The many faces of James

I tried and tried and tried to get a nice picture of James the morning of his birthday.  He was not cooperating, but the results were too funny not to share!

Happy 4th Birthday James!

I can hardly believe my baby has turned 4!!

3rd Birthday

2nd Birthday

1st birthday

The day he was born

Blowing out the candles

American Girl Valentine's Day

The Kehrweckers came down for the weekend.   Brent and Jason went to the Auto show while Emily and Salli took Lilli and Lauren to American Girl Place!

On the way downtown Lilli and Lauren were both talking to their grandma's on the phone to tell them thank you for their Valentine's goodies!

Trying to decide which outfit to purchase!

Kit is Lilli's Favorite Historical Character

Making a Valentine's Day craft

Wiped out!

It feels like spring!

Yesterday the temps here actually topped 60!  I got out of work around noon and it just smelled like spring.  I wanted desperately to throw the kids in the van and drive down to Nettles Island but that's not in the budget right now so we opted for a trip to the zoo instead.  For the last few years my parents give James and Lilli a membership to Brookfield zoo for Christmas every year.    I love that we can just go for a few hours and not feel guilty about not getting our money's worth.   The warm weather brought out a lot of animals that we don't normally get to see, a cheetah, the 2 new lions, a tiger and a polar bear.   James's favorite part of the zoo is the building with the fish and penguins in it.   That building also has a wave that crashes down onto plexiglass while the kids stand underneath it.  Lillian has never been fond of it (it is pretty loud!) but James gets the biggest kick out of it!  Lillian just finished a unit of study on Penguins in school and when we got to the penguins the keepers were inside the exhibit feeding them!  I think we could've stayed in there for an hour, the kids were so amazed by it! 

Christmas in Iowa

We had a wonderful time celebrating Christmas with Jason's family in Iowa.   We got to spend a lot of time with our new nieces which is always a joy!  The kids got to go sledding on the ice down the driveway.  Mommy and daddy may or may not have taken a few runs down themselves :)  We also got to spend some time with the extended Bruxvoort family.  Jason's Aunt Diane was up from Texas and she and Lilli hit it off right away talking about books and libraries!  With 3 new great-grandbabies in the last year Christmas day at Great Grandma and Grandpa Bruxvoort's was certainly louder than years past and we found out that so far there will be 3 MORE great-grandbabies by next Christmas!  It was so fun to see all the little ones opening their presents! 

Far and away Lilli's favorite Christmas present was her American Girl doll, which she named Natalie (because Natalie means "born on Christmas".  Natalie and Lilli have become inseperable friends and it's been a riot to watch.

James's big gift was a basketball hoop which will grow with him!  It's at it's shortest setting right now, but can extend up to 6 feet tall!  He also got a lot of legos and action figures but I think his favorite "gift" was a little spiral bound notebook which Uncle Doug found and taped a picture of Blue's thinking chair to!  Seriously, I think James could play Blues Clues all day long!

Merry Christmas!

Since I didn't get around to mailing out Christmas cards this year, I thought I'd share a summary of our year here instead.

James had a busy year.  In February he aged out of the early intervention program he was in for speech and started attending the local elementary school twice a week for speech.  Initially this did NOT go well.   After some more testing a social/developmental delay was discovered as well.  While it was likely caused by the speech delay, it had one huge advantage.  2 diagnosed delays qualified him to attend the 5 morning a week preschool through the public school both this school year and next year.  He is making progress in leaps and bounds.  His speech is progressing and we're starting to see him play WITH his friends, instead of just next to them.  He can't wait to get out the door to school in the mornings to go see his teachers and friends.   He loves playing with legos, although he could still spend most of the day playing James's clues, his own version of Blues Clues!  He also is discovering a love of cooking and needs to be right at Mommy's side almost every night as she cooks dinner, wanting to know every step of the meal-making process!

Lilli finished kindergarten at Southwest Chicago Christian and started 1st grade this fall.  She was thrilled that her 4 very best friends were all in her class and they've been having a wonderful year so far.  In October she broke her arm on the playground but after 7 long weeks she has finally been cleared to play on the playground and in gym again!  Her teacher is joining mommy and daddy in being beyond thrilled about this as the lack of an outlet for Lilli's energy was very evident in every day life.  Lilli is turning out to be quite the reader (wonder where she gets that from!) and some of the American Girl books, Little House on the Prairie and Rainbow Magic books are her current favorites.  This summer Lillian discovered a new talent, tennis.  She took lessons for 3 weeks while we stayed with Mema and Bapa and absolutely fell in love.  She won the most improved award for her class and is already talking about taking lessons again next summer.  She also loves to draw and paint and cut and color and is always gifting her friends and family with her craft work.

Jason put an interesting year under his belt at work as the stock market did it's best to make his job a challenge!  It's been such a treat to have his office less than 2 miles from home, we're really discovering that more and more as the snow piles up here!   Jason was asked this year to serve on the search committee as our church looks for a new senior pastor.  While the meetings seemed to be just one more thing to add to our already busy schedule, he has really enjoyed it and the committee is currently on a hiatus while we work with a specialized transitional pastor.

Salli continues to work a few nights a week at the Dinner Club.  She also started work as a Taste of Home (soon to be Entertaining at Home) consultant again after taking a few years off from that.  And because she wasn't busy enough she also started babysitting for 2 little girls 1 day a week.  In addition to the 3 paying gigs, she is the Coordinator for our church's MOPS group and continues to sing on the worship team and in choir.  This fall she was able to travel to Dallas to attend the MOPS Int'l Convention and came back refreshed and renewed in all areas of her life!

The past 6 months saw our extended family grow as well as Jason and Salli became Uncle and Auntie for the first time with the addition of 2 nieces born to Jason's brother and his wife and Jason's sister and her husband.  

We hope that you all have had a wonderful year and that this Christmas season finds you all healthy and enjoying the love of your families.  We'd love to hear from you all soon!

Christmas Begins

The fudge is ready.

The kids are ready.

The program is complete. (Yes, our church put our kids at opposite corners and they still nearly managed to tip over the mics and baptismal font.)

(Daddy told James to sing loud!)

The presents have been opened. (The first round with Mema, Bopa, Patrick and Kutu)

So what's left?

Shhh. Merry Christmas everyone!