Aidan's first Christmas...

Even with some of the bad luck we had this holiday season, we feel very blessed and had a wonderful Christmas season thus far. We still need to visit our loved ones up north, but hopefully we'll make it up there this weekend. Here are some pictures we took before Christmas, I think they turned out adorable!

Christmas morning was nice, Rachel came down the stairs and her eyes lit up with "Santa really came". It was so cute! She managed to wait patiently until Mom and Dad were able to get a cup of coffee and she was ready to pass out gifts...

Rachel did well at letting Aidan "try" to open his gifts, but after opening his stocking he had no interest in opening any more...so Rachel got to open his too!

After everything was opened we got a kick out of watching Rachel play with Aidan's presents and Aidan playing with Rachel's...

There was no snow for us on Christmas, instead it was a beautiful, brisk winter day that allowed Kevin and I to get the fireplace going and relax a bit. Kevin made a wonderful dinner and between the cookie exchange and what I had already made, we had plenty of sweets to last us...

Christmas Cards...

This year we decided to take a family photo and make them into cards. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, do you realize how hard it is to find matching pajamas for a family of 4 that doesn't cost you a small fortune!? Needless to say, I gave up and rummaged through what we all had to pick out the right semi-matching jammies. Aimee was able to come over one evening and take the pictures for us....(Thanks again Aimee).

We ordered 50 and you would think that would have been enough for everyone to get one, WRONG! I am going to have to remember in the future to order 75, as once we were through addressing the ones for all the family, there were not many for our beloved friends. So we are sorry if you did not get a family photo this year, but I am enclosing a copy here for everyone to see. I thought they turned out pretty well, even if Kevin thinks he has a silly grin going on.
We are going to make the rounds to the family and friends in Elkhart and the "Region" later this month, but we'll have to make sure the weather cooperates before confirming.

For our friends in the area, don't forget that on December 19, 2008, we are hosting a Cookie Exchange! I am pretty excited and it looks like we have a nice group already RSVP'd to come. If you have accidentally deleted your evite, email me and I'll send you another one.

Whether we get to see you this holiday season or not, we are wishing everyone a MERRY Christmas and HAPPY New Year!

Sick home...

This says it all this past week in the Hammonds' home. We hope all of you are doing a little better...

Thanksgiving 2008

I started the Holiday by picking up Kevin's mom to spend Rachel's birthday with us, as well as spend the week. It was nice to have the extra set of hands, even if we all seemed to get her sick (Sorry about that Peggy). I was able to make home made pumpkin pie this year. I do have to say it was easy to make and tasted wonderful, so it may become a staple during the holidays. I was also able to make some zucchini bread, apple crisp and these cute little rice krispy treats for the kids.

This year was filled with lots of guests; the Mortemore, Miltz and Mooney families joined ours. We had a wonderful meal with contributions from everyone!

I especially liked Aimee's soup, but there were so many good things for sides that very little turkey was eaten. Do you like my thrown together table? I guess we are going to have to work on getting a real dinning room table if we want to do a big dinner again, but borrowing Judy's folding table to put with ours worked out well. It was nice to have the extra company, I know Rachel enjoyed playing with Adam and Caleb and all the extra adults (you know we never pay her any attention). Here are some of the pictures from the day...

By the time everyone left, things were cleaned up, turkey had been picked clean (Thanks Molly and Aimee), and everyone was full and tired. Rachel and Aidan took a while to finally go down, but I think they were both just overly tired and full of the excitement of the day...what do you think?

We loved having everyone over and hope to be able to do it again in the future!

Happy Birthday Rachel and Aidan's 9 month checkup!

This past Saturday we celebrated Rachel's 3rd birthday and it always reminds me how we have such wonderful family and friends! Rachel of course had a mini birthday celebration the day before at the sitter's, so she was uber excited Saturday! I picked up Peggy on Friday, so she was around to help wrangle the kids so we could get the house up to par (I realize it is always a loosing battle with 2, but hey it was a special occasion). My parents came in from Elkhart and Paul and Lise came down from Hobart. It was also nice to have Cathy over (she is expecting her first and has been very ill). Also the Dorans and the Mortemores came, so it was nice all around! Rachel received many nice things that should keep her entertained for a while. Here are pictures of the day, as you can see, fun was had by all!

On Thursday, Aidan went for his 9 month check-up. The doctor said that he was doing really well (even though he is only in the 25Th percentile, but he is really active, so no worries). He was running a slight fever which could have been from teething or a virus (though my suspicions are that it was from teething), but everything looked perfect! So no more well-baby checks until January, though we will continue to see the nurse for vaccines due to our alternative shot schedule.

