Max did great with his Christmas play. He was Kid 1 who played a "shepherd" in a play. Kind of a play within a play. He remembered all his lines, and did a great job.

Here he is saying one of his lines, "Yeah, my family has lots of stuff in our bags that we can use!"

Then we got to see the Big Guy!!

Max tried to convince Santa he was good this year.

Mattie has never been shy with Santa.

Look who's a big girl! Mattie really likes her bed, although lately she has been leaving it in the middle of the night to join Max in his. That would be fine if they went back to sleep, but they usually end up playing. I found them at 4am a few nights ago...they were playing legos.

Christmas has finally come to the outside of our house.

Mark and the kids did a great job putting it up.

Mark and Max handled the lights.

Mattie hammered in a stake.

Mattie was kind enough to paint my fingernails for me today. She insisted, in fact.



She did better than I expected, but she kept looking up at me and saying, Be still!




Then she let me paint her fingernails. And toenails. Twice.
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Christmas time!! We have been having a great time decorating our house (and Nana and Papa's) for Christmas.

We got our tree up and the kids did a great job trimming it out.

Yesterday was Dec. 1st and we always start the Christmas countdowns, put the star on the tree and...the biggest treat... the first 2008 Christmas season viewing of "Elf". Oh, yes. It's Christmas now. Emily got to share that special family time with us. You're welcome, Emma.

Max finally lost his second tooth today, he pulled it out himself. I was glad, I wasn't going to do it.

Max expresses his excitement about Christmas through art.

Sorry! I didn't download any pictures off the camera tonight, but here is a new one to tide you over until a full update tomorrow.

We have had a few big days. Yesterday we stopped by Grandma's to show off our costumes.

Chloe and everyone came by to say Hi, too.

Then we went to Bass Pro Shop for their Halloween bash.

Max's favorite was the fishing.

Mattie's was the pumpkin painting.

Max made smores.

And Mattie ate them.

Then, today, Max received the Character Counts award for Respect. He was really excited and proud, and was thrilled with the prize: a coupon book from McDonalds. He read me off all 25 coupons, twice, in the the car on the way home and later, again, at home.

Tonight we went to the Fall Festival at a different church.

My beard making could use some work.

Happy Pirates eat cotton candy.

I think I could make a timeline of Mattie's life just with pictures of her eating cotton candy.

Max spent alot of time at the basketball, the candy was good there, I guess.

This is Mattie's kind of fishing.

Arrgh?!

We went to the Aquarium, like two weeks ago. No, it just feels like it's been a while since I've posted. Max had fall break, so Mark took some time off and went to the Aquarium.

The kids were so good on the drive down. I didn't hear a peep out of them the whole trip!

We ate breakfast at Cracker Barrel, but this is the only picture of that, because once the food arrived, it was pretty crazy. We all ordered something different and then passed the plates around! We had pancakes, sausage, bacon, eggs, biscuits, ham, hashbrowns, gits (no one ate those), everything.

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Who can look cute next to this!?!

Our fist stop was the sharks, because it was feeding time. That turned out to be a little tamer than you would think. But we liked it.

We really liked the sting rays, too. They would come to the edge and splash us.

Max feed the sting rays.

Mattie, too.

Max touched all the things in the touch pool.

Including a starfish. Mattie didn't want to touch any of them.

She did like the jellyfish, though.

Gross.

Hey, look! Patrick!