A January Photo Update

Seeing as it's almost March, I thought it'd be a perfect time to post some pictures from... January. :) Life's been good. The big news around here is that Courtney was called as the Primary President at church (i.e., she's now responsible for the 2 hour Sunday School and other programs for all the kids age 18 months to 11 years old - about 75 kids on any given Sunday). It's quite the responsibility, and I know she'll be great. It definitely has made us that much more busy at home!

And now for the picture update (which is initially heavy on Leo content):



We spent a Saturday down in Columbus to go to the temple and the COSI science museum.  Luke was having some issues with the sun in his eyes in the car.  We took care of that:

Courtney took the boys to a nearby mall while I was at the temple.  Yes, Luke is the one flying through the air in that second picture: 

I then took the boys to the COSI museum.  I didn't get many good pictures, but they had a great time as always.  We could probably spend all day at that place:

 
Coming soon... February pics!

Luke is 3!

Last week, we celebrated Luke's third birthday!  He was pretty excited for his birthday this year.  We waited until the weekend to have his party so that his Grammy and Pappy and a few cousins could be here.  On his actual birthday, Luke and I went out to breakfast at IHOP before I went to work. 

On Saturday, we all went to the Science Museum here in Cleveland.  Unfortunately, our camera curse continued and for some reason our memory card didn't save our pictures from there (we returned the memory card for a new one this past week... gotta love Walmart's return policy).  We also had fun hanging out around the house and getting things ready for Luke's party. 

After church on Sunday, we had Luke's birthday supper of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.  Then it was time for his birthday cake... you'll never guess what kind of cake he wanted. 

...That's right, a dinosaur cake!

I must say Luke got a pretty good haul from his birthday presents.  He was actually a little scared at first of one of the dinosaurs he got from his cousins, but he's getting along pretty well with it now. 

Oh, and Leo thoroughly enjoyed the festivities as well.  He's become best buds with Lindsay, one of his cousins. 

Christmas 2010

Though we've been married for almost five years now, this was the first time we've actually hosted Christmas.  My parents, Kari, and Mark came up to Cleveland for a few days and we all had a great time.  What made it especially fun was Luke's excitement for anything and everything to do with Christmas, whether it was the Christmas tree, lights, Santa, presents... and even egg nog.  Seriously, the kid couldn't get enough of the egg nog. 

Pictures do a better job of telling the story than me, so here we go...

Shocking I know, but we had a White Christmas here in Cleveland.  Here's Grandma getting nailed with a a snowball, courtesy of Luke...

He thought it was pretty funny...

On Christmas Eve, we had a little program where we sang some carols, read the story of Jesus' birth in the Bible, watched a short DVD about the Nativity, and then let the boys see their new stockings (made by their Grammy!) and open their Christmas Eve present (pj's!). 

It's safe to say that Christmas day was a success with the boys, they thoroughly enjoyed opening all their presents. 

Not surprisingly, Leo was content enough to just play with the wrapping and packaging!

And there we have it... the Christmas post only a month late!

November/December

In a continuing effort to catch up on what was on our old camera, I'll post some pictures here from November and December.  I'm way too behind to do much storytelling, but that will return next week when I do a Christmas post (sneak preview: we had a great Christmas!). 

Here are the boys looking pretty sharp before church:

Leo makes one cool firefighter:

One of the things we were most bummed out about when we thought we lost our camera was losing pictures of Luke putting the ornaments up on our first real Christmas tree.  Without further ado:

The boys also got to see Santa IN PERSON! ;)

...as you can see, they were thrilled.  And finally, here's us boys just hanging out:

The Return of the Camera

Yes, we're still here!  And I come bearing good news... we found our old camera!  Believe it or not, it was pretty much right under our noses.  I was cleaning out our car in anticipation of packing up for our New Years' weekend trip to Pennsylvania and found it in the little compartment between the front seats.  So anyway... obviously there is much to catch up on from the holidays, but I'll have to go back quite a ways to catch up now that we have our pictures from the old camera. 

We'll start with Leo's birthday party with the Cross family.  Yes, I know he's 14 months old now, but better late than never!

Our Camera

I have good news and bad news.  The bad news is that we sadly lost our camera this past week.  We hadn't loaded pictures on our computer in about a month, so we lost some good ones, including of Leo's birthday party and putting up our Christmas tree.  Fortunately, Courtney's parents were there at Leo's party and took some pictures, and so we'll be able to get theirs. 

The good news is that we coincidentally had ordered a new camera for our Christmas present to each other.  It arrived the day before we lost our old one!

Life has been busy, but good for us.  Work is in full swing, as is the Cleveland winter!  We got about a foot of snow last week over a few days and another big storm is coming in as we speak.  We bought a snow blower a few weeks ago, and it's definitely come in handy already. 

The last pictures we loaded had some snow pictures from the first little snow storm we got in early November, so enjoy!