Santa was here!

Here's what our morning looked like until the batteries died on the camera!

The girls made a good haul, Santa must have heard their requests and Claire got her "Pee-Pee in the Potty Baby" and Maddie an enormous bin of Play-Doh and accessories.

Dance Class

This was from a few days ago. Maddie got to learn along with Claire's class before the Christmas break. This was her 2nd time dancing with the girls. If you've got 3 minutes, it's worth the watch! Claire's been doing some instruction at home, we think.

Number 3

Sooo...

I can't think of any clever or witty way to break this news so I'll just be out with it: WE'RE PREGNANT! Baby Number Three should be joining us sometime in mid- to late-July (July 17th is the technical due date). It's still very early, but any and all prayers are good so we thought we'd put the news out there. :)

We haven't told the girls yet because the nine-month countdown seems a little long for them. Or, at least, it's a long time for us to have to explain that no, the baby is not here yet. They will be excited, though, to know that one of their cribs is going to be in use again.

I've been feeling a bit sick with this one, so the blog has been suffering from a lack of attention (along with the girls, the cleanliness of my house, the quality and amount of food cooked by me, etc). Please bear with us! My next priorities are Christmas shopping and Christmas cards. Then hopefully things will start to settle down here and this baby will stop making me feel so yucky!

Altus Christmas spirit

We haven't been to see the Altus Christmas lights yet this year, but we've definitely begun to experience Christmas. The girls found their stockings filled on Dec. 6 (St Nicholas Day) and found some neat surprises in them (Maddie's favorite: an apple; Claire's favorite: books sent from Gramma). Later that morning we took the girls to see Santa at Phil's squadron's Christmas party. That evening Phil and I went to the grown-up's Christmas party and the girls got to play with a babysitter. Lots of fun, but we didn't take any pictures of us (of course).

Then this morning we packed up the family and headed downtown for the Altus Christmas parade. It was a beautiful day and there was quite a crowd. Claire and Maddie managed to score some candy, see a marching band, lots of floats, and some horses. And, of course, what's a Christmas parade without Santa? He brought up the end of the parade, riding high on a fire truck.

Click on any of the photos to see a few more!

Whew! Almost makes up for the lack of shopping around here...

Our big girls got big beds

We ordered Claire a REAL bed (twin-size) a few weeks ago. She had finally grown too big for her crib-turned-toddler-bed. During our quest to find her a bed, we decided to buy bunk beds that can also function as twin beds. This will (hopefully) maximize our options in whatever other crazy-small houses the Air Force deems perfect for us. So that means that Maddie got a new bed too. Rather than store her nice, new bed in the yucky garage, we decided to just take the plunge and put her in her big bed too. They've both done really well in their big beds, so I guess they're big girls now. The poor cribs are up in the attic for now...

Maddie's dance moves

Maddie really must have really paid a lot of attention to Claire's dancing. She was doing some early practice all on her own:

O Christmas Tree

We have an artificial tree. It's a little one, but we have a little house. Regardless, we couldn't turn down the opportunity to go cut our own tree at the local Sasse Family Tree Farm. They're located just north of here and stopped planting trees about 10 years ago when their wells ran dry (apparently baby pine trees need lots of water and Oklahoma is not known for its rain. Tornadoes, yes, but not much rain). I'm usually a tree-hugger, but these trees were getting cut this year anyway, so we might as well get one, right? We bundled up the girls and headed out early on the day after Thanksgiving to get one picked out before the crowds got all the good ones. Some photos of the adventure:

Before

Cutting

Decorating

It's ready for Christmas (and so are they)!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone out there has a very happy Thanksgiving holiday. We have a lot to be thankful for here. :)

Our big 4 year-old

Yep, our little girl turned four. How crazy is that? The really crazy thing is that she and I have the same birthday, but she keeps getting older while I stay the same age (somewhere around 29). Odd.

Anyway, Claire got a big dose of birthday this year because her actual birthday was Friday and her party was Saturday. And she got sung to at school on Thursday since that was as close to her birthday as they were going to get. Not a bad week for our Claire-bear! Here is the gratuitous slide show from her birthday at our house and then her cowgirl party at the gymnastics gym:

Little ballerina

I went to Claire's dance class on Wednesday and took a few photos of her in class. Madeline was really interested in the dance moves too. When Claire's teacher noticed Maddie doing the dances on the sidelines, she found an extra pair of tap shoes and Maddie got to tap with Claire's class. Boy was she excited! It's going to be a long wait for her until she turns 3 and can go to lessons too.

This weekend Claire had her dance "showcase". It's not exactly a recital (no costumes), but all of the classes got up on stage and did a few routines with the lights and a crowd watching. It's supposed to help them get over their stage fright for the real recital next spring. I don't know if it worked or not, but they sure were cute up there!

Leaves are falling

Ever since the first few leaves fell off the tree in our backyard Claire has been begging for a pile of them to jump in. Fortunately for her, Phil can't stand the leaves everywhere in our yard, so he grabbed a rake and made a big pile for her (well, it was actually for the lawn maintenance folks to come and vacuum up, but she was happy about it anyway). I think the two of them had a nice time.

Butterflies

I don't know if the local butterflies were overly cold, tired from migrating, or just super-friendly, but we had bunches of them on our basil this week. They were nice butterflies, too. One even perched on Claire's jeans for awhile and the girls were able to catch a few to look at.