2011 Family pictures

Ok, I'll make 2012 a better year than 2011. Given that I only had two posts in 2011 it shouldn't be too difficult. I'll start off by sharing some family pictures we took back in December. They turned out pretty good - we went to a park near our house, there wasn't a lot of color left in the scenery so Suzi got creative and added a lot of color to us!

Dorothy's 4th Birthday Party

Dotty turned 4 a couple weeks ago and as such we had her first official birthday party. It was just her and a few friends but she had fun. We (really meaning Suzi) had a "Spa Party" where the girls got avocado facials, got a pedicure and manicure including very girlish paint. I'm not sure if the 4 year old girls really got it all, but at the end of the day they had fun.

Suzi even had special snacks, enough to feed an army, of tea sandwiches, crackers with apple and peanut butter, home-made strawberry lemonade etc.

I'm having fun..... really I am

Pinewood Derby

Henry participated (and really dominated) in his 2nd pinewood derby this past week. There were 19 cars racing and they had a series of 17 races where everyone got to race every other car on different tracks. Henry's car finished first in all the races except one where he thought it would be fun to race his car backwards! I forgot to take the camera so we didn't get shots of his excited antics during the races.

He really was much happier than this forced smile make him appear - he just loves to pose for pictures this way.

Closeup of his car and medal

Henry's car

Henry and Peter's Cars

Peter's Car

Christmas 2010

Christmas this year was really fun, I won't try to go into all the details but we did want to share a few pictures.

We did get the pictures of the kids taken - below are some of the best.

I could not resist adding Dotty's smile.

Suzi's tree looks perfect as usual

Suzi also made seven, yes count them seven, dresses this year. Of course the girls had Sunday dresses that were amazing. This is the front of Dotty's dress (of course it's all hand made, including the detail around the neck)

Here's the back of the dress

Scarlett's matching Dotty's

Dotty also made some fun matching dresses for the girls and the cousins.

(She made five dresses but we could not get all the girls to pose at the same time)

Halloween 2010 - costumes

This year we had some fun with the twins costumes - Garden gnomes! The funniest part was the way the kids loved their hats, and Charlie's walk was hilarious (yes, I know I should have gotten a video of that)

Dorothy's princess costume was really neat - until Henry hit her on the way to the church and her makeup started to run down her cheeks....

Halloween 2010 - pumpkins

The kids had a blast this year with the pumpkins. We're not too artsy so we got a kit with some templates and the kids were able to choose - and customize each template.

Of course Dotty had the creepy cat type pumpkin

Peter was very proud that he was able to do 90% of his pumpkin by himself

Henry did this one 100% by himself - nuff said

Why I love fall

Today during lunch I had the chance to go out to the backyard and play with the kids - luckily I remembered the camera and took some fun pictures!

Charlie loves playing with balls and being outside. He typically has a huge smile on his face while were outside, and screams when we drag him inside!

Waiting for the bus to come pick Dotty up for school - I love the color contrast with the stairs!

Dotty can be really cute when she try's