Christmas 2011

Christmas this year was a week long celebration for us! Since we were going to NC for Christmas we decided to do Christmas at our house on the 21st. The above picture is of the girls waiting to unwrap their presents. Vaishali is obviously giddy with excitment and Anjali is unhappily waiting.

Brother is always happy to help out the lovies. See how sweet he is, too busy paying attention to the girls to attend to his own gifts. The girls were so funny ripping into their presents. Anjali got so excited with the first one and yelled with excitment "thank you, you welcome" and Vaishali kept saying "rip it" in a frog like voice each time she ripped off a piece of paper.

After the girls woke up from the nap, and daddy had finished putting all the toys together, Anjali ran into the play room and said "new toys awesome".

Later that evening we had some friends over and decorated cookies and had pizza.

The girls had their first school Christmas party and me, daddy, and Jacob all went. It was adorable.

Here Anjali is showing us the snowman she made. Doesn't she look serious? Such a big girl at school!

Poor Vaishali wasn't feeling good that day. The following night we found out at the emergency room that she had pneumonia. She still wanted to show her class Christmas tree, just precious!

Check out this cool cat running away with brother's hat then striking a cool pose. Love it!

Daddy helping Anjali decorate her cookie.

Vaishali decorating her cookie and brother even decided to do one too, lol he IS still a kid.

Okay, and this next one is a tad late but I didn't realize we never uploaded the Halloween pics. I couldn't just leave these adorable pics out though.

Oh my, I know aren't they the cutest things? Vaishali is Snow White and Anjali is Little Red Riding Hood. Jacob was way too busy with his friends down the street for me to get a picture of him in his costume but he was a Jester (some crazy looking clown/joker thingy). That night we attended our church fall festival with a very big trunk or treat and lots of bouncy houses to play in, and we finished it off with the kids favorite buffet place, Golden Coral. It was a fun night.

Anjali didn't like Red Riding Hoods Hood, but sissy did for a minute. Well, maybe just for this photo op, hehe.

Frosty the Snowman...

Frosty the Snowman is a cartoon I watch EVERY year, even if my boys refuse to watch it with me. Lucky for me my lovies will and this was their first year to really watch it. This year I bought the movie so that we could watch it when we wanted instead of waiting for it to come on tv and not have to deal with commercials. It was a fun snowman event. We watched Frosty and made snowman cookies. I think tomorrow we'll do a snow flake art activity. Vaishali would rather play but Anjali enjoyed the cartoon while sissy jumped on mommy and daddy. After our snowman cookies they were both jumping on us. I think daddy may have even suffered an injury or two. I'm still a little bummed that Jacob would rather play video games with friends than enjoy these wonderful little kid moments. I mean really, how on earth can you feel like it's Christmas time if you don't watch the traditional Christmas cartoons with your family? Hmm, I wonder if I enjoy these cartoons more than they do, hehe?

Having snowman cookies with daddy. Yum!

Awe, I love that they will sometimes take time out of their busy play day to sit with mommy! I adore these sweet moments and knowing how fast the boys have grown up, I hug them so tight and try to hold on just a minute longer. Vaishali is busy climbing on my back and then rolling off and giggling, hehe.

Playing in the Leaves

Yesterday the weather was so good we spent most of the day outside. This was the first time the girls ever played in the leaves, and man were they dirty afterward. We played all the way upto dinner time and then ended up going out to eat. When we were getting out of the car to go into CiCi's Anjali said "hungry". I told her we were going to eat pizza, and she rubbed her belly and said "pizza good". We had tons of fun in CiCi's Anjali ate a lot and sang really loud along with the music playing in the restaurant. Vaishali likes any kind of dipping sauce and had a bit too much marinara sauce. The girls are starting to decide what THEY want to do and are not much interested in what you want them to do so, when daddy said it was time to go, and they were playing in the little arcade area they said "NO" and through a fit. Then we went next door to Gamestop where Anjali seen some blinking lights and she screamed "cool" and "wow". I'm not sure where she learned cool from but it was funny.

Anjali

Vaishali

Before cake we had lunch and guess what Vaishali had with her chicken.....ketchup! That cheesy grin, priceless.

Birthday Party Pictures

Vaishali feeding some cake to daddy. She's so motherly.

Anjali LOVES cake and often wont eat breakfast and will ask for cake. Sometimes when she's hungry she'll start saying something like pizza and rub her belly and say "mmm mmm tastey".

Jacob observing from the top of the tree house.

