Fun in the Snow!

Molly and Alex got bundled up and had some fun in the snow on Grandpa and Grandma's farm.

Molly makes great snow angels!

Sledding!

More Christmas Photos

Molly and Danessa (her 2nd cousin)
They had so much fun together! It is great to have a cousin the same age! :)

More puppy love.

Molly and Alex both were given 2 toothbrushes (one standard, one spin brush) from Grandpa and Grandma Ehlebracht.
Molly and Alex had a great time trying to see if they could use both at the same time! :)

Puppy Love

Loeschke Christmas Photo

Alex holding Rudy
My parents got Rudy, a little Papillon puppy, last summer. Alex adores Rudy, and Rudy actually seems to like to have Alex hold him.

Here's Molly holding Tootsie, Aunt Sally's miniature Dachshund.

Molly with Rudy

Christmas Program

On Dec. 16, Molly was in a Christmas program at church. She did a great job singing!

Aren't they adorable?

After the church service, there was a community meal and a Christmas party. Alex picked out a gift during the White Elephant game, and it turned out to be two used kitchen sink water sprayers. I wasn't impressed, but Alex LOVED them. :) He grabbed one and pretended to spray people (complete with sound effects)! Alex made it seem like so much fun that a friend wanted the other sprayer so he could pretend to spray too! :)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Music and cookies

Alex loves music. He likes to try to sing, and he loves instruments. Here he is playing his drum. :)

He got a toy guitar for his birthday, and he struts around and kind of dances as he "plays" it. :) It's really cute.

Molly and Alex love Christmas cookies. They like to put the sprinkles on them too.

We've been limiting the cookies, but we've let the kids have them every once in a while. Today before lunch Molly asked if she could have one after lunch. We said yes. However, things got kind of busy right after lunch and we forgot to have cookies. Just a little bit ago, Cory and I were playing Go Fish with Molly while Alex napped, and I wanted a cookie. I remembered that we had told Molly she could have one so I told her she could pick one. She said, "I want the snow man one. I'll go get it!" Then she ran into the kitchen (we were at the dining room table). She came back into the room with the snow man cookie. Cory and I asked her where she had gotten it from, and she showed us.
She had snuck it from the cookie container earlier today when we weren't watching, and she hid it in the couch!!! (We have a couch in our breakfast nook while our basement is being renovated.) Cory and I had to turn away from her so she couldn't see how hard we were laughing. After we could get straight faces, we explained that she shouldn't sneek food or hide food in our furniture. Silly girl.

---

Advertising strikes again: Cory said yesterday Molly was watching Care Bears, and she came up to him and said, "Dad, we need to go to Build a Bear Workshop. It's where best friends are made." (That is exactly what the commercial says, by the way.)
Then she added, "I've seen it at the mall, but I've never been there before. We should go."

O Christmas Tree

It was snowing Saturday morning when we went to pick out our Christmas tree. Then we all came inside and had some hot cocoa. I think that was the first time Molly and Alex had tried hot cocoa, and they loved it. :) Molly told me she wanted to have some every time she came inside after getting cold playing outside all winter.

Molly and Alex got to hang all of our unbreakable ornaments on the tree. They loved it! One funny part was that Alex didn't want to have the Christmas music playing. Every time we turned it on, he went over to the stereo and turned it off.

Molly told Alex, "Be careful. The tree is very porkely!"

( It actually has very soft needles.)
I asked Molly, "Do you mean prickly? Or pokey? Prickly things have needles that can poke you."
Molly said, "Yeah mom, but look at all the porkels on the tree!"

Sweet hugs. :)

How precious is this?!?

-----------

Alex has been really cracking us up lately. The other day, he was eating a clementine in the kitchen. Cory and I were in the living room, and Alex walked up to Cory and said, "YUCKY!". Alex gave Cory the inside stringy stuff from his clementine, and then said, "Thank you!!!" and walked back into the kitchen.

There is a new cook book out there that is all about hiding vegetable purees in other foods so your kids eat more vegetables.
I was skeptical, but I thought I'd try it. I made a box of Kraft mac n cheese (that they love!) for lunch and put only like 3 Tbs of pureed squash in it.
NEITHER kid ate it. :( Molly said it was too cheesy and she didn't like it. She only ate one spoonful and refused to try any more.
Alex found one little squash string on his spoon and said, "Uh Ohh, Uh Ohh, HELP!" and had me rinse it off for him. Then he didn't eat any more.
I ate it, and I could tell the texture was different but it tasted the same as always.
I guess we'll just stick with baby carrots, frozen peas, corn, and canned green beans. At least they eat SOME vegetables. Maybe they'll branch out when they are older. :)