Randy and Debby: december in pictures

jonathan was very excited about decorating the house for christmas and it was all we could do to make him wait until after thanksgiving. it's probably a good thing because i'm not sure how quickly it would have been done in my pregnant state if he hadn't been such a strict taskmaster. this is him "helping" randy with the lights on a rainy morning. because that's how much randy loves him, and that's how persistent he was.

diane lost her first tooth. i wish it hadn't been because she and madeleine were playing soccer in their bedroom and a ball knocked it out and she swallowed it, but hey, milestones come in all different forms. it was probably already pretty ready to come out on its own because she had another tooth already poking through and she lost her other bottom tooth soon after, but still, no soccer in your room.

we went to the seattle asian art museum one rainy weekend when the kids were dying to get out of the house. they didn't do so well with the actual art, but they loved the kids' room, where they had puppets, blocks, and other things for them to play with.

madeleine and randy doing origami together:

we went over to my aunt cheryl's house to decorate sugar cookies, one of my kids' favorite christmas traditions.

i was trying to be sneaky to catch this scene between the girls. madeleine does a lot of reading to diane, which i love.

jonathan insisted that i take a picture of him in front of the stockings. i was happy to oblige.

oh, the ways i find my children...

our annual attempt to get a family picture in front of the tree on christmas eve:

the end result:

diane was very into posing that night and wanted me to take one of just her. goofy girl.

my parents came for christmas and madeleine's baptism and we tried to get a picture of them with the kids, but this is how that went:

here are pictures of actual christmas day (not pictured: me feeling sick from being pregnant, randy on major medication from bronchitis, and my mom dealing with a nasty cold of her own). it was a pretty quiet day for us, hopefully the kids didn't feel too abandoned by the sick adults.