Glasses

Now it just remains to be seen how much he'll actually WEAR them!

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!