Author Archives: joel

Played in the snow yesterday. Lots of fun. Over-and-out.

Last weekend, the kids and I joined Grandma King and James and Kathy for a breakfast with Santa at the Ashworth in Hampton. The kids were a bit shy at first, so we ate breakfast before I tried to get them to talk to him. But once they had eaten and warmed up to the situation, they chatted his ear off. They told him what they wanted for Christmas, and Sean also told Santa all about the Sonic the Hedgehog game he plays on his Gameboy. I think Santa was probably lost about two sentences in - Sean gave him all of the details of the game, which would be pretty confusing if you'd never played it.

On Saturday, the kids and I made Christmas cookies. I used too much flour on the countertop while rolling out the dough, and the kids ended up covered with it. They thought it was hilarious that their clothes were all white. Later, while decorating the cookies, they got themselves covered with frosting too. I'm not sure whether more frosting ended up on the cookies, or in their stomachs. They tried to be subtle about it - they were spooning frosting into their mouths when they thought I wasn't looking. But they had fun, and we were headed to Grammie's later - so I didn't care much just how sugared-up they were. Heh.

The kids have been building a lot of puzzles lately. Carter is getting surprisingly good at it - we can sit her down with a 40 piece puzzle, walk away, and 5 minutes later she calls us over to show us that she's finished it. I think we might get her a couple of bigger puzzles for Christmas.

Sean and Carter have a new game that they've been playing lately. Carter tries to pick Sean up, and then they both fall over. She makes the silliest grunts and groans as she tries to lift him up, and then they both end up in a pile on the floor.

You won't catch me letting her do that to me. Both the kids - but especially Sean - love having the dogs kiss them right on the mouth. I've tried telling then not to, because it's gross - but that just makes it that much funnier to them.

It's tough to get a genuine smile out of Carter lately, once you point a camera at her. All she wants to do is make silly faces. Here's one that Lori took a couple of weeks ago, when we had the family over for the toy warehouse sale up the street.