Beans and Donuts

The past two months have flown by and have been fairly uneventful. We've enjoyed a warmer than usual winter so we even got to play outside a few days in January. The boys are learning to love their little sister more and more. And she gives them the best smiles. We had a bit of a rough Feburary, we've been sick pretty much all of it except for a few days. So we are looking forward to March. :)

I was cleaning the cubboards and found some really old dried split peas, lentils and beans. So we decided to do some art with them. And then we used the leftovers for construction play.

Finger painting

So Adam wanted donuts. I thought, how hard could it be to make them? A little online searching, a whole lot of Crisco, and viola! Home-made donuts! It only took two batches for me to get the hang of it. I'm not saying they're like the ones in the store, but Adam loved them.

Alex was on his way outside with Daddy to look for bugs. He was fully equiped with magnifying glass, coat, and glasses. I had to take a picture. :)

Photo shoot

So we had a friend of ours take some pictures of the kids this weekend. Instead of posting some of the pics on my blog, I'll just put the link to his blog for you to see them. Brian Powell is who did them and I love how some of them turned out! So check it out.
http://brianpowell.info/?p=7070

Christmas 2011

These first few pictures aren't Christmas, but I threw them in anyway. In these first two pictures Erin is a month old. Alex has a birthday just a few days before Christmas, so we had an icecream cake to celebrate (thanks Nana and Papa!). Some of his favorite presents were a magnifying glass and binoculars.

Alex asked to hold Erin, and this Kodak moment was the result!

(Erin is 6 wks old in this photo)

We did Christmas with the boys on Christmas Eve morning. The boys woke up and had a couple big presents! We didnt' get them too many other things since the trucks are so big. Good thing too, because Alex ignored the other little gifts and just used them to put in his front loader! They did get a couple green dump trucks that will come in handy out in the sand box. They're pretty heavy duty, so they should take a beating and last a while. For the moment, Alex uses them to put loads into with the backhoe on his tractor. Adam has a trailer on the back of his tractor, but somehow it manages to get hitched to the back of Alex's. :)

This tshirt has a picture of Pop's tractor!

Erin slept through the whole thing. She got some shoes anyway.

6 wks old

Christmas at the new Jackson house. Adam and Alex had fun making a pile of presents for each person. Adam had a tendency to just make one pile though---right by Erin's chair. :)

Presents are done and now it's time to eat, or at least Adam thinks so!

From the back of the house you can see cars go by. The boys enjoyed watching cars and trucks drive by. They really enjoyed seeing the feed trucks. We even had to go watch them be filled when we went to the office to see Papa. Dad got out the old train set. The boys really enjoyed getting to "drive" it and change the tracks it went on.

Erin is 7 wks old

We gave Dad money for skis this Christmas. They came in the mail before we left and so he got to try them out. He bought Mom a set too, so now they go out together.

Me and the kids stayed up north while Andy went back home to work between the two holidays. So when we got to the Rummel's, we had more gifts to open! One of which is this: a baby quilt from Andy's Aunt Elaine. As usual, it's always a delight!

The boys made gingerbread houses while they were at Mimi's house.

This is Adams----see all the yellow!?

This one is Alex's.

We were given this cute little Christmas dress, so we had to get a quick picture of Erin in it!

It just about killed the boys to be at Mimi's house for 3 full days and see all those presents under the tree and NOT be able to open them! We had to wait for everyone to get there before we opened them, but it was worth the wait. :)

Jeremy, Natalie, Peter, Kelli