Cute Boy AND Girl

I have 2 very cute kids who love each other very much!
The other day Marc was playing on his computer making a "Book About Me" online. Samantha loves bugging him while he is on his computer. This time, before I saw her and told her to stop, she climbed into Marc's lap!! He sat and made her a "Book About Me" for her. He is such a sweet little man!!
One morning before Marc had to get his coat on to go to school, Samantha climbed in the chair and hung out with her favorite brother! :)
Hope their lovingness continues and the fighting doesn't. ;)

Cute Boy!

For years I have been looking forward to when Marc was old enough to start "Family Game Night". Well, for Christmas Marc got LOTS of games. We had about 4 nights of "Family Game Night" last week. I was in heaven! ;)

One of them we played was Jenga. We wondered how he would do since he is wild sometimes. He did really well. The longer the game went on, the more "tense" the game got. He was getting really nervous every time someone had to remove a piece.
And then when it was his turn, he was SO scared that he was going to be the one that knocked it over.
When it came around to my turn, Marc was so jumpy that I decided to put him out of his misery. ;) I could have gotten my piece out successfully, but I made it fall over. Marc was so excited!
We have truly had fun having our "Family Game Night". :)

Cute Girl!

Over the last week or so I have gotten some cute, random pictures of Samantha. So, here thy are: :)

The other day she was playing with her dishes. She found her 2 shakers and decided that they would make good bracelets.Samantha LOVES Marc's CARS slippers. Every time he wears them, she goes over to him, touches his slippers, and says "car, car, car". One night Marc was nice enough to let her try them on.
To keep Samantha in the living room we pull the play kitchen over to block the walk-way (unfortunately, she is strong enough to move the kitchen herself). She slid the kitchen just enough for her to slide out one night. Daddy went out to get her. He didn't move the kitchen enough for them both to get back through at the same time, so he put her on top of the kitchen to get her back in the living room. She thought that was REALLY cool. (Don't worry, Daddy is just out of frame in this picture)
Samantha was digging through her bucket of dishes and food. She couldn't reach the thing she wanted. So, instead of walking around to the other side of the bucket, she decided to climb into the bucket to get what she wanted. I guess that is one way of problem solving! ;)
We have officially begun potty training her, Ugh! ;) Over the last week or so, any time we see her starting to poop in her diaper, we grab her, and out her on the potty. We also put her on the potty right after waking up from overnight and nap. Nothing has happened yet, but she is showing definite interest in the "potty". Here's to a quick and easy potty training! :)
We love our little girl and can't believe how fast she is growing up!! :)

Messy Girl!

For Christmas Samantha got these cute little paint brushes for toddlers. You can seem them in the picture below...they are a big ball to make it easy for the toddler to hold on to. The paint is already in there, all she has to do is press down a little to get the paint to starts flowing.

One night while we were playing games with Marc, we let her try them out......She had fun....and made a MESS!! :)
My Mom has been "whining" that she had artwork from Marc on her fridge, but none from Samantha, so we have decided to give this masterpiece to Grandma for her fridge. ;)

Thanks for the cool painters Aunt Sari & Uncle Gary! Samantha had a blast using them the first time. The wet wipe after cleaning her up was really pretty too. ;)

Happy New Year!

We usually stay home on New year's Eve and chill out as a family. With young kids, we didn't want to leave them home with a babysitter, and we also didn't want to take them out anywhere late. This year one of our neighbor friends invited us to their "neighborhood, family friendly, party". We thought that sounded like fun so we walked over to their house for awhile. There were 5 families including us there. There were kids ranging in age from 20 months up to 10 years old. Their house was chaos! ;)
Here are some of the pictures of the kids playing:

Samantha making the top spin

Samantha riding their rocking horse. (Sus and I thought we had the only 2 Rocky's, but guess not. :( )

Marc dressing up with all the "girly" dress up stuff

Samantha ready for battle, wearing a pot on her head

Rob, the dad of the house, plays hockey. Samantha decided she wanted to try his helmet on

We got to Kris & Rob's house about 7:00 and left about 10:00. Samantha was starting to get a little cranky from being overly tired. We came home, put Samantha to bed, and played games with Marc for awhile while we waited for midnight to come. As soon as we got home, Marc turned the tv on one of the countdown shows. Little Marc sat down in front of the tv and watched for awhile waiting for the ball to drop...he was VERY excited for the ball to drop.
We played Electronic Toss Across and Sorry Sliders waiting for midnight. Sorry Sliders is a really cute game!! :)

Once midnight hit I took some pictures. This is what Samantha was doing at midnight.
Marc actually did very well for staying up 4 hours past his bed time. :)


We had a great night...lots of fun with great friends and family. :)
We had a great 2009 and are looking forward to another great year in 2010 (man it seems weird to type that!)

