Well, again, I am behind on updating the blog. (frowny face) Oh, shucky darn! I had several videos to share but I'm not having luck getting them to load so I may have to send another link soon. To get started, on November 6th, Grace lost her 3rd tooth and on November 22nd, right after Thanksgiving dinner, she lost her 4th!
For Thanksgiving dinner, Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Mikey and his girlfriend Ashley came to visit. Grace wrote and read a note before we started eating. "Today, I am thankful that we are all together for Thanksgiving. I'm thankful we have healthy food to eat. I'm thankful for my family and friends." It was really sweet and I was proud of her for being brave. Here is the note that Grace left for the Tooth Fairy after losing her 4th tooth. It was all her idea and just is so sweet! Luckily we had some cookie sprinkles to leave. Wish everybody could've seen her face when she woke up!
Grace's new jack-o-lantern smile! She has been saying for several months that her two middle top teeth are getting loose but she hasn't lost them yet! Maybe they'll hold off until right before Christmas so we can sing, 'All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!' That would just be too perfect!
Here is Grace's 1st grade school picture!
Grace's school had a Winter performance (can't say Christmas performance anymore in the schools...(so political) and they performed several songs from the Free to Be...You and Me album. It was precious! They sang Sisters and Brothers and Free to Be You and Me. They also sang two songs in Spanish. 1. Pollito Amarillito and 2. Los Pollitos Dicen Pio Pio Pio. You can youtube them if you want to hear the songs. It won't be of Grace singing it but the songs are on there. Very very cute!
Here's a picture of Yogi being Yogi... Yogi loves to dig in anything and everything. We bathe him at least once a week because he comes to the back door looking like this. Luckily, he is excellent at taking baths! What you can't see are his legs that are covered in mud too!
Our Christmas tree and presents...
and our Christmas card!
Both of the kids have taken several swim lesson sessions at the YMCA. They have done such a great job! Grace can swim about 1/3 of the length of a pool (could probably do more but get's flustered). She is great swimming the backstroke and has learned frontstroke, backstroke and breaststroke as well as treading water...also has started to learn how to dive. She is getting more confident in the water each time she's in. We are getting a pool membership to our neighborhood pool this year so we have a fun summer in store for us!
Holtz, on the other hand, has no fear of the water and never wants to get out. His class is still getting him used to the water but he has no problems doing anything they ask him to do. I'll have to move him up to the next class because this one was too easy!
Grace took a gymnastics session at the Y as well. Grace took gymnastics for several years previously at this amazing facility but we figured why spend the money at the super expensive place when she can have a blast here? I took tons of photos (imagine that- ha ha) but this one is GREAT! If you click on it and enlarge it...she is...drumroll... Michael Jordan! Who knew...I think I have her in the wrong sport!
Yogi being all cute! Don't let him fool you though...
The wicked witch of the west?
Whoops, nope, it's just Holtz! He loves to get out of his bedroom at night so we put a baby gate up to try to keep him in. Sounds like a great idea except he figured out quickly how to crawl over it.
We went to Florida again this Christmas break. The kids were both a little under the weather before we left so we weren't able to get their pictures with Santa here in town. We did, however, go to The Mall at Wellington Green to see Santa. The display was phenomenal! After standing in line for 2 hours (maybe longer), the kids entered a winter wonderland! Snow (fake, or course) was falling from the sky (can you see that they are covered with it)? Perfect for right before their picture with Santa (and Mrs. Claus).
I've always cut Holtz's hair but we took him to get his first professional haircut after seeing Santa at Cartoon Cuts. He was perfect!
On Dec. 23rd, we took Yogi to the ocean for the first time. Yogi LOVED the dog friendly Juno Beach!!
Santa came!!
Our Elf on the Shelf, Max, headed back to the North Pole again Christmas night.
Uncle Andy was with us too!
Cute outfits that Bob and Sharon brought home from India! The kids love to have 'dance parties' in them!
Watching a Christmas movie movie with Poppy...
It's good to swim in December!
