Talia in The Nutcracker...just kidding!

Talia's ballet "recital" was really adorable. Her teacher, Miss Raegan, essentially just walked through the class she does with the girls every week. Talia is very enthusiastic, that's for sure. She tends to be a little too social...but gee, I wonder where she gets that from? And I have to always remind myself she is only 3!














Truman also got a chance to "freeze dance" with all the little girls. Check out the video, it is really funny! I apologize for the camera-work, I was trying to watch and tape at the same time!

Weekend fun

The kids had a blast this weekend visiting our friends the Davisons. Thomas and Truman are just 6 weeks apart in age, and there is only a 3-week difference between Claire and Talia. Needless to say, it was odd not being pregnant while Julie was expecting her 3rd arrival, Elise Marie, who came 6 weeks ago!
My goal was to make things a little easier on Julie, so I tried hard to take on older-kid-management, meal-assistance, and baby-Elise-holding duties. Even though Truman and Talia had a yucky cold, they did pretty well. Truman and Thomas spent most of the weekend in another world - they reenacted all sorts of Super Mario levels and had lots of "adventures." Claire and Talia also played quite well together, although much of the time Claire was chasing after the boys while Talia was in her own princess world. Talia was in love with, who else, herself! Julie has a large floor-length mirror in front of which Talia spent a lot of time preening and dancing while wearing Claire's dress-up clothes.
The kids decorated crowns for themselves and also snowman ornaments, which I am looking forward to hanging on my tree. Hopefully we can try to continue the ornament-making tradition for years to come!

Prepping for Christmas

So...I have a disease that my mom gave me called "must-buy-everything-the-kids-could-possibly-want-for-all-holidays-especially-Christmas." I fight it every year, and honestly keep it under control most of the time. This year is a royal struggle because I am determined to keep myself on budget. Sigh.

Honestly, a few weeks ago I had NO idea what to even get the kids. But now I have more ideas than I can handle. Should I get Truman a tool bench? A train set? A parking garage? The Magic Treehouse series? Blokus? A DS Lite (probably not)? Schoolhouse Rock? A Solar System mobile? Some sort of rocket ship? A Brickadoo kit?

And Talia...a hopscotch rug? A playhouse? A singing Sleeping Beauty (they have them at Sam's Club)? More dressup clothes and shoes? The Princess and the Pea game? MORE Princess paraphernalia?

Oh, if someone is up there in , help me win the lottery! On the other hand, my kids would be totally, totally spoiled so that may not be good idea.

Truman the Photographer

Lately Truman has been taking pictures. Many, many pictures. Most of the time I don't even know what he's been up to until I upload them to my camera! It is interesting to see things from his level...oh except for the fact that Talia and he are obsessed with taking pictures of butts! Yes, butts! It isn't safe to come to our house, ha! Well, I'm not going to post those photos here but here are a few of the sights of Truman's world:

Talia's Princess Shoe

This is one of many shots of Deal or No Deal. Truman was fascinated by the 9 million dollar cases.



A photo of our family at Truman's & Talia's birthday party in July of 2006.

Some sort of mallet - I have no idea where it came from!

A calendar. One of Truman's favorite things. Ranks right up there with calculators and maps.

Halloween

We had such a blast on Halloween...unfortunately Ted had to work (of course) but Talia and I visited Truman's school for a costume parade, and then afterwards we came home and handed out candy for awhile before trick-or-treating ourselves. The kids had much, much MUCH more stamina this year. We were out for over an hour, and as anyone in this area knows, the weather was so fantastic. No layers required!

Up until the week prior to Halloween, Truman insisted he wanted to be "Bee Mario." For those of you who don't know (which is probably 95%) Super Mario Galaxy has a special Bee Mushroom that turns Mario into a little bee. However, he changed his mind the week before and just went "regular" Mario. Last year Talia was Luigi to Truman's Mario, but this year she was Princess Peach. As we were trick or treating, it seemed that most dads knew exactly who they were, but the under-18-set weren't as with it!

Soccer

This summer, Truman spent a blistering hot week at soccer camp. My goal was to prepare him for the actual soccer season. I thought things were ok, as he seemed to like soccer camp most of the time. Unfortunately, about week 2 of the season, Truman decided he really, truly, deeply despised soccer. Well, Ted and I put on our parent hats and explained to him that he was committed to sticking out the season. You know the speech...his teammates were counting on him, he was expected to finish, etc. etc. We also faced the fact that Truman isn't ready for team sports that required constant motion and running, and also that his attention span when it comes to sports is all of a millisecond. We had an inkling of this in t-ball in the spring but there is no downtime in soccer, especially when your team only has 6 players! Regardless, the kids were cute and we suffered through it all. Truman was ecstatic when it was over...and honestly, so were we! It was hard to force him to participate in something that he really didn't enjoy. I do have to say, he had one shining moment toward the end of the season when he had an awesome block when he was playing goalie...I wish I had it on video! Regardless, there were some good moments...

Vacation!

So we had a wonderful trip to Mississippi last week! Although...it didn't always feel that wonderful during the traveling part. Ted stayed at home (to work), so I drove down to "the cabins" (as Truman calls them) with the kids by myself for a short weekend pseudo-family reunion. The reunion part was actually for the Rose family, which is my aunt's husband's family, and the "cabins" are actually part of a very nice campground of sorts that has cabins (fully stocked with toilets, showers, and TV's). It was a loooooong trip to take on a Thursday (13ish hours) to then return on Sunday! But Truman had his little heart set on going, because we first visited the campground in the early summer of 2007 for my cousin Ben's wedding, and Truman fell in love. It was interesting, because he isn't really an outdoorsy kid in general, but there were two things that stuck with him: first, there were numbers on the cabin doors, and second, there were tons of kids available to play.

He had a blast this time, as well...he really enjoyed spending time with his Great-Aunt Linda (my mom's twin) and his cousin Kaity, who is 3. Also, there were tons of adventures with water toys and even a talent "contest" during which he performed a very nice rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." He really is a ham at heart!

Talia also had tons of fun playing with Kaity...and she managed to give herself some really good blisters by hiking all over the place in her princess shoes. We couldn't convince her to slide down the slip 'n slide, but she enjoyed running towards it and "pretending" like she was going to do it. She faked us out every time. She also wanted to take home baby Tristan, my cousin Helen's new baby who is only a few weeks old. Not surprising, as Talia LOVES babies.

The kids spent tons of time playing with play dough and just running around. It was pretty fun for all, and Aunt Linda did a great job organizing it all...I hope to do it again! It is hard to maintain family connections between the little cousins.













Talia & Kaity















Happy Truman


















Getting Uncle Bo!














Checking out flowers with Grandma