Family pictures

We took our pictures for Christmas back in October at Bond Park. It is a really neat park that is close to our house. It symbolizes our time in North Carolina. We thought that doing them early would help us be prepared for Christmas. We still ended up procrastinating the making of and sending of cards.

Christmas

Our celebrations started Christmas Eve at the Cranes. We got together for cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate while we exchanged secret Santa gifts with the Gaspar de Albas and Cranes. Later that evening at home we opened up our Christmas pajamas. Christmas morning our kids did an amazing job sleeping in until 7:30 a.m. For our kids, that is a huge accomplishment any day of the week, but on Christmas it was phenomenal. It probably had something to do with three straight weeks of going to bed late since the beginning of track out.

It is fun to see the children's different personalities and how they react to the situations. Blake was happy to be crawling (his new talent) around to get to everyone's presents and to eat the wrapping paper. Julia was so excited to finally be able to open up the present with Princess wrapping paper that she had been eying for the last week. After she opened up her presents she was just content setting up unopened boxes around her. She would be happy with just one present. Brayden jumped into his candy right away. He went around and shared with everyone. He was very anxious to open all his presents and couldn't get to them quick enough. Kylee was the first one up waiting for everyone to wake up. She was content and controlled. She waited patiently for her presents and helped Blakey. It was a fun relaxing day.

Christmas Nutcrackers

We were able to celebrate the coming of Christmas with a few special activities. The first, on December 13th, was Kylee's participation in the Cary Christmas Parade. She had a few extra Friday ballet practices to learn her role as a Chinese dancer in her Nutcracker themed dance for the parade. It was fun to go and watch the parade as a family. There were various High School bands, dance groups, jump rope groups, girl scout and boy scout groups, and even the local jazzercise group. Brayden wasn't too excited to be there until he realized that many of the groups walking by were throwing candy to the parade watchers. He came home with 2 pockets full of candy. It was pretty chilly outside, but luckily we were sitting on the side of the street where the sun was shining.




The other activity was a girls night out to the Nutcracker on December 19th. Kylee, Julia and I went with Katrina and her girls, Kristina, Paloma, and Sofia. It was fun to watch and I think Julia did a great job. Julia loves to dance and do "ballet" so this was entertaining for her. She kept giving me hugs and kisses throughout the performance. She probably enjoyed the attention without having Blakey attached to my hip. Kylee's first comment when it started was, "This is boring." Within a few minutes though she was having a good time.

Julia community dance

Julia attended a community dance class with Sofia and Denali.  The teacher Ms. Maggie always brought different props for the girls to use.  Julia enjoyed it and was one of the few that would do most of what the teacher demonstrated.

Julia turns 3

Here is a little to describe our little princess. We call her princess because that is the kind of world she lives in everyday. Most days she only wears princess dresses, sings princess songs, listens to princess music, watches princess movies, and plays with her princesses. She also names every princess that she comes across. It makes Target difficult to shop in because every other isle there will be a princess towel, or bowl, or clothes and Julia will need to stop and name them before she can move on. She loves her princesses but her real bond is with her kitty cat and Randy. Those are her sleeping buddies. Kitty Cat makes Julia laugh, likes to lick people, she also screams, and sometimes gets in trouble. I will find kitty cat outside her bedroom door with the door closed. I will ask what has happened and she will tell me that kitty cat was a bad girl. Julia is a pretty independent little girl. She likes to do everything herself. If you try and help her she will just have to undo the work and do it again all by herself. Julia loves to dance and enjoys taking a ballet class at the community center. Julia is a good helper. She likes to help with making dinner, setting the table, and putting the dirty clothes in the laundry basket. Julia is also very loving, she likes to say I love you and goodnight to both Mommy and Daddy about 5 times each before she can go to sleep at night. We are very happy to have her be a part of our family. She has been a pretty easy going 3rd child.

We celebrated Julia's birthday with a combined party with Brayden. We had to change Brayden's party date and the new date ended up being the day after Julia's birthday. On December 13th we celebrated both their birthdays by having a bounce house party with their cousins and some of Brayden's friends. Matt made Julia a princess crown cake to help celebrate and she received some princesses for her presents.

Brayden's clay creation

This is a clay figure that Brayden made at school in his art class. He was pretty proud of it. It is a guy on a skateboard.

Brayden turns 6

Brayden is enjoying his Kindergarten year. He is learning a lot and loves to do any homework that is not required of him. Brayden says he has a lot friends at school and enjoys playing with them. Brayden loves candy. If there is any candy in the house he will find it, and we know when he has found it when we find candy wrappers under the couch, under his bed, and even in his sheets. Brayden is great at sharing. If you ask him he will share just about anything, even his beloved candy. Brayden is a collector. He says he picks up things that catch his eye, which includes bottle caps, paper clips, twisty ties, scraps of paper, plastic, and metal, and just about anything else that might happen to fall in his path. He talks about his ultimate goal of building a robot with it all. Brayden would be a good salesman because he doesn't take no for an answer. He will ask a question like, "Can I have a candy?" and if our response is "no" he will excitedly say, "Thanks, I will go get my candy now." Brayden tends to be a truth stretcher. If he is blamed for doing something, his immediate response is that the nearest sibling did it.
Brayden 's 6th Birthday was the day before Thanksgiving this year. He was lucky because he got to celebrate three different times. First, we celebrated as a family on his birthday by going to Red Robin for dinner. The next day was Thanksgiving dinner at our house with the Gaspar de Albas and Cranes. Matt made an R2-D2 cake to celebrate with the cousins. The 3rd celebration was a combined party with Julia at WiiiBounce, a local party place filled with large inflatable bouncing toys and big screen Wii video game consoles. The highlight of Brayden's birthday was that he finally got a pack of REAL POKEMON cards from Mamaquel. The homemade ones are now no longer needed.