My favorite place: The Beach!! I think it's the kid's favorite place too! They had a blast!
We came home on December 29th and drove straight home. I think we crawled in bed around 3:00am and the kids were ready to open presents at around 6:30am! Santa came to our house too!
We missed the little snow that Lexington had while we were gone so the day we arrived home, after opening presents, we headed to Columbus, IN to Grandma and Grandpa's house for some fun sledding! He has a perfect hill in his back yard!
Yogi had huge balls of snow on his fur that we couldn't get out. He had to defrost in the car while we warmed up inside! He loved being out in the snow too!
I swear, this was supposed to be a snowman. I kept hearing, "the snow isn't packing..." My mind usually isn't in the gutter but seriously?? Can't miss that one!
Christmas at Grandpa and Grandma's house!
Grace's New Year's resolution was that she wanted to play the chord organ more- ha! Maybe she will follow in my footsteps and be a musician!
We've lived in Lexington for almost 6 years and we've never hit any of the distilleries on the bourbon trail. What is wrong with us? I guess having two little kiddos puts a damper on things like this. Well...we went to our first distillery tour Four Roses with our neighbors Chris, Dana and Savannah. It was fun and interesting and the kids had a blast!
Holtz has been to the dentist before but he's never let them clean his teeth. On Jan. 14th, he was a rockstar! Check out those shades!
And...Holtz turned 3!!!! One of his favorite presents is this guitar. He still plays it everyday so maybe he's going to follow in his momma's footsteps and be a musician too! At his 3 year appt. he weighed 30 lbs. (28th percentile), and was 38 1/2 inches tall (71st percentile). Still long and lean! I do love tracking these!
He also loved his new shopping cart and doll (Henry)!
We just recently discovered that Holtz has a food dye intolerance. When he has red and/ or blue food dye, he gets very violent and has temper tantrums that can't be controlled. Very strange indeed! It was kind-of a fluke how we found out. Before Christmas, Evan gave him a peppermint stick and he went nutso! I thought it was strange so looked at the ingredients in the sticks and it was only cane sugar, red food dye and peppermint oil. I had heard about food dye intolerances and started reading about them and sure enough, fit the description perfectly. We've experimented with red, blue and yellow and we believe he is ok with yellow but red and blue are no-nos...so we have pretty much cut out all food dye in our house (hard to do). Even marshmallows have blue food dye...found out the hard way (crazy!). So, instead of putting a ton of icing on his cake, we bought toys instead and Holtz got to eat from the middle! Of course, it was a firetruck birthday because he is ga ga over firetrucks and firemen. Luckily, since I graduated from the Citizens Fire Academy, I have several friends who are fireman and we can visit often!
Opening presents!
Now, some funny things from Grace:
Grace will say, "OK Holtz, do you want to be rock, paper or scissors? Scissors, ok I want to be rock!" She is really into idioms right now: Don't let the cat out of the bag gets her laughing so hard! We were talking and I said she's a chip off the old block in which she replied, "you are the old block!" I guess she's right. (grin) She also likes to say, "in my opinion..." She said, "in my opinion, I think Mrs. Bell is the best principal." Me, "why?" Grace, "Because she loves all of us!" I'm glad she's going to a school that she loves! Another thing she said while we were driving home from school (totally random), "When I grow up, I'm going to paint my garage door purple...and I'm going to live in this neighborhood...not in Africa or the South Pole...and I'm going to marry Holtz because he's going to be living with me!" So adorable.
Here the kids are taking advantage and enjoying a 60 degree day in January!
Now some things from Holtz:
Holtz says me neever for me neither, firsty for thirsty and some other cute things. He knows the coin names and knows how much they are worth. He can spell and write his first name and can sound out and read some 3 letter words and sight words. He can snap his fingers and burps all the time...really loud...really gross! He does always say, "excuse me" so you can't get mad at him. He likes to plug his ears and then ask Grace loudly, "can you hear me?" He is always running...and falling...
I'll be sending another post soon with February through April! Hopefully I'll be able to load the videos too! Have a good one!
