Christmastime Is Here!

Trimming the Tree

Favorite ornament: a basketball & sneakers

 

Visit from St. Nick

Nativity Scene that St. Nick brought to Grandma & Grandpa's

Nemo!  James is obsessed.

Giving Nemo a kiss.  Shortly after this, he wiped his snot on Nemo.  They're best friends.

A new truck.

vroom, vroom.

Finding Nemo on Blue Ray

 

Festival of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo

I can't put my arm down!

 

Meeting Santa

Pre-Candy Cane

Post-Candy Cane

Fun Times

Wearing Mama's Indiana Night Shirt

Aunt Jill & Uncle Joey's Wedding

 On November 3rd, Matthew, James, and I (and the baby!) were blessed to be a part of another beautiful wedding: that of Matthew's sister Jill and her beau, Joey.

The bride was walking on air.

James fell in love with the band.  He stood in front of the stage for about an hour and a half, dancing, stomping, and eating an apple.

By the end of the night, he was one tired little boy!

But Aunt Jill was all smiles.  Best Day Ever. :)

Halloween - Better Late than Never!

I know we're well into the Christmas season, but I wanted to share a few pics from our Halloween this year.

Carving pumpkins was a team effort.  

James drew on the faces (with some help from Mama)

Dada removed the seeds

And both of my boys did the carving 

(ok, it was actually just Dada)

While Mama took the pictures

 

After carving pumpkins, we headed to the toyroom for a little football action

(who says football is just for Thanksgiving?)

We had a lot of fun carving the pumpkins and watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, but James was not so keen on wearing a costume this year.  We came up with what we thought was a great costume for the little guy: Baby Einstein.  With his wild Einstein-ish hair, we thought it would be a perfect fit for the little man.  I taped the letters "E=mc2" on one of his sweaters (which he wore proudly to Boo at the Zoo) and bought him a fake mustache.

 However, on Halloween night, James refused to put on the mustache or wear his sweater.  He screamed anytime I came near him with either of them.  He is starting to get very picky about what clothes he wears...

At least he did sport his pumpkin socks that Aunt Steph gave him

And he later ran around wearing my witch's hat

It was cold an rainy on Halloween, so we decided just to stay in and hand out candy

James had a great time seeing all the kids in their costumes and even meowed at a little girl dressed up as a cat.  Hopefully he'll be a little more into costumes next year :)

Mr. Stengel Goes to Washington

Back in mid-October, I participated in the Breast Cancer 3-Day walk in Washington, D.C.  The walk fell over my Grandpa (aka Pa) and Grandma's birthdays, so we asked Pa if he would like to join us and celebrate his 90th birthday in the nation's capital. 
We are so glad he said yes!

 

The walk was amazing, as usual (a big thank you/shout out to all my donors!!), but I actually had more fun exploring the museums with these three guys:

 

We all had our favorite things.  Pa's was the the Air and Space Museum 

(big surprise there :).

 James loved running around in the National Mall

 But in the Air and Space Museum, he found something he liked even more.  

Any guesses to what it was?

 Sputnik! 
As soon as we walked into the museum, he started yelling "Ga!Ga!Ga!" (his word for ball) and pointing up :)

 I liked the First Ladies exhibit in the American History Museum and the National Galleries of Art, although I'm not sure we'll be allowed back in after Pa touched a painting by Monet (and got reprimanded by the security guard, to which Pa muttered under his breath that he highly doubted it was an original) and Matthew asked a different guard if anything had ever been stolen from there.  I'm sure our pictures now reside at the front desk under the "No Admittance" list.

 Matthew liked running around with James and the new Star Spangled Banner exhibit

(he lived in DC for a month a couple of years ago, so he had seen most of the museums already).

 Despite the loooong car ride (and the debates about which route to take), we all had a great time.

Long overdue update

Things have been a bit busy since we last spoke.  We went to Washington DC for the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk, celebrated Halloween, celebrated Aunt Jill's wedding, and just got back from celebrating Thanksgiving in Southern Indiana (the hard drive on our computer also crashed, which helped contribute to the lack of posts around here lately).

We also got to see more of this little one, baby numero dos:

(please forgive the poor quality of the pictures)

I had my 20 week ultrasound on 11/16.  Everything looked perfect!  Little baby even posed for us, sticking out his/her elbows and putting his/her hands behind his/her head.  And if you couldn't tell from that last statement, we also successfully did not find out the sex of the baby.

Matthew wasn't able to get off work for the appointment, but he did get to see the little one on a dvd that the ultrasound tech recorded.  We are very thankful that the little babe is right on track development-wise.  10 fingers and 10 toes!

Thanks to Uncle Matt for babysitting James during my appointment and congratulations on changing your first diaper.  As much as I tried to talk him into it beforehand, James did not go #2 while Uncle Matt was watching him. :)