lot of loss in the last 1-2yrs and now we are able to experience new life. So thankful for the Lord's faithfulness to us!

When asked Luke said he was thankful that Jesus would come again one day (we had just read that in his Bible) and Olivia said she was thankful God made Mommy. :)

Olivia ready for the party

Last year we had our first smoked turkey and it was so yummy. This year though, we had smoked duck! Long story short, he and a friend found frozen ducks and thought they were turkey. Anyway we still had it and it turned out ok. Olivia kept calling it "ducky" which made it quite unappealing to me.

The kid table