Ruth and her class did an end-of-the-year dance recital at school.  Each grade did a different style of dance.  The first graders did Hawaiian-style dances.  Ruth was awesome!

Here's Ruth.  Feeling Pretty. :)

Ronan Rocks!

This is Ronan. He figured out how to hit the toy with both hands. So cute!

My Children Rock

They learned to dance from me.

Dr. Horrible has a Ph.D. in horribleness!

My VERY VERY MOST VERY favorite movie right now is called "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog." It was made by Joss Whedon (who also made Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly (another of my all-time favorites)). Neil Patrick Harris (who I will always remember ad Doogie Howser) and Nathan Fillion (who won my heart in "Firefly") are so good in it. ANYWAY, so I found it on Hulu.com (a very good way to watch TV with out actually paying for cable) and I've been watching it over and over and over again. I have become so in love with it that I feel very strongly that if I fail at sharing it with my friends, I have failed at life. So here it is. All 45 minutes of it courtesy of hulu.com. PLEASE TRY IT! If you don't love it by the end of the first song, I give you permission to turn it off.

Christmas Video

With Christmas only a few days away, I've been thinking a lot more about what Christmas is all about. This movie is a perfect way to express that. A friend of mine in my ward here in Lubbock wrote the words and music for the song in this video. I always tear up when I hear it, I love it so much. (The crying is probably because of the pregnancy...but the movie really is good).



Merry Christmas!

Ruth has an announcement...

Spontaneous Saturday--Videos!

Ruth is learning to write!

First Day -- Ruth's Version

Ruth's First Day

Tuesday was Ruth's first day in Preschool! We've been very excited for this day to come and Ruth was not disappointed. She goes on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am to 2:30pm. When I dropped her off I told her I had to go and she said "Ok, bye mom!" The whole day I sat thinking about what she was doing at that moment (I have a schedule) and imagined her saying "I want my mommy!" But apparently that did not happen. When I picked her up I asked her if she missed me and she said "No, not really". It made me a little sad, but I'm happy that she likes school. Gareth and I were able to hang out a lot. It was nice to be able to give him some one-on-one time. Since Ruth's preschool is in a church (South Plains Church of Christ) they spend a bit of time every day learning and singing songs about God. I'm happy that she can spend her first year of school learning all the bible stories and about how her Heavenly Father loves her.

Ruth wanted to tell you all about her day in her own words but the video wouldn't upload...I will try again later.

Races

Today we decided to take a trip out to our front porch for some chalking. I guess Ruth has seen something of the Olympics because she immediately decided to make some racing tracks. Gareth has never turned down an opportunity to race his sister so off they went!


When they got bored with the first track, Ruth made a second.

Gareth thought about helping but got distracted by all the different colors.

Dancing

Ruth and Gareth love to listen to music and dance. This time we were listening to a song from a Veggie Tales movie.

Happy 4th!

Yesterday was a fun little holiday. Ruth and I went to the parade in downtown Lubbock. I was kind of disappointed with the parade. It seemed like a long line of advertisements; there were no floats! It seemed to me like all the local businesses signed up to be in the parade and they got their cars, put advertisements on them and figured that was enough. Flagstaff's parades are similar but they made it fun by throwing out candy by the handfuls. Not Lubbock. Ruth was pretty disappointed about that. We're glad we went though. It was nice to see all the Lubbock-ites gathered together. They all seem like pretty decent folk.

Here we are waiting for the parade to start...Ruth is very weird.

The parade begins!

This was the most entertaining part. There were lots of horses in the parade. The fun part was watching them poo...

...and then watching the street cleaners immediately following clean up their poo.

Here is Ruth at the parade...




After the parade we went over to some of our new friends' house for a bbq. It was nice to be able to spend the holiday with more than just our little family. I didn't take any pictures because we were having too much fun to stop for pictures. Ruth and her little friends spent the afternoon splashing in the little pool and running around like crazies in the backyard. After the bbq we dropped off the boys (party poopers) at home and Ruth and I took off to find the fireworks. The fireworks were supposed to start at 10pm. We got there at 9 and waited until 10:45 before they finally started. It was very much worth the wait. The fireworks were right above us and they were loud and beautiful.

Here is Ruth waiting for the fireworks...


All-in-all we had a pretty good holiday. We are very grateful that we live in a land where we feel safe and happy. Happy Birthday America!

Catching up...

My phone has been having trouble hooking up to my computer so I have a few pictures and a video I made a while ago that I need to put on here. Hope you don't mind!

Here is a picture of Gareth being silly...

This is Gareth at the library waiting for Ruth to get out of story time...

This is a video that Ruth made a few weeks ago after an especially large snowstorm...

Gareth turns One

Our little man Gareth turned one on Sunday. Even with the extra day this year, both Havilah and I agree that not enough time has passed for the boy to be a year old already. It seems like just a few months ago, he looked like this:and now he is crawling and using sign language to ask for things and starting to stand up on his own and getting ready to walk. We have the same feelings about Ruthie too, and she turns FOUR this year. Being a parent is one of the most awesome things in the world, but sometimes, when you look at your little ones growing up, it can be a bit depressing. Especially when you consider that they will be TEENAGERS sooner than you realize. I just pray that they will turn out like their mother and be sweet and obedient and NOTHING like their father. He was a punk.

My little gamer

Here is Ruthie playing Go, Diego Go on the Wii, all by herself.



I ask you, has any father had as much reason to be so proud of his child? I think not!

*Sniff sniff* Soon my little girl will be strafing n00bs on Halo 5...... children grow up so fast.

Old Memories

We were going through our old pictures and we found some video we shot of Ruth when she was the same age that Gareth is now (11 months). She was just learning to walk...

Another Flick

Ruth wanted to make another movie for Santa. I recorded this with my phone. At about the 2 minute mark, I got a text message so when you hear "Mom, did you hear that?" that is just my phone telling me about the text... hope it's not too confusing.

A Movie

This is Ruth talking to the world.

Getting Dizzy

As I mentioned earlier, Gareth is thinking about crawling. He's not doing it yet, but he's getting close. He is like an inch worm; he'll get up on all fours, then fall forward onto his belly and repeat those motions until he reaches his destination. I tried to get him to do it on camera, but he got a little confused. In the background you can hear Ruth playing with her favorite coloring book- it has lots of animals and letters in it.