Random December

The last month has been a whirlwind of projects.  Here are just a few snippets from our random life.

Ayvri has learned to climb the wall.  Truly, this little jumping bean can climb just about anything.  She's incredibly agile, has staggering energy and never runs out of creative ideas.  She loves to color, she is always talking to herself (as in, her mouth is moving, but no sound comes out), and she loves to sing.  

Kabe has lost four teeth this month - including both fronts and either side of the bottom front.  This gives him a very creepy smile.  Pair that with his inordinate ability to make creepy faces and we proudly present "Gollum".  He's an odd duck, but a great helper.  More than once he's donned his coveralls and gotten under the house to help with the work project.  What a good boy.

Leisl is a mover and shaker - she loves the Christmas lights and is such a sweetie.  I loved this picture of her fat little face and triple chin, the best kissing neck around.

Little Darla loves to make faces and recently Mom decided that she has enough hair to give her bangs - an actual haircut ensued and she looks so much like Ksenya at this age it's killing her mother.  What a sweet, silly girl (who is actually completely potty-trained now).

Ayvri's scary hair - a constant in our life of change :)

Once of Kabe's Mommy minutes - don't know why they are called Mommy minute because usually they are Daddy minutes, but these boys decided they needed to arm wrestle and Kabe found that by using his whole body and putting his feet on Dad's chest for leverage he could (almost) win.

Ksenya had her first orchestra concert and it was delightful.  She is working so hard and it is awesome to hear her practicing and developing this new talent.  She is, as always, a stellar sister and such a great helper for Mom and Daddy.  She's started "babysitting" and really does a great job when Mom and Dad are on the job-site.

This made me laugh.  We have this nativity so the kids can play with it and more often than not I find it set up like this - with all the pieces so tightly bunched around the manger I'm sure baby Jesus can't breathe, but it's sweet and I'm sure just the way they really felt that first Christmas night.

Sweet Leisl cut her first tooth and wasn't very sweet.  For about 3 days she was miserable.  Hopefully the rest won't be this bad.

And finally - our big project.  This is a picture of a big empty lot.  See that on the right - it's Daddy and a couple other guys, next to a pad of cement where now sits a little blue house.  That's right we bought a house (sort of). and took it apart and moved it to this empty lot and dug trenches for water and sewer and power and put the house back together and took the axels and tongues off and put it on jacks and plumbed the gas line and did about a million other things and after another week or two of work (and another million things) we'll be ready to move into our own little paradise.  It's been a long time in coming and we are super excited!  Brace yourself, in just a few weeks we'll have an actual address of our own.  This is the only thing the kids asked for, for Christmas this year and although we missed our target deadline, we're hoping for a New Year in our new house.