Christmas Fun

When it's just the 4 of us for holidays we don't go all out for dinner...too much work! Michael's request was fried chicken so he fried up some chicken. I made "Cowboy Slaw", corn on the cob, and two pies...Kentucky Pie and Brown Granny's Caramel Pie. You should all be jealous of our pies! Michael just had to have a picture of the chicked he fried! I poured the oil in the frier and turned it on but Michael did EVERYTHING else after that but somehow I still smelled like fried food when it was all done! Ben enjoying the sheep from the Little People Farm mommy and daddy got him.

Santa brought both kids the wagon and Amelia got a "treaure chest" (her words) full of princess dress-up clothes. She LOVES it. This morning she asked Michael if he wanted to be a king!

Christmas Day 2009

I'm too lazy to rearrange these pictures right now! Thank you blogger for making this difficult. They are in reverse order!

Christmas Eve 2009

Christmas Cookies!

It's a short lived tradition (started last year) but each year I made Christmas cookies with Amelia. This year she was introduced to gingerbread men at school and when I asked her if she wanted to make cookies with me she asked if we could make gingerbread men. I found a recipe, bought the cookie cutters, and we gave it a shot. For gingerbread they were pretty good but we've discovered our little family doesn't care too much for gingerbread! Next year we'll make gingerbread men out of sugar cookie dough!

Singing!

Winter Fun!

Okay, no offense to the past but I'm not sure I'm ever going to finish updating with Oklahoma pictures and happenings! SOOO...I'm going to skip ahead to more recent happenings. Here are a few pictures of them dressed up for church and playing in the snow. For the last 5 days we've had pretty dense fog up here and it creates an "ice fog" on everything. It's kind of like the effect of an ice storm except it's snow instead of ice.

OH, and Julie, why didn't you tell me how hard it would be to wrestle a 9 month old into a button-up shirt and a tie!!!

Visiting Great Grandparents

Playing at Grannie & Papa's

Amelia "cooking" at Grannie's. While Grannie worked on dinner Amelia would pull up the bar stool, beg for some ice, and "cook" away. Let's just say...Grannie has more patience than I do.

Ben with his Grandma Patsy

2/3 of the Womack Great Grandchildren

Spending time with Grannie & Papa

4 Generations of Halbrook Men

Hanging out with Grandma & Grandpa Womack

Some of the old toys they love playing with.

Amelia Belle and Cornelia Belle

Grandma has hung on to a Fisher Price Club House and all the grandkids love it and know where to go dig it out! There's also an old Playskool tool bench as well.

Oklahoma Randomness

This is ALWAYS what it's like when a 1 and 2 year old to play together!

Amelia and Ben had a GREAT time with all their cousins. Amelia and her imaginary friend Sweety frequently play with "my cousins."

Playing around after one of the rare nap times where they both slept.

Baby Cate Marie Hopkins was born in October! Somebody needs to send me new pictures of her...

Oklahoma had several long stretches of rainy days while we were there so one evening we went to Incredible Pizza just to get out and play! Amelia was a little freaked out by the arcade but once we forced (yes, physically forced) her on this train she had a blast and wanted to keep going back to it!

The winning ribbon from their go-kart race.

Playing with more cousins.

Uncle Randy let Ben chew away on his thumb and it kept Ben entertained for hours. I think he had 3 teeth at the time. (He now has 8 teeth less than 2 months later).

Kissing cousins. Little Miss Hannah was always wanting to love on Ben!

Funny Amelia Moment!

If you know us very well you know that Amelia's got quite the little personality. I can't say that we've trained her well, but at church she rarely shows this side of herself because she's more reserved around others...some days that is.
I guess she's getting familiar with her new Sunday School teachers Mr. Gene and Mrs. Leann because she sees Leann for both Sunday School and AWANA. Well, her teachers are VERY big on having the kids recite their memory verses in Sunday School which is great, but, once again, if you know Amelia...well, she's not going to do anything till she's ready. Our first Sunday back was November 1 and that day at lunch she said something about a Bible verse. I never got a straight answer out of her but the basics were that she wouldn't say the verse for Mrs. Leann in class but she said something like "Obey your parents" to me. I asked Leann about it and she confirmed what Amelia said and I guess she and her little friend Emily were the only two in class that day and they both had some little attitudes going on!
Amelia has brought that verse up a few times since that first week and the story's always the same, "nope, I didn't say it for Mrs. Leann." Well, this past Sunday afternoon she says, "Oh, 'Obey your parents' is my verse" out of the clear blue. I asked her if she was going to say it to Mrs. Leann that night at AWANA. She said yes...I'm skeptical as with most things this 3 year old claims...well, what do you know...I told Leann about it and she asked Amelia about the verse and then prompted her with "Children" and she finally said her November 1 Bible Verse to Leann!!! It was December 6 but better late than never I say!!
Thank goodness she's only in Puggles (at AWANA) this year so there's not a lot of pressure to memorize verses. We're up to two official verses since mid-August!

Oklahoma State Fair

In September we went to the Oklahoma State Fair to visit Uncle Brian. Okay, so we only spent about 5 minutes with him but we went in search of him FIRST! Amelia was so proud of her blue "Advanced Water Solutions" crown that he gave her. That crown survived at least until the end of October when we left!

We went in search of the livestock barns and all we found were the Express Clydesdales and a few other random horses that were getting showers. We were too tired to keep looking for the FFA Barns but the Clydesdales are always fun to see.

Amelia did the little Farmer for a Day exhibit at Agtropolis. She picked apples, dug for potatoes, gathered eggs, etc, and then got paid for all that hard work with a Tootsie Roll and coloring book. We opened that little Tootsie Roll for her and you know what happened? Yep, she dropped it. Thankfully the teenage volunteer believed my sob story and gave her another one!

Weighing the produce.

You can't see her but she's down there digging for potatoes!

Picking apples...

Posing with the cow!

Yes, Michael wore an OSU hat all around the State Fair! No, he didn't lose a bet...that's just what happens when you're 33, already have skin cancer, and don't bring your OU hat all the way from Alaska. You get to wear whatever you dad has available...if I remember correctly his choices were a pretty old trucker-style cap, the OSU one, or a burnt orange (Texas colors) hat. He went with the lesser of the evils!