Christmas portraits

I try to get nice pictures of the kids in their Christmas outfits every year.  Jacob has made that very difficult this year!  He hates having his photo taken, these pictures took 2 days and lots of bribery :)  We talked all day about how great he was going to look when he smiled for mommy's camera and how he would sit nice and still with his siblings.  I ended up with a few great shots of the kids...and a lot of pictures of Jacob screaming!

7 years old!

Andrew turned SEVEN!  He is such a smart, happy kid.  He is doing great in school, has brought home perfect report cards all year, he loves science and math and is really taking off in reading too.  He is always smiling and he makes friends everywhere he goes.

For his birthday, we had a small party at the house with the family. He asked for a salad with apples in it for dinner and a strawberry cake.  Then we spend the evening doing science experiments (thank you Aunt Vicki!)

Parades and Playoffs

Back in the October, Emily got the opportunity to dance in UFs homecoming parade.  UF's homecoming is a pretty big deal around here, all the public schools are closed on homecoming Friday and they have a big parade down University Ave.  Emily was excited to dance in the parade (I was really nervous about letting her go the whole parade route without me!) She did great, I was surprised her little legs danced the whole route and she was still smiling when I met her at the end!

Also this past fall, Andrew played machine pitch baseball.  He ended up on a great team with wonderful and encouraging coaches.  He really enjoyed playing and we spent hours practicing hitting and catching baseballs!  His team made it to the play offs and ended up placing second!

And in the stands cheering on the tiny dancer and the little slugger is little brother!  He gets toted around to a lot of activities for his big siblings and he is always such a good sport.  He really enjoyed watching the baseball games and cheering on big brother!