December

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and as much fun as we had. As usual, we stayed plenty busy in the weeks leading up to Christmas with parties and other activities.

One of the best things to happen was the spelling bee at Cameron's school. Cameron was in it and was competing against 2 kids from each of the 3rd and 4th grade classes. Guess who won? We were (are) so proud of that little dude! When the second to last student missed her word, Cameron realized he could win it if he spelled his word right and that look was written all over his face. When they asked him to spell "unify", he actually paused and thought about it (unlike when we were practicing) before spelling it correctly. Now he has a big ol' honkin' trophy and gets to compete against the kids from the other schools in town. All of them. From 3rd grade through 10th grade! Isn't that nuts?

Here's the Cowart Elementary Spelling Bee Champion and the runner-up (which we suspect Cameron has a crush on). She doesn't look too happy.

Speaking of Cameron, any of you that have spent much time around him know he's the most curious of the 3 boys. If there's a button, he'll push it. If it comes apart, he'll disassemble it (and never put it together). I think this next photo is a great example of his curiosity.

We recently got a new front-load washer and dryer. Dana took this picture of Cameron watching the washer to see how it works.

As we got closer to Christmas, the boys and I started our vacations and had plenty of time to hang out around the house with Dana. We filled our time with play and a lot of fun activities.

Making Janet's famous orange ball cookies is one of our favorite Christmas traditions (and yummiest!)



We also made gingerbread houses. The kit contained 5 houses but we really couldn't figure out which pieces went where so we pretty much decided to wing it. One of the very cool buildings I made was accused of looking like an outhouse.

Not the outhouse but a fine example of my handiwork. Hey, we started to get desperate when the icing started drying so quickly and just grabbed whatever piece was closest to make the house.


Cameron and I built a music box that plays "Here Comes Santa Claus" from scratch. OK, maybe not completely from scratch but we did assemble it from the completely disassembled kit. That's pretty much the same as building it from scratch, right?

Christmas time also means Christmas pictures of the family. When I look at other people's pictures, the family always looks so nice and everyone looks so happy. When I look at ours, I remember the arguing and griping and effort it took to produce one or two half-way acceptable shots. We probably took 500 pictures and after deleting those with tears, mad faces, sad faces, weird faces, and closed eyes, we didn't have any left. So the following shots are the best we could do.

This wasn't actually planned but Cameron really wanted to take a picture of us. He did alright.

I realized later, I didn't get a nice picture of Dana with the boys. They all wanted to make funny faces in all the shots she's in. That's OK because this represents our family better than the fake poses.


Dana took a nice picture of the boys and me.



I had a special request to get a picture of the boys with the sled this year. Mom and Dad had a picture of all the grandkids in the sleigh except for Cade. We almost waited too long. Little dude isn't so little anymore.

We also drug out our Twister game for the first time in years. The boys had a blast playing it and of course roped Dana and me into several games with them. I'm not sure about Dana, but it sure made me realize just how little flexibility I have anymore.

Cade's struggling to stay up in this solo game. Notice his tongue!

Kevin's friends Hunter and Nic even got into it. This game appears to have broken down into some alternate version.

We also spent a lot of playing time outside. Cade, more than the other two, loves being outdoors. He drags his scooter and bike and anything else he can get his hands on out every day if we let him. Even in the cold. Recently, he came up with a new way to keep his face, and nose, warm.

Ever since Cade was little, he has loved wearing gloves (and weird outfits). Of course, we can never keep a pair of gloves together so when he finds one he'll wear it Michael Jackson style for a few days until he either loses it or finds another one. Here, he found one black glove and one Spiderman glove. I think they pair nicely with the desperado look he has going. Just the other day he went into the store with me to return a movie dressed just like this except with two Spiderman gloves. If it didn't bother him, I guess it doesn't bother me. (

I'll post our Christmas pictures soon.