Boys, boys, boys!!! I don't know what I'm going to do! lol. Someone and I won't say who, discovered his dad's ties and decided to try them all on. Who needs to go out when you have live in entertainment!! First: tape, then: ties, hmmmmm......what next?
We had our annual Christmas cookie baking, which Jason and Mia really like. Jason got to do more this year with rolling out the dough, while Mia just enjoyed being able to snitch little pieces and get flour all over her face. :) I just got to have fun taking pictures, since Dad is the official Christmas cookie expert. Unfortunately, the cookies are all gone already, before I even get to tell you we made some!!! But there have been many requests for more cookies, so we might have to make some more!
Jason loves to steal my camera and take pictures with it. Most of the time I don't know he has until I am going through the pictures on the camera and find all sorts of pictures of his feet, his face really close to the camera, Mia, and sometimes me. I think, "Wait, I didn't take this!" It is so cool to see what he looks at. A lot of them tend to be a tad blurry, but some of them are really good. This one is being added to my favs file which includes one from when Jason and Mia were riding in the bike trailer during the summer.
For fun one Saturday, Josh and I took Jason and Mia to the Fun Factory in Pella, Iowa. It was this huge room with a gigantic climbing play thing. :) Jason was so pumped. It had a really fast slide, some obstacle courses, climbing, and swinging! Mia was a little scared because the floor was woven so her little feet could get stuck and she stuck pretty close to Mom or Dad. But she loved being there and so did Jason. What a great thing to be able to do on a cold day! Of course, I loved playing on it too!
For Thanksgiving Josh, Jason, Mia, and I took a trip to Missouri. One of the activities for Thanksgiving was riding the uncle's horse. Zack loved riding. Jason was looking forward to it, but as he was getting on the horse, the horse moved suddenly and he felt like he was going to fall off. So that was the end of that. He decided he wanted to come down and not get back on again. Mia was so excited to see the horses and to ride. She didn't want to get off. I don't know about her, we might end up doing riding lessons instead of dance. Maybe. :)
One Saturday Josh and I were working on organizing downstairs. Jason came into the room, 
Finally, the infamous rice-box! Yesterday Jason, Mia, and I made a rice box. It was a lot of fun and a lot of mess! :) Why is it the most fun things are usually the messiest? But it kept them occupied for, I bet, a couple of hours. I was able to get dishes done anyway. Mia was playing really nice until she started throwing rice everywhere. But she loves coloring too, so that was a good distraction. :) Too bad it didn't last as long as the rice-box. 
Something new that we are adding to our schedule is teaching music lessons at the Music Square here in Oskaloosa. Both of us are really excited for this, but Hannah may be a little more excited because it provides her an opportunity to be doing something with music more often. Josh will be teaching drums and Hannah will be teaching voice lessons and maybe an occasional trombone. These are the pictures of us that will be printed in the business section of the Oskaloosa Herald. Are we seriously grown-up? When did that happen?
Here are some pictures of Jason and Mia on the bike trail near our house. This was a beautiful November day! I did not plan for them both to be in red shirts in jeans.....honest. But don't they look good? :)