Birthday Number 2

Oh my where did the time go?! My babies are not really babies any more. This has been the fastest two years of my life, but I have to say 2 is a lot of fun. You're doing some of the silliest things. I love to listen to you talk and some of my favorites right now are "I wuv you, you funny, and Anjali's oh man!". It's so cute to see you two playing together like when you chase each other around a room and when Vaishali feeds her sissy, so very precious. You started a two day a week preschool class a few months ago and it was hard, but now you go to school and come back saying "school fun". A few words you have learned at school in the past few months are: awesome, mine, cake, and wow. You both love animals and like saying all of the sounds that the animals make. When you wake up in the morning I often find you jumping up and down in your cribs and giggling. You both love your brothers dearly. You both love to sing many songs but Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and ABCs are your favorites, and you've both been counting to 10 in perfect order for a couple of months. Happy Birthday to my precious and adorable lovies!!!

* I did not take this picture of Vaishali, uncle Samir did, I would never allow her to come this close to a coke! lol

A Fall Weekend

The weather was great and we enjoyed a few fall activities this weekend. On Friday evening we took the kids to a pumpkin forest, pumpkins are layed out in the woods, to pick a pumpkin. I was hoping for small pumpkins but all of them were huge. Above is Anjali picking her "punkin" as she likes to call it.

Our attempt to get them together. Hmm, I'll say it was a pretty good one, they're fast these days and don't enjoy sitting still for any length of time.

I love this, Vaishali saying "it big". She is Momma's bionic baby. No pictures of Jacob, I guess he's too big for pumpkin patch pictures. He did however, pick out the biggest pumpkin he could find, of course. This year we're not going to carve our pumpkins. For one thing we just don't have the time and they don't last very long. Jacob and I will be painting the pumpkins this week and that way the girls can enjoy them too.

On Saturday night we watched Zookeeper; a movie we've been eagerly waiting for. Today we finished our fall weekend with a nice cool weather lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup and pumpkin bread for dessert. I do love fall but I can't wait for the Christmas season!

School Days

Jacob hard at work on math, his favorite subject.

The girls have been working a lot on colors and counting. Here they're sitting in their high chairs working with counting bears while brother sits at the kitchen table doing math. The girls can count perfectly 1-10 and know most of the ABC song.

Awww would you just look at my new tutu and my adorable pig tails.

Vaishali's tutu. She enjoys posing for pictures.

Hummingbird

Can you see it? That is a humming bird that got stuck in our garage. The poor thing kept hitting it's head up against the ceiling trying to get out and Nesh had to come help it out. Every once in a while we see one come to our humming bird feeder by the deck but they flutter away so quickly. I think they're beautiful.

Petting Zoo

Last weekend we found this great little petting zoo about 30 minutes from home. Since Bubby was home for the weekend we wanted to go out and took all of the kids there. The girls LOVED it! Recently they're so into saying all of the animals and the sounds they make. This happens to be one of the favorites, the "moo cows".  And yes they are sporting Carolina Panthers jerseys. They are after all Carolina girls, so cute!

This place was really cool and many of the animal were not caged. The deer were just out roaming around and were not affraid to walk up to you.

I have always been pretty freaked out by deer but surprisingly these were walking right along side us and didn't bother me.

Felt Story Board

Last week I made this felt story board for a Language and Literature project. I made the board by using a piece of foam core board wraped in a large piece of felt with hot glue. Next, I made these story board pieces to go along with the story called The Little Story of Babaji. Well actually I can't draw stick figures so I had my very artistic dear husband draw them and then I cut them out. The requirments for the project was that it was from a diffrent culture and I chose this story because the setting is in India and I can use this with my girls a little later to retell the story. Now I'm dreaming up all kinds of other stories that I can make flannel story pieces for. I'm sure Nesh will be so excited.

Fall Morning

Ahh, the weather has been so nice and we've been enjoying some time outside. It wasn't time for lunch yet and the girls were busy playing on the deck so we had our morning snack outside picnic style.

Lately Anjali's favorite thing to do is color. Here we are coloring an old box that they also love to hide in. She also colored a FEW other things on the deck, sorry daddy!

Costume Review

Fall is officially here and Halloween and fall festivals are coming fast. Even though my boys are 15 and 12 they still love to dress up in costumes this time of year. This month I'm doing a review of children's costumes. I like this site for costumes because it has everything you're looking for this time of year and even more than that I like the historical costumes which can be great learning tools for home educators. I chose this pilgrim boy costume for Jacob to use during Thanksgiving time for our history unit. To my surprise he actually thinks it's pretty cool and is looking forward to making up a skit to go along with our unit for Thanksgiving day.
 He still hasn't decided which costume he wants to wear for our church fall festival at the end of the month but the website makes it easy to chose a category of costumes to look at every time he changes his mind.