Who is That?!

Marc has very thick hair that grows very quickly. I know it is time to call for a hair cut appointment when he wakes up in the morning and his hair is sticking up. ;) With is being the Holidays, we were so busy that we didn't have a chance to get him there, so it got really long this time.
After his hair cut, we decided he looked about 9 years old. ;)

Cars!!

We were putting the Christmas tree ornaments away the other day. Samantha found the box to Marc's CARS ornament. She was really happy about the cars. :)

Daddy decided to "test" her. ;) He buried the box in the pile of all of the other boxes and asked her to find it......



and she did!! Smarty pants! ;)

Night at Your Museum

We became members of the Public Museum of Grand Rapids over the summer. We received there monthly newsletter and in was an ad for their annual fund raiser call "Night at Your Museum". This is a take-off on the movie "Night at the Museum". We couldn't let any of the characters escape! As members of the museum, it cost us $20/person (Samantha was free). Upon entering we were given flashlights and security guard badges. We had dinner, which was lasagna, pizza, bread sticks, and salad. As we were eating all the characters from the museum exhibits came to life. There were 50-60 different characters there wandering around. As we went through the museum looking at the exhibits, we would occasionally run into a character. Some of the kids had fun making some of the characters go back to their exhibit. The Pharohs were the funniest!! The kids kept dragging them back to the Egypt room and they would immediately leave again. :)
The first person we encountered was Leonardo DaVinci.A couple of times during the 3 hour event, they would block off part of floor for some knights to battle. There were 2 knights from different eras, each fighting for their own respective woman. :) The knights wore and fought in the traditional 100 pounds of leather and armour.

Marc went over to see the knight afterwards. He got to feel how heavy his armour really is!!

We found Cleopatra. When we asked her if we could take her picture, she said "what's a picture?". daddy Marc asked if we could take a drawing of her, and she said yes. She then asked us if our camera was one of those fire boxes.

We found Mona Lisa as well. She carried her picture frame around with her all night. Whenever someone asked to take her picture she would look off to the left just like the painting.
In the animal habitats section, the kids (and some Mommys ;) ) got to do a scavenger hunt about some of the displays. It really got us looking at the displays.
As we were leaving the habitats, we ran into Betsy Ross.

We walked over to sit on a bench by the window that overlooked the river and some of the buildings. Betsy Ross came over and asked what all those really tall building were????? Marc said, it's a Marriott...and that confused her even more because she didn't know what a hotel was. Marc told her it was like a really big Inn....and then she understood. ;)The museum had the carousel running for free that night as well. We saved that for last. Both kids had fun. :)



We stayed at the JW Marriott that night. It is right across the bridge from the museum and we had a certificate for a free nights stay. Both kids were asleep within 10 minutes of laying down in bed.

We had a great time!!!! We will definitely be going back again next year!!

Merry Christmas!!

Every year my Mom makes a pineapple coffee cake and brings it to us at the Christmas Eve church service, that way we can eat it on Christmas morning.Marc ate coffee cake while Daddy was in the shower. As soon as he got done eating, he got to open his stocking. Here is Marc "pre-digging in" with his stocking......
and him with his stocking loot.
Marc got a Christmas version of tic-tac-toe so he and Daddy played a game of it.
Marc got a real guitar for Christmas...what were we thinking??? ;)
Marc is excited for the snow to melt so he can test out his new scooter.
An hour later, Samantha finally woke up. this is her with her stocking before we helped her look through it.
and here she is with all of HER stocking loot.
Marc helped Samantha open the gift he bought for her. She liked her Orange Blossom doll very much!
We had a few hours to spend as a family, then my Mom, Grandma, and brother Jeff came up. Grandma posed for a quick picture with her two favorite grandkids. :)
My Mom puts together "stocking bags" for everyone. In Samantha's bag she put a halo ......fits her huh?! ;)
Ok...my kids are just a tad bit spoiled!! ALL of the presents under the tree are for them (with the exception of maybe 4-5 for us).
"Santa" gave the Stoufer family a new Christmas game. Marc wanted to play it with everyone before they left.
Samantha got a teddy bear that is almost as big as she is!
Samantha has fun playing with her new pink laptop....
and her new pink castle...

My living room looks like a toy store exploded in it!! We had a great Christmas! Thank you everyone! :)