Pics of the week

Microblog:

Sledding, Christmas, Went to the Zoo, Hallie's 6th birthday

Christmas

Well, we made it through Christmas. For those of you that were curious, Zac had a great "first Christmas". The crazy thing was that it seemed like it was old hat for him. That seems to be the recurring theme with Zac. I have no idea how (or why) he does it, but more often than not, he handles new situations and events with tremendous ease.

For example: We went to see Santa a few weeks ago. I think we took all of 2 minutes to explain Santa to him. He barely seemed to be listening. And yet, when he saw Santa for the first time, he yelled across the mall "HI SANTA!" and then proceeded to run right to the front of the line to go and sit on his lap. I'm not even sure how he knew Santa was Santa. I don't remember describing him to Zac. Who knows.

Opening presents took very little explaining. (Of course!) But taking it one step further, he had little problems during the tough times when we made him wait to open presents. (Taking turns, waiting for photo opp's, etc.)

Christmas morning, he immediately noticed that there was something in his stocking, and quickly began asking for his presents.

Most importantly, he will be the first to tell you that Christmas is for "Jesus' Birthday". Once again, he acts like he's been doing this for years.... not months.

What a trooper. Merry Christmas little Zachy!

Quick story

Funny Zac story:

Katie wanted Zac to try on a new sweater (a common task around Christmastime!) whereupon Zac starts to whine:

"NO! It's not cool. It makes me look FAT!"

How funny is that?

One way to say Merry Christmas

Well, you may be able to tell that our kids enjoy dressing up. It seems that the kiddo's have been dressing up a little more than normal these past few weeks. I know it's a little weird (especially the boys in dresses), but it still makes me laugh.

Here's our version of "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree":











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A baseball star is born

BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!

Brothers 2.0

More Brother Pictures:

Brothers

Still working on the format change.  I'll get a round to it later.

In the mean time, I wanted to simply state how wonderful it is that my two boys get along so well.  In fact, as I type this blog entry, I can hear big "thumping" from upstairs.  Their newest thing has been (not so subtly) sneaking out of their room and going into mom and dad's bed.  It's cute at the end of the night to find the two of them sleeping together (sometimes holding hands) in our bed.  

A parent of 2 or more kids knows the joy that comes when your kids get along.  (and the corresponding stress of when they DON'T get along).  But the absolute best thing is when your are all-out belly laughing with each other.  We seem to catch our boys doing that more and more.

Life and stuff

So apparently, Katie has abandoned me.... speaking in a "blog" metaphorical sense, that is.

And now I'm left here all alone. Having to blog by myself. And it's already been a week since my last post.

I'm going to try really hard to get this thing going again. But I'm thinking that the theme needs to change. An "adoption blog" just doesn't seem to hit the point here anymore. I really can't emphasize enough how "normal" everything is with Zac. We certainly have our moments, but it's nothing close to what the adoption books were preparing us for. In fact, this past week, Zac has repeatly won the "best kid" award in our house.

NOTE: The "best kid" award is nothing more than Katie and I comparing notes at the end of the day after the kids are in bed. We don't tell the kids the ranking and it does not impact the amount of food or love that we give them the next day. It usually goes something like this:

Katie: Man, Zac was sweet today
Ryan: Yea, and Hallie was completely NOT sweet today
Katie: So I guess it was Zac, then Jake, then Hallie today
Ryan: Indeed, Zac wins the "best kid award" today
Katie: Yea, but he was still a turd yesterday.
Ryan: Indeed...

So anyway, I was thinking that the theme needs to be something like "Fun Family". And then I can try to blog the most outragous, fun thing that we did that particular day.

I'd be open to creative titles for this new format. Feel free to post your comments. Perhaps it's even time for a template change...