Superbaby

Tate will be 3 months old tomorrow. I know, I can't believe it either. According to the "experts," I should probably have started giving him tummy time around a month ago. I haven't though because, well, I just haven't. I can see that he's plenty strong, and it's much more fun for me to hold him and look at his face and talk to him when he's awake. I decided to put him down on his stomach for a couple minutes this morning though, and he proceeded to immediately turn himself over onto his back. I thought that it had to just be a fluke. After all, he hasn't even had any practice time on his belly. I put him back on his stomach and reminded him that he's already getting way too big way too fast, and he's not supposed to be rolling over for at least another month and darn it, he needs to slow down. He responded by immediately rolling over again. So, I got the camera, put him back on his stomach, and...

Getting Ready For Christmas - Advent 2011

This year, I haven't posted any of the things that we do during December to prepare for Christmas because I posted most of it last year. So, I'll direct you to those posts instead. We are on our third year of eating rice and beans for advent. It's just such a tangible way for our entire family to sacrifice something in order to have more to give. The kids are able to be involved and they really get what it is we're doing. They are again choosing items this year from the World Vision Christmas catalog that they want to give. They take this very seriously and put a lot of thought into exactly what they want to buy with the money we are saving by eating only rice and beans for dinner each night.

This is the advent wreath that Jay made for me last year.

We did our annual St. Nicholas Day festivities with friends, but, unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from it. As I've mentioned before, Santa is not a part of our Christmas celebration. Our kids know that St. Nicholas was a real person who loved Jesus and gave generously, but that Santa Claus is not. You can read more about it here, but basically, we do not want Christ to be replaced by the jolly man in red. We want Jesus to be the reason we celebrate and the reason our kids are excited at Christmas time - because of the ultimate gift of Jesus, not because Santa is going to show up and leave presents under the tree.

Some of the other things we do during advent to attempt to focus our attention on Christ are posted here.

And, here are just a few pictures of our tree decorating night from a couple of weeks ago...

For some reason, Jay has loved doing this little balancing act with each of our children as soon as they can start to hold their heads up on their own.

Jake decided to write a birthday card to Jesus to wish Him a happy 2011th birthday.

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving in Tucson with Jay's family and had a fantastic time. It was great to spend time with his parents and to see some extended family that we haven't seen in several years. We had some concerns about the drive with Tate since it is more than a seven hour drive and he is sometimes not a huge fan of riding in the car (after all, that means that he has to be set down), but he ended up doing really well. Jake and Addi were great too and didn't complain at all even though we made the drive on Thursday and then had to turn around and come right back on Saturday. We weren't sure how it was going to go when we left our house on Thursday and had literally been in the car for 5 minutes when Addi asked if we were in Arizona yet. And she was dead serious.

I don't think that this picture is really from when we were in Arizona, but I just needed an excuse to throw it in.

The kids learned how to play battleship while we were there and it became a great source of entertainment.

I'm not sure where she gets these poses.

I was not a fan of the motorcycle ride around the block, but Jay convinced me that it was fine, and Jake was in heaven.

Nana's first time with Tate. I think she likes him!