Nicole has been in preschool for two weeks now, and feels so comfortable with her class and is excited to go! She has also learned many class members' names and when playing with her toys at home she will name her cars with their names. I can learn a lot by listening (for example, Aidan apparently runs down the hall and the teacher has to ask the kids to stand still and wait while she gets him :-)
Nicole showing us her cubby.
For Thanksgiving we went over to the house of some great friends who had us over for Tday our first year here too. We both moved to NC about the same time and they are also from AZ.
Michael's diet for Thanksgiving was appalling as you might have guessed. Probably half of what he ate was marshmallows (supposed to be for the fondue) and a fourth this punch and another fourth...oh actually he ate a ton of this...Crunch n Munch (caramel popcorn). He seriously did not eat another thing all afternoon and evening. Marshallows, punch, caramel popcorn.
Nicole was quickly best friends with their Nicole and they were playing "chase," baseball, soccer, gymnastics, and Lite Brite together.
Their two dogs were at first sources of terror for my children, but by the time we left the dogs were terrified of my children. Especially Michael with a pot (don't ask). And no, of course no dogs were harmed by the visit of my children.
Their little puppy Mandy was just Jacob's size!
Jacob was the best baby and slept right through the Thanksgiving dinner!!
Proof that Nicole is not afraid of the "big" dog anymore!
Their two dogs were at first sources of terror for my children, but by the time we left the dogs were terrified of my children. Especially Michael with a pot (don't ask). And no, of course no dogs were harmed by the visit of my children.
Their little puppy Mandy was just Jacob's size!
Jacob was the best baby and slept right through the Thanksgiving dinner!!
Proof that Nicole is not afraid of the "big" dog anymore!
We braved the odds and took family pictures this year! One of the funny parts of this pic was that we had to take off our shoes for the white background and we discovered Michael had a huge hole in his sock and his big toe was sticking out! Luckily, Jacob's socks fit Michael and we left Jacob's feet out of the pic. Boys! Also for this pose, the photographer had me and Jim sit down first and of course Michael ran over to a fake tree and broke an ornament in .5 seconds. What else? Oh yes, can you see me restraining Michael from taking off? And trying to box Jacob in from crawling off? The funny part was trying to smile through it all so that camera could grab some pics!
You know you have good pictures when the photographers burst out laughing while reviewing the pictures... I think Nicole got a few good laughs right there!
Michael had this thing with being to close to Jacob (avoiding the hair grab) so we could only get a few shots of them together. All the while, the photographer's assistant was singing in this really high squeaky voice and waving around some stuffed animals trying to get them to LOOK. Crazy or not, it worked!
It seems pretty crazy looking at this picture and realizing that yes, I have three children and we are a family of five. Wasn't it just yesterday that I was trying to get Nicole to crawl by making a Cheerio trail on the carpet? Each night I think about the craziness and stress of the day and how I could be better with each of them...and inevitably I turn to thinking about despite the difficult parts of the stages they are going through, each of them is so very precious and I am soooooo blesssed to have such sweet, loving, and energetic children in my life. This is the best kind of craziness :-) 
This was our first pose and I thought Jim's face looked slightly like a harassed father :-) Kind of like "help...me..." :-) But maybe that was due more to Michael's inability to even remotely sit still that made it take three minutes for the camera to even click once! I think his heart must pump blood faster than ours, he simply LOVES to move.
I love how sweet Nicole and Jacob are, while Michael is simply chillin'.
Perhaps labeled "Personality never faileth"? 