November is a hectic month in our house!!

Maybe I'm giving this update because I am feeling slightly anxious or maybe because I want to apologize in advance if I miss getting back with anyone this month....

Well, wow, November....Kevin is going to be traveling like crazy which leaves me to tend to the little ones by my lonesome. I worked extra late this past Monday, then was off yesterday and spent the day with the kids cleaning up and running a few errands. Today Kevin leaves for Minnesota (ay) and will not come home until Friday night. This weekend we are hoping to catch up with Kevin's sister, Jenny, as she will be in town. We also hope to get the Halloween decorations put away and back up into the attic and close down the last few things in the yard.

Next week, I will hopefully be going to LLL Monday (Ladies, I am so up for going out afterwards), then Kevin will go to Ohio for the day Thursday and I will take Aidan for his 9 month checkup. Friday I am going to take the day off and get things ready for Rachel's birthday, as well as, pick up Kevin's mom to come spend the week of Thanksgiving with us (she is such a God send). Friday, hopefully, we will be able to get tickets to see Twilight and may even possibly go to dinner (date nights are few and far between for us). Saturday, is Rachel's 3rd Birthday and we are going to have cake and ice cream that afternoon.

Thanksgiving week (as if that isn't already busy), Kevin is going to Pennsylvania for a couple days and it will just be Peggy, me and the kids (did I mention she was a God send?), then we're going to be cooking dinner (hmmm, I guess I need to see if the Mortemore's are coming over??) and hopefully finding a couple must have items on Black Friday....

Wow, with everything going on November seems like it will be going by faster than October....well wish us luck, hopefully all will survive...

Our wonderful Halloween!

We had a great time getting ready for Halloween this year. On Wednesday we carved pumpkins. Rachel did a GREAT job cleaning out her pumpkin and even helped Kevin clean out his when her pumpkin was all done. Aidan had some snacks and supervised...

Rachel decided the shape for her mouth, nose and eyes to make a "scary face" and Mom carved it out for her. This year I decided to do a face with Rachel and Kevin, being the wonderful hubby he is decided to make a "Twilight" pumpkin for me to enable my addiction (www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilightseries.html). I think they turned out wonderful!

Halloween Day: I got them all decked out in pumpkin garb and got a couple pictures before they left for daycare.

The kids had a costume party at Daycare, so Linda was already going to have Aidan in his costume and Rachel into the bulk of hers (like I was going to send fairy wings with a 3 year old to daycare), so when we got home, Rachel got a couple snacks, Aidan nursed and we waited for Kevin to get home from Dr. Julie's (www.aboutlifechiropractic.com/) so he could take them out for a little while and I could get the pizza in the oven. A friend of mine from work came over (She's our Halloween buddy) and she and I took Rachel back out after dark. Rachel hit the motherload as every house would let her grab handfuls or give her a handful themselves. She was good at saying "Trick or Treat" and "Thank you", even if at times it was only a whisper. Here are some pictures of the kids waiting for Kevin to get home.

Overall, the night was good and the kids made it to bed at a decent time. We had a few trick or treaters and Rachel seemed to enjoy herself! Mr. Blonde on the other hand was exhausted by the whole process....

Our first adventure to the Indianapolis Children's Museum

Last year at the ARC conference (http://www.arcind.org/), I bid on a set of Children's Museum tickets. With eveything that has gone on this year, we had forgotten about them until recently. Which is a good thing, they were going to expire at the end of this month. So we decided to go there this past Saturday....we should have know it was going to be one of those days! Even before we left the house Rachel was being more than her usual WILD. (We even forgot the camera, so the pictures enclosed here are not the greatest, but Kevin's phone did a pretty good job!) Overall it is a nice place to visit. The musuem has 4 different floors of exhibits. We started at the top and worked our way down....

As I keep mentioning, it is a Children's museum, so it is meant for little ones to get out of their strollers and interact with the different exhibits. So of course Rachel gets out and does well with these exhibits....

But this is where we start to loose her (literally some moments)....

Kevin and I both we chasing her every which way....but again it suppose to be interactive, so we were letting her go a little wilder than normal...but finally put it to an end when she let go of Kevin's hand and bolted in the opposite direction.

This is the last of picture time....

It was a good thing that at this point most things could be just looked at rather than touched all the time....She really loved the dinosphere and so before we left we hit the gift shop and found a great dinosaur floor puzzle by Melissa & Doug and Aidan got a little T-Rex finger puppet.

I think we decided that the Museum was a great place to visit once a year, but that investing in a membership would not be well advised for us until Rachel and Aidan are both a little older. Wish us luck next year when we take them again!!!