All is well!

We are all well here this week, I am very happy to report. Now if we could just stay that way! We had a good week, even though we stayed in most of the week to escape the ice, snow and cold. They did venture out into the snow a couple of times, but on Saturday, Grace didn't want to go out, and Xander stayed only about 10 minutes. Will stayed for almost an hour and loved every minute of it. The top picture is one Brian took of Will in the snowbank. He was really enjoying himself that day! He liked digging, stepping in the snow and standing in it. The other pictures are of the kids with their towers. They are becoming expert tower builders. They have learned how to be very careful while stacking, steadying the towers with their other hands as they put the blocks on. Grace and Xander had ones as tall as them the other day. If the towers fall, they sometimes cry, but sometimes just say "Oh no!" or "oh my!" and start again.

The funniest thing they've all started doing is answering questions and using exclamations. If we ask Xander a question, he will usually say "no" (like yesterday when daddy asked him if his diaper was poopy he said "no" even though it was.) Or the other day, we were reading a muppet babies book and one of the lines was miss piggy saying "Isn't this a pretty dress?" Xander promptly replied "No." We died laughing. Other times, you can say "put the doll on the table and come eat dinner." and they'll say "OK!". They are repeating EVERYTHING and it cracks us up. They had meatballs for dinner last night and they all walked around saying "meatball" all night. A nickname for baby Carter maybe? (just kidding Lisa). They are still doing great finding shapes and colors. Grace decides that every letter she sees is a "B" and will hand out letter blocks and say "B" for every one of them. Will has developed this hilarious deep, throaty laugh (a take on the evil genius laugh they all used to have.) He does it all the time, especially while running around the house or being silly. He's silly a lot lately. It's actually quite funny, he for sure is Mr. Personality. Grace has been little miss helper lately. She's quick to get something we need, or pick up if we need to. She definitely likes to please. Xander has been pretty quiet lately, and playing a lot on his own. Dale and Ellen see a lot of Brian in Xander's actions. He's also quite shy lately, and hasn't been enjoying going to the nursery at church. The others are OK there, Will even cried when we made him leave, because he wanted to keep playing.

I will wait to post again until after Christmas next week. I'm sure they'll be lots of stories and pictures to share. Maybe I'll even get around to figuring out how to post video. Happy Holidays everyone!