Toss around

Here is a snip-it of a Christmas Eve game we play. The game involves passing on wrapped presents (candy) every time the word "the" is read in the "Twas the Night Before Christmas." I videotaped a little bit of the game and find Jacks actions in this clip a bit funny (of course I was egging him on by throwing my boxes at him). Jack is sitting in the center in front of Jen, who is reading the story.

Calling all Spacemen

Maybe I'm just a biased parent, but I thought Jack looked cute walking around with a motorcycle helmet on. And I thought he looked like he was ready to pilot a spaceship, circa 1962.

What a day

A candid shot of Allie after church today.

West Family Photo - Christmas 2009

I think this photo captures each of our personalities...OK, maybe just Allie's.

Sitting with Santa Clause

Opening Christmas presents

Allie, Jack, and Lincoln opened their presents together on Christmas morning. Jack, as he has done in the past, opened a couple of presents and wanted to play rather than finish opening the rest of his presents. Lincoln didn't need much help with his first try at unwrapping presents. He was pretty good at it. Allie had an all-around good time opening presents, playing a little, and opening more presents.

Sibling cuddles

Allie and Jack cuddled for a few moments on the couch today. As most of you know, they rarely sit still long enough by themselves, much less together, to have time to take a picture like this. As you can guess, they were staring at something on the TV.

Christmas jammies

The kids opened one present each on Christmas Eve. All three received the same gift, new jammies. They had already worn their new pajamas one month earlier for Thanksgiving, but had to put them away until Christmas.



And some pictures from Thanksgiving night:

Crawling update

Just wanted to give a video update of Lincoln crawling. You may want to check the original crawling post to see the progress he's made. Now that I think about it however, the video here was actually shot at the beginning of Nov 09. So, this isn't the most up-to-date crawling update possible.

Jack's 3rd Birthday

A few days ago Jack celebrated his 3rd birthday. His birthday started at midnight when he woke up crying with a raging fever. He didn't want to take any medicine, but after spilling it once, he finally took some very bubble gum flavored ibuprofen. He did go back to his room for the rest of the night, but it looked like he wasn't going to be feeling well for his birthday.

After he woke up, he complained that his throat hurt and because I currently have strep throat, we decided to take him to the doctor for a strep test. So, off to the doctor we went (Jack, Lincoln, and Adam). He had a 9:45am appointment and we arrived right about 9:43am, which meant we were technically late. So, we didn't get into the exam room until close to 10:30am and after a quick check-up, including a strep test, we were on our way. Jack tested negative for strep and other than a fever later that night, he hasn't show any signs of illness since.
Jack had previously received a birthday present when a few weeks ago, he and Jen went to see a real life Thomas the Tank Engine. I'll let Jen post the details about that outing (presumably in another blog), but Jack really enjoyed his Thomas experience.

So after the doctor's office, we came home and opened Jacks presents during the early afternoon. That way he could have time to play with his toys throughout the day, rather than opening his presents right before bedtime. Suffice to say, that Jack's favorite present was a talking and signing Thomas the Tank Engine book. While opening his other presents, which included more Thomas toys, books, a movie, some Spiderman underwear that he picked out, a potty-training doll and cards from family and friends, Jack seemed only interested in playing with his talking book. He has since discovered the joy of playing with the other toys he received, but for the rest of his birthday he had eyes only for the talking Thomas book.

For dinner Jack had requested cake, but we talked him into eating pizza, which is one of his favorite foods. He was still not feeling all that well and ate just a little bit of pizza and intially declined to eat any cake. So we thought that we would have cake the next day and gave Allie some ice cream instead. About 20 minutes later, Jack decided he could finish his pizza and then wanted cake. So, Allie swindled some ice cream in addition to cake (we weren't serving them together this time around).


Jack had a pretty nice birthday, after not initially feeling well. He is appreciative of his family and friends for sending cards and gifts.