Thanksgiving

We let Sam and Jacob take our Thanksgiving pictures this year which may have been a mistake. But here is the best of what we got out of them.
We had Alan's cousin Liz and her husband JD and their little girl Cami who is about a month younger than Nathan come visit. Also, we had my uncle Tracy from Dallas come down too. We are so blessed to have such great family living close enough to come visit.
Nathan, Cami, and Sam with his head cut off.
JD, Me, and Alan getting stuff cleaned up after dinner
Hanging out with the kids in the playroom, Alans feet, Cami, Liz, Jacobs back and JD's legs.

We forgot to take a picture with the Egberts but I remembered at the last minute to take one of the boys with Tracy. This made me realize that next time I think I will be taking control of picture taking and we can try letting the kids take pictures when they get a little older.
Thanks Tracy and the Egberts for visiting we had a blast!

Camping

So we finally took the kids camping a couple of weekends ago, we met up with our friend Jason in a campsite in Somerville, TX. It was on a little beach and because of the drought this year the lake was significantly smaller than normal, but this allowed us to find some pretty neat Clam shells. The boys made a collection of shells and brought one home to keep.

For some reason we did not get any pictures of us with our new ginormous tent that we had to buy for our growing family. The boys loved every minute of their experience, from skipping rocks to making s'mores, they love camping.

Cute Nathan

So, I was feeling kind of guilty that Nathan has not gotten any professional pictures for a while, I did do professional pictures of Sam and Jacob when they were his age. Anyway, I decided he needed to have a special post all about him and his almost 18 month old self. He is such a special boy. So sweet and loves his big brothers. He likes to put on other peoples shoes, wrestle with daddy and the boys, sing, dance, read, tease his brothers and roll around the ground with a big smile on his face. He can say a couple of words, like Dad, Mom, Jakie, (he has a word for Sam but it sounds like "that"), dog, tree, ball etc.
We love our Nathan!

Halloween

The boys were so excited for Halloween this year, they dressed as Robin Hoods and Nathan was a karate kid. Here they are waiting to go out trick or treating.
We had fun celebrating Halloween by decorating pumpkins and having a Halloween party with our friends Hallie and Jason, unfortunately we did not get any pictures of the party because the battery on the camera died, but we had fun bobbing for apples, and eating donuts on a string.

Soon after Halloween was the boys 50th day of school so they got to dress up like they were from the 50's, they wore white t-shirts and rolled up jeans and slicked back their hair.Later the next week they wanted to dress as cowboys and so I had these shirts for them to wear and they passed around their one cowboy hat so they each got a turn to wear it.

Baby Girl

Yes, it is true, we are pregnant and having a girl, I am 20 weeks along now and the baby is due at the beginning of March. We have some very excited little boys here eager to meet their new baby sister. They have been praying for a baby sister for a couple of years now and so they were thrilled to know it was a girl. I will keep you updated more on baby #4 as the weeks go on.

Soccer

The boys started Soccer for the first time. It is so funny to watch all the little kids all chase after the ball. Both boys have each scored a goal and helped their team a lot with assists.


Taking a water break
Nathan thinks he is such a big boy and he wants to go out and play too. Here he is chasing after the ball to kick it. His new favorite word is ball and he carries the boys soccer boys around the house yelling "ball" and then putting it down and kicking it. It is so cute to watch.

Starting Kindergarten and other news

Samuel and Jacob have started school and have loved it. Sam has Mrs. Chippi, and Jacob has Mrs. Huettel (who is replacing his teacher Mrs. Williams who just had a baby.) They love PE, art, gym, recess, lunch, and centers the most. But they do fit in actual school work too.


Getting on the bus
Waiting for the bus


Nathans hair was starting to look like this...

So we decided he needed a haircut, so this is the final result. I learned that cutting a wiggly one year olds hair is hard.Here are my little guys ready for church, aren't they adorable.

We have had picture day already too, and this was what the boys looked like in the morning, I am hoping their actual pictures look something similar and that they don't have crazy hair or something.
Nathan was a little jealous of the boys new backpacks, so he decided to borrow one of their old backpacks. He is also decided to start walking more which is a big relief for me. A little note about Nathan, he LOVES shoes, he has only a few words, which are DAD, Mom, cheese, and shoes (I think he also says dog but it sounds a lot like Dad so I am not sure.) And these are the things he loves the most so I guess it is fitting. He also loves to jabber, he is so funny and I get stopped in the grocery store ALL the time from old ladies who want to talk to him because he is so vocal.

The Bees Knees

So we discovered this week that we had bees. A lot of bees. We had to call out a bee keeper to find out exactly how many we had and what damage they made. The guy was amazing he found the problem by feeling around for warm spots and listening for the bees. This is where he found the bees, luckily they were not in between walls or somewhere extremely difficult to get to them. However he did say they went back in this area about 5 feet. You can see where they are here because it is the section without insulation, it is hard to see the bees and comb because he was using a smoker.



Here he is vacuuming up the bees
Just a small piece of honeycomb that he pulled out. He pulled out 20 pounds of unusable honeycomb and honey and about 4 pounds of honey with comb that was usable.


More comb
This is the comb he gave us, we extracted the honey from this and got a mason jar full. It was a crazy thing, we still can't believe we had literally hundreds of bees living in our wall and under our floor.

Samuel and Jacob turn 5

The boys were so excited to turn 5. They asked for bikes and they got them, they obviously didn't get to ride on them until they saw them in person in Texas, but they did get some bike helmets from their grandma which they had to wear right away.

Aunt Karen made them some fun capes
This is the wonderful Dinosaur Train cake Grandma Jane made for the boys, isn't it awesome


The boys wanted all of their family that could make it at their party. Uncle Richard, Uncle Braden, and Aunt Karen and their families joined us along with Moma and Papa, Grandma Jane and Boppus, Uncle Evan, Aunt Sarah and Aunt Audrey, and some of our friends, Liz and Rob and Wendy and James and their families.
We played games, ate food, ate cake, and played at the park.




The boys loved their birthday party and were so excited to have all of their cousins with them, thanks everyone for coming out.