Nine Years Old!

Click on the page to read their "All About Me" responses as nine-year-olds!

 ( I promise I didn't color coordinate their outfits to the cookie!)

Happy Birthday to these crazy kids! They keep us on our toes with the hilarious, strange and sometimes off-beat things they say and do. We love them!

Braces and a birthday!

My dad put braces on Grace and Will right after the new year. It's just part of their comprehensive orthodontic work he's doing on them, phase II as it were! They feel pretty proud that they're the only kids in 3rd grade with braces! So far so good - a few days of soreness and a poking wire on Will's cheek and they're off!

Graces's before...

 Will's before....

 Will after!

 Grace after!

They will have a couple of months with these until those front teeth are straightened out. Then they go on to phase III which is an appliance called a BioBlock. I'll let you know more about that as we go. What about Xander, you ask? He is skipping straight to the Bioblock. He got the impressions to get it made just this morning. In about 3 weeks, he'll get it seated and he'll be off. He doesn't need the braces because his straight teeth are already pretty straight.

January 8th was the kids' 9th birthday! Can you believe it! It was a normal Thursday, so we had our normal schedule, although I did come eat lunch with them at school that day. We celebrated with cake and ice cream with the grandparents on Friday night and went to Omaha on Saturday (more on that later!). Another exciting announcement - on the kids' 9th birthday, their new cousin Gabriel August Baxter was born! He came a few weeks early, but he's healthy and doing great and now the kids share a birthday with a cousin!

 Adorable baby Gabe - or Gabie as Will has started calling him.

As part of their birthday celebration we took them to Omaha to play at the Omaha Children's museum and then go to dinner. Since they're getting pretty old for kids museums and stuff, we figured we'd better do it sooner rather than later. The museum was OK but the best part (that Brian and I were super excited about) was the animals that used to be in Richman Gordman in Lincoln. They were restored and the kids could play on them. Brian and I have great memories of playing on those while our moms were shopping. Fun times! I don't think the kids thought they were cool, but we did!

After the museum, we ate at Cheesecake Factory. The kids were big fans of that! They loved their dinners and the cheesecake was awesome. A little expensive, though, so I don't think we'll do it often.

The kids had their 9 year check up at Dr. Swisher's office on January 2nd. They're all doing great, nothing to worry about. They are all healthy and have no problems (except for maybe turning into smart ass tweens). Will was about the 70th percentile for height and weight. Xander was 85th for height and 73rd for weight and Grace was 50th for height and 45th for weight. So, their growth is all normal and fine. The one glich in the exam was that Will failed his eye test! He is about 20/40 in both eyes. No less than a week later, we got a letter from the nurse at school saying he failed the eye test at school, too. So....we have an eye dr. appointment for him in February. Probably glasses for him. He's actually excited about it, though. I think he is because it will make him different from the others. I'm sure I'll have updates to post about that later.

Santa pictures

These turned out cute, so I thought I'd share. I just got around to purchasing them!

Christmas Day

 Santa was here and he was pretty generous this year!

 Since the Harry Potter obsession is huge and ongoing in this house - Santa took advantage of that. He brought each their own box of Bernie Botts' Every Flavor Beans (which are brilliantly gross by the way!), light up wands and a spell book. Awesome! They've played Hogwarts every day since they got them!

 The boys got more video games from Santa, always popular!

 Grace got Legos and girl Nerf things. Mom and Dad gave them Under Armour and Justice (for Grace) clothes, some legos and DVD's. Always popular choices. We gave Brian lots of clothes and books, which he always wants. I was a happy mommy on Christmas morning because I got a new tablet! I've enjoyed playing on it and use it a lot!

 The standard in-front-of-the-tree-Christmas-morning picture. So grown-up!

After presents, we got dressed and made the food for brunch. Always a yummy time! Both sides of our families come and we eat and eat some more. Everyone left around noon and we got ready for the evening at the Hoefs. 

 More cousins. Tobias, Sebastian and Maddie!

 Xander got a magic 8 ball, which he was in love with. Everyone played with it, including Sebastian. In fact, they were fighting over it! 

 Maddie loves Will. She gave him hugs.

 Xander and Sebastian - weird kids!

Tobias was very excited about his new truck!

We ate ANOTHER really good dinner at my mom's and opened presents. About 8:30 everyone started getting really tired and fade. It was off to home and bed for everyone! 

The rest of our break was great. I did have to work at the office some, but Brian was home and I did have some days off, too. We spent one morning at Defy Gravity in Omaha with the Niebuhrs and the kids had a sleep-over at the Niebuhrs another night. Brian and I were able to go out that night to dinner and a movie. New Year's Eve was a fun, low-key night. We picked the kids up from the Niebuhrs and hit a matinee showing of "Night at the Museum 3" then we went and picked up dinner and ice cream to eat at home. We had the kids get in jammies then watched another movie and then the East coast ball drop on TV. They were pretty tired by then after being up late at grandma and grandpa's the night before, I think they did sleep in a little bit the next day! We had many days of pajamas, video games, movies and good food. It was a very relaxing week and a half. Monday morning came too quickly and we had to get back to our routine. We'll have more pictures to come as the kids' birthday is coming up. We won't really celebrate much but I will get some pictures of them as they turn 9! Happy Holidays everyone!

Christmas Eve

 A little family picture on Christmas Eve morning.

 I can't believe how grown-up they look!

 Cousins!

 Must get a silly picture in!

 Opening presents. They got a lot of legos, Xander got a cool remote control car, Will got these machines with gears you have to build and Grace got arts and crafts. I think they also got books, DVD's and some video games.

Here is a picture of them dressed up nicely for church. They clean up pretty well!

We spent all of Christmas Eve over at the Niebuhrs again this year. We went over in the morning and ate a big lunch. Lisa and Chad tried their skills at beef wellington - apart from a small kitchen fire, it was a success. We opened presents, played and talked all afternoon. About 3:30 the party broke up and everyone went their separate ways to get ready for Christmas Eve church. We had to be there at 4:30 to rehearse bells, the kids choir and Orff. We had a busy church service - the kids played/sang 3 songs with the choir. Brian and I played bells and I helped with the choir on the 2 Orff songs! It all turned out really lovely - we got lots of compliments and it made for a great Christmas Eve service. After it was finally all over and cleaned up (around 7:00!) we went back to the Niebuhrs for soup and cookies. We finally called it a night around 9. The kids were still super excited for Santa (they were still believing even yet this year) and went to bed the fastest they ever have before!