a nice day

Gabe's 3 year old picture with the elephant
Flying a kite at the Rockwall harbor this evening




Feeding the ducks


Custard at Culvers

more various (Christmas and zoo)

Here is one of the aprons that I made for my nieces Delaney and Irah. It is fancy nancy material (which they love). I put the vinyl on the material so it could be used as an art apron and be easily wiped off.

And here is Delaney modeling the apron after opening it.
Here is Ross after receiving his new bike for Christmas
And Irah also with her bike.
Don't look at these too closely. They are awfully blurry. First time using the camera on my phone...yeah, I'll blame it on that.
Gabe at the zoo. He was VERY excited about feeding the giraffe.
Look at that tongue coming out!
Peek a boo!
On Safari. =)

a variety from the last month or so

These'll be some random pictures followed by another post with random pictures. Life has been kind of random lately, plus I've put this off for far too long and I have lots of pictures. PLUS, I FINALLY figured out how to get the pictures off my phone. The first picture below is a recent pic Nathan took of Gabe and the cat. Gabe does love Linus, but he has lately been talking a lot about getting a dog. =) Not a great pic, but cute, nonetheless.
Here is Gabe's "new" train table and new poster that he got for Christmas. His room is really shaping up.
Playing with some of his Christmas presents.
Lots of game time since Christmas (Candy Land, chutes and ladders, hi ho cherrio, and this cars game)
Rolling the dice...
Last weekend, we went to a free trial of "soccer tots". Here Gabe is using his foot to "pick up" cones that were on their side.

This was part of a little obstacle course that the kids did.
Mostly he just wanted to roll around in the soccer balls.
We had a little get together on Sunday with some friends and I made some desserts using some of the fun stuff I got for Christmas, such as a cupcake cookie cutter. =)
And I also got a cakeball cook book, so I made some cupcake cakeballs to match. It was fun!
We did get a little snow on Sunday. You can get a glimpse of it in this picture.

Big Boy Bed!

"Testing" out his new big boy bed (is it tough enough to withstand the jump test? Let's hope so!)
Reading a story before bed. We had to take out the rocking chair to make room for the bed and the train table...so the floor it is!
Here he is asleep on his first night (with his gazillion buddies). Yes, it was dark in there, we have a great flash!
Thanks Nana and Popaw for his first "big boy" bed!

Christmas and cookies

First fire of the year
Gabe's first "Christmas present". He got this train table from the family that I work for (used). It will eventually go in his room, but we just put it here for today. In his words, he was "so cited!" He even did a crazy little dance when we said we were going to bring it in the house. I wish I would have gotten that on video!
Making Christmas cookies!!! Gabe helped to make the sugar cookies...
...then cut them out...


...then decorate them!
And then eat them! This was "Bob the tomato".
Then decorate some more. =)

Heard Museum

A while ago I won some tickets on the radio for the Heard Museum in McKinney. It is a semi-small science museum and wildlife sanctuary. We had never been there before. Our tickets expired at the end of this year, so we figured this was probably our last weekend to go! Gabe has been asking to go to the "dinosaur museum" for quite awhile. This was his favorite part of the whole thing...the dinosaur dig sand pit. He would have been happy to stay there all day. I forgot the camera, so all these were taken with my cell phone.


They had nine life-sized, moving, "talking" dinosaurs! We didn't know that they moved or made noise until we got there. Gabe did NOT like that they made noise. He startled every time they growled. I think they were a little too life-like for him. He wanted to keep moving so they wouldn't "get him". None-the-less, he enjoyed it. He said the dimetridon (sp?) was his favorite.


We managed to get a few smiles out of him. =) Afterwards, we found out (thanks to the GPS!) that there was a Culvers just 2 miles away. On the way home, we stopped at a local college to see some of our relatives (Jeremy, Angela, and Trevor) who live a couple hours away, but were here for a soccer tourneyment. Good day...another late nap for Gabe.

Getting ready for Christmas

First a shutterfly update: I wrote that previous post in order to get the free card, but thanks for those that gave their input! I got the code and ordered my cards, so they are on their way to us.

This morning, we went and saw Santa at our church (yes, we have our very own Santa!). These are the pictures we got. Gabe told Santa he wants Duck the train (from Thomas) and a stuffed giraffe. Why these particular things were on his mind today, I have no idea. =)

This is just a close up of the same picture above.
After seeing Santa we went to get our Christmas tree. We'll decorate tonight.