Olivia has been asking to go ice skating for awhile, so on Friday we went to Ice Line in West Chester and gave it a try. I can not skate, Earl can. Olivia seemed to really take to it well. Ethan had trouble keeping his feet together, but he did well too.

getting ready to go out on the ice

December

I am not sure where last week went, not to mention the month of December. We did however take a lot of pictures (when I remembered the camera any way).

Olivia and Ethan both enthusiastically sat on Santa's lap. I don't know if you remember pictures from the past two years, but they were usually one or both crying. This year I had to tell it was time to get off of his lap because there were other children waiting!
We went to get our Christmas tree on the absolute coldest day before Christmas. All of the uncut trees (we usually cut our own), were covered in ice so we had to buy a pre-cut tree. We picked a tree in record time. I didn't take to many pictures, it was to cold to take my mittens off!!!

Celebrating Christmas with Great-grandpop Carl and Grammy Hough, Aunt Carol and Uncle Frank, Aunt Sue and Uncle Leo, Pat and Mom-mom and Pa-Pa.

Ethan has been wearing "Big Boy" underpants for about 2 months now and doing a great job. Just in the past 2 weeks he tells us when he has to go and we really haven't had any more accidents, before we were just putting him every hour or so.

He is very proud of himself and we are too!

Olivia sang a solo at her Christmas program at pre-school, she was a little timid.

Decorating our Christmas tree.

Okay so when my sister and I were kids decorating our Christmas tree, every year our parents would tell us how nice tinsel used to be and it hung so nicely and you reused it every year until it was to short to put on the tree any more and blah, blah, blah. They also taught us, as I thought everyone was taught that you put one piece of tinsel on at a time on every branch. After Earl and I were married I learned with our first Christmas tree that not everyone did this. It was the only time in the 6 years we have been married that we put tinsel on the tree. Until this year! I found myself telling Olivia and Ethan (after banning Earl from the Tinsel) that you place on strand on every branch. Well it is apparently like Father like Daughter.

Olivia's Tinsel placing (Just like her DAD!)

Ethan's Tinsel placing (Shows promise!)

My tinsel placing (as it should be)

Ethan is all set for tools. He now shows Daddy how to use his

Everything on his work bench MUST be exactly as you see it here or he has to fix it!! Seriously, don't rearrange his tools or you're in trouble!

Santa brought Olivia a big girl bike and helmet!

We had a great Christmas. We were able to spend time with all of our love ones. The weekend before Christmas we went to Grandmom and Pop-pop Millie's and saw everyone there and had a great time playing the Wii. Unfortunately I forgot my camera! I forgot it again when we celebrated Christmas with my mom's side of the family. I am going to have to do better.

Random pictures

It has been awhile since I have posted any pictures, so here are some random pictures.

Ethan helping Pop-pop work on the new floor.
Playing with Unkie Ed after Thanksgiving dinner!

Aren't we cute and angelic!

Hanging out with cousins on Black Friday.

Kyler, Ethan and Jake being boys

We decided to decorate our little maple tree out front for the birds. We made orange slices and covered pine cones with birdseed. Ethan and Olivia both enjoyed doing it. We then hung them all up on our little tree (and I mean little). The tree looked really cute. However a day or so later we noticed that not only was the birdseed gone but so were the pine cones. Apparently a very hungry squirrel made off with the entire pine cone. We still had fun making the ornaments.

posing for pictures with Dexter.

Halloween Fun!

Olivia's school went to the orchard in the beginning of October. They had a hayride, picked pumpkins and apples and then made cider!



There was a play area at the end. As you can tell Ethan was in heaven!

We made some pumpkin crafts. The kids had a lot of fun making them.

Here is Olivia's pumpkin. She said she was making it to look like Aunt Kari. So I asked her what made her pumpkin look like Aunt Kari? Her response was the red freckles!!

Pumpkin Carving

Now who is going to put their hand in there and pull out the gooey stuff??!!

Ethan wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty!

Monkey see, Monkey do.

The finished product

Trick-or-Treat

Ethan and Olivia were very excited about Halloween this year. Olivia wanted to be a witch. A nice witch. Ethan decided to be a cow. Not just any cow, a Holstein cow. His costume was really neat, it was a hand me down. He absolutely loves it.

This was the only picture I could get of his cute little tail that I made for his costume.

more pictures from this weekend

This is a little out of order, But our second stop on Saturday was at the Mast Farms on Rte 23 in Morgantown. They have corn mazes, animals, hay mountains, a straw pit, swing sets, face painting and I think that is only about half of what was there!

Checking out the animals before getting started!

Now where do we go?

Ethan getting a birds eye view!

The look out tower in the middle of the maze
Climbing the hay mountain

Daddy and Ethan taking a break after the long maze!

Refreshed and onto the bouncy ball maze!

Face painting



Our second hayride of the day. It was getting late in the day and the lighting was really pretty.

We had a great time and went home very tired and dirty!!