Since I last wrote...

Jacob has been fighting a double ear infection,

Maria turned 10,

and we celebrated Jesus' birth with friends and family. (by the way, I had 25 of these pictures printed up to put in the Christmas cards that I was going to send to you but never did. Sorry about that!)

Among their gifts, the kids opened their own boxes of "sugar cereal" to enjoy over Christmas break. We argued, "Who needs a Nintendo Wii when you have Cocoa Puffs?"

David's "Chorm Poopers" tormented everyone in the manger,
"Alright, Joseph, where are you hiding the baby Jesus? We have blasters and we will use them!"
We traveled to Wisconsin. John dropped Luke, David, Jacob and me off in Green Bay to visit with Heidi and her girls, Anna, Rachel and Josie. Grandma Speckhard was there too. He took Maria and Benjamin to the cottage for hockey.

We all planned to go to the cottage New Year's Eve day but Rachel and Josie got the stomach flu so I took my kids plus Anna in Heidi's van to the cottage. The lake ice was horrible so they played across the street on a neighbor's rink. It was beautiful with the snow and ice covering the tree branches. Heidi said it looked, "Narnia-ish." It really did.


"Alright, Luke, you can play but get in my way and you're going down."
"Ok, Daddy."

Mr. Tough Guy

Heading to the penalty box.

Kids' game.

Benjamin was pretty upset that his team just lost in the kids' game. He gets so competitive - gees!

Luke loved it. He and John came out again in the evening and skated some more under the lights.

Jacob turned 1!!!
We celebrated with peanut butter/chocolate brownies I had made at Heidi's.

Happy New Year!
Ok, not much of a lively crew here.
Back at home... Luke turned 5 on January 3rd (someone forgot to buy birthday candles so we used our Bullfrog candle) and since we hadn't had enough sweets the past few weeks, I bought some Krispy Kreme chocolate-covered glazed donuts to celebrate. (I think I might have gained weight just by typing that.)

And that brings me back to Jacob who is still fighting a double ear infection. He'll be getting tubes sometime in February but until then, he'll probably look like this.