The Demise of Santa...

It happened...Santa's secret is out of the bag for Quinn.  As Jim was saying goodnight to him he grabbed Jim's face and said "I want to ask you something and I really really want you to tell me the truth". After repeating that he "REALLY" wanted to truth he asked,"At Christmas time, do you and mom go thoughtfully think about what we would like and sneak them into the house and pretend that Santa came? or does Santa really bring presents?". and by the way, "I really want to know the truth.". 

What do you say to that!? After asking if he really did want to know the truth, Jim spilled the Christmas beans. 

Afterward Quinn said, "Good I am glad that someone who is thinking thoughtfully about what we would really like for Christmas and doing something kind for us is bringing presents instead of someone who just hops down the chimney, tosses out a LEGO set and then hops back into his sleigh to go to the next house". 

We will see how long this remains just between the 3 of us...

ps- "Oh by the way, it's the same thing for the Easter Bunny right?"

2011 in review

The collage below shows one picture from each month of 2011 (with an extra from June masking the lack of ANY pictures from September!).  It has been a great year. 2 people said the marathon driving vacation was the best part of the year, one person said visiting Lego Discovery Center was the best and the last person said that playing Fling Smash on the new Wii was the highlight. I am sure you can not possibly guess who's was who's.  :)

Wish you all a happy and healthy 2012.

Here we come a caroling... year 4

Every year I look forward to the winter solstice.  Being the day with the least amount of day light of the whole year, I am always excited when it comes-because it only gets better from there. The other reason I look forward to the solstice is because our super awesome friends the Landis' help us carry on our caroling tradition that started on a whim 4 years ago. This year we set a few records with our adventures. It was the warmest it has ever been so far, there was no snow on the ground for the 1st time, we sang to more houses than we have ever been able to hit before, and we caroled via Skype!

I hope everyone has something they are looking forward to this holiday season! Wishing we could carol to all of you.

Beauty of Fall

 I love fall in our state. I love these 2 boys too...Enjoy  the beauty of the season.

Training Camp...

In the past 12 months Nolan has chosen to pledge his football allegiance to the Cincinnati Bengal.  When summer came and it was time to choose his one camp to attend, he chose football camp.  He has officially become a football fan and we love it. When he found out  a few weeks ago that he had an ex-NFL player living a few houses away he could not wait to head over and ask the guy to show him a "few moves".  So for the past 2 weeks, Nolan has put on his football gear, tucked his Hawkeye football under his arm and knocked on this guy's door only to be disappointed again and again when no one answered. Yesterday however he had success!  The man was SO nice and came out and threw some balls with Nolan, complimented him on his awesome throwing arm and great moves. Nolan was on cloud 9 and came home to tell Jim not that he had gotten to throw balls for an ex-NFL receiver but that he had gotten a "new throwing arm".  What a great experience to end his summer break with!