Eve of December

It's been 2 months now since Ella's birthday. Since then Eliza, our 10 month old has popped her 1st tooth and started crawling. In the picture at left, Eliza is shown doing what she does best and lots of during the day - smiling!

Ella's on the verge of being able to read short stories on her own. Emmeline will soon be learning short vowel words. It's wonderful to see them listening intently to a story that I'm reading. They especially like Dr. Suess and Bill Peet books. And all 4 have their creative juices flowing which comes out in their pretend play and their drawings. For instance, Emmeline (on her own) came up with the idea to make her own apron out of old computer paper and also to make a paper basket. Before you know it, the other 3 also made aprons as well as baskets. Stuck in Emmeline's basket is a mask that she made to fit on her face. The kids are shown in order of age - Ella, Emmeline, Ezra, Elise.

The month of November flew by with us taking family vacations trips. First to Nebraska, so that Tom could help his Dad harvest the corn & soybeans. Tom likes driving the grain trucks. The kids had a blast playing outside for many hours. All four even cooperated on a "building" project of their own. They picked lots of tall dried grass and made a "straw" house with it. They also enjoyed riding in the combine with Grandpa and going on a treasure hunt for corn cobs that got missed by the combine. This year we even took a day and went to Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha.

After the harvest trip, we were home for a week and left to go down to Kansas to visit my parents. Tom took 3 days of study to prepare for a Christmas Advent sermon series. Then he spent 2 1/2 days helping reside the east side of my parents home. Once again, the kids got lots of playtime outside. With the old siding (nails removed) they made a play house in the truck where all the boards were thrown. They also rode their bikes, visited 4 of their second cousins who are the same age, got to see their newest 7 week old cousin - Mary Lee, and of course thoroughly enjoyed helping Grandpa with chores - which entailed feeding hay to the cows, picking up eggs, and getting to visit the hay loft in the barn.

Now it's almost December and we're all getting back to routine here at home.