14 January 2010

a few random pictures

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Birthday the Fourth

Carter turned 4 on Tuesday. He was so excited. He's been asking about his birthday for months. The day before his birthday he asked me if his friend 'G' was coming over for his party and I told him no, only us and Grandma and Grandpa would be there (Parry and Suzanne were passing through town on their way to Arizona). He was very sad as apparently "you're supposed to have lots of people at your birthday party." I'm thinking next year we'll have to have an actual party.

To make up for my poor mind reading skills I did a little decorating. He had requested a purple cake (purple is his favorite color) so that's what he got.

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Don't worry, it's still dot cake with dot frosting, we just colored it purple.

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I also made him a birthday banner and had all his presents wrapped and out when he woke up. He seems to be satisfied with that. At school he got to be first for everything because it was his birthday. We had chinese stirfry for dinner, made with pork tenderloin (Carter prefers good cuts of meat, lol).

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Carter got some lovely gifts. Patti and Tom sent him some reusable dry erase workbooks, Urgrossmutter sent him money and Auntie Meghan sent him a book of mazes. He got his very own digital camera from Oma and us and I made him a knight costume. He received a sweatshirt with skulls on it and a remote control car from Parry and Suzanne. He seemed to be thrilled with all of them.

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After a long day of waiting, finally the purple cake!!

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And, our knight (or 'armor' as Carter calls them) Sir Carter:

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Clementine

Did I mention to everyone that we were getting a puppy? Because we did. And her name is Clementine.

Despite a rocky start (trust your gut and DON'T buy from a white trash back yard breeder!!) we seem to be getting along okay. It was too cold to take her outside the first week and a half she was here (negative wind chill nearly every day) so we had to start using puppy pads. She got the hang of those pretty quickly and now that it's warmer we're having reasonable luck getting her to go outside.

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The boys are in love. IN.LOVE. They think she's the best thing ever. Oz calls her "Nine!" as he can't say Clementine yet. All they want to do is play with her.

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She seems to be relatively smart and comes when called and is responding to no. She's also very cuddly.

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Four Christmas'

I have to say that our four Christmas' were infinitely better than the movie of the same name (starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon). We watched that crappy movie at our first Christmas and it was truly pretty crappy. Hopefully VV and RW just made it as a paycheck and not because they thought the script was good.

First Christmas:
We visited with Auntie Heather and Oma in Oshkosh first. All of us crammed in Heather's one bedroom apartment. Surprisingly enough though there was plenty of room for us all.

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I'm a computer zombie wherever I go.

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But I'm not the only one

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Awwwww, sisters doing the dishes.

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Christmas pajamas

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The biggest hit of the day was not any of the presents, but Heather's old N64.

The whole two days there were lovely. Heather made a super delicious tenderloin for Christmas eve and Christmas day was ham (which I couldn't eat because of the September Ham Incident) and ham gravy (which I could eat!). We saw some Christmas lights, told some dirty jokes and had a lot of fun.

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Second Christmas:

We visited Dad and Jeanne next. Crystal was home and Heather spent the night as well. We did brunch with the Hoppe side of the family on Saturday and Carter and Oz were very much spoiled by the gifts. I ate a few too many cookies and still no ham (but thankfully there was turkey to eat as well).

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Plowing with Grandpa

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Carter took this picture of me

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She's such a classy girl, though she has nothing on Wendy Pepper

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Carter loved playing with his 'cousins' at Dad and Jeanne's. I think he also enjoyed all the cookies. It was a little cold to play outside for very long, but we did get some sledding in. We also managed to squeeze in a visit with Urgrossmutter (Oma's mother) so I guess we'll call that Christmas 2.5.

I'm already noticing that as the week went on I took fewer and fewer pictures. Hopefully I managed to get some of the fourth christmas.

Third Christmas:

We stopped over in Oregon to visit with Meghan, Dan, Noah, Xander and Sera.

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Our most successful couch picture yet.

Madison was fun. We met with our friends Ehron and Stephanie for lunch at the Thai restaurant (mmmmm, red curry) then the kids opened presents and Dan and Meghans. Meghan and I high tailed it out of there and went to a few yarn shops and fabric stores. Yarn and needles were Meghan's Christmas gift, knitting lessons came later in the night. We came home to find the boys (big and little) playing original Nintendo, which they were all enjoying.

Fourth Christmas:

Lastly we stopped at Parry and Suzanne's for the Lawson Christmas.

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All the grandkids. Carter was not interested in having his picture taken.

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All of the pearl snap shirts Andrew received. Yes, he is sort of a loser sometimes.

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You can't really tell, but they're walking on a good 18 inches of hard packed snow.

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And then we drove home. We survived, we had fun, we spent a lot of money, we got to see a lot of people. Thank goodness we don't have to do it again until next year.