Flannery Christmas party

We also had Julie's family over for a Christmas party on Christmas Eve. Dave, Nancy, Jeff, Todd, April, and Uncle Brian all came over with Grandma and Grandpa to eat a nice dinner and open a few presents.




The kids had a great time opening presents




And so did the adults! Grandma and Grendpa loved their new TV.



And check out Uncle Brian in his new snuggy! I warned him the picture would end up on the internet...

Fun in the Snow

In December and January we've had a few days of decent snow, and Natalie and Eric have taken full advantage of them.

Eric spent most of his time eating as much snow as possible. He's apparantly completely impervious to the cold, because he just kept eating and eating the snow despite his super-cold little nose. We eventually just had to wrestle him inside before his face completely froze.




Natalie helped Dad shovel a bit.


Then made a snow angel.



Then made a snowman.


Then went sledding with the neighborhood kids.



And then crashed on the couch to recover.

Christmas Day in Indy

As is becoming our tradition, we traveled to Indy later in the day on Christmas to see everyone. It's a fun trip since we get to see everyone, and this year we even got to see the full Mitchell crew. It's getting a bit crowded since there seems to be a new kid almost every year, but that just makes it more fun :-)

Natalie and Eric had a great time with Grandma, Grandpa, their aunts and uncles, and the second cousins (I think?). Some pictures of the festivities are below. Enjoy!

Natalie got a Cinderella dress as a gift from Grandma and Grandpa. 30 seconds later she was wearing it and she kept it on for the rest of the night.


Here's Eric tasting the chapstick. He liked it.


Uncle Nick and Uncle John discussing philosophy no doubt.


Eric and Grandpa having fun as usual.


Natalie and Carina showing off their silly faces :-)


Eric got a cool toolbench as a gift, and it was a huge hit with all of the kids. You can see Natalie and Carina doing some surgery on it and all of the adults just watching the show as the kids swarmed around it having fun.




Carina and Natalie also put on a little song and dance number at the end of the evening as well.

Christmas Day

Hi folks. The blog is back in action for 2010, and we have a lot of catching up to do so let's get started. I'll start by posting some pictures of Christmas morning with the kids. Natalie's big present was her new Barbie Jeep. She's pretty excited about it.

Eric was pretty excited about it as well.


We even got to try it out in between rain showers that morning.


Eric was most excited about his new Batman Castle. He still plays with it every day! He loves making "vroom vroom" sounds as Batman and Robin ride around on thier motorcycles.




Many more posts to come in the next couple of weeks as I try to get caught up with everything that's been happening!

Even more swimming

We've had a lot of fun in the water this summer with the King's Island water park, public park water playgrounds, Grandma and Grandpa's pool, sprinklers, and swim lessons. Natalie loves going to the pool whenever she gets the chance, and we went over to Dave and Nancy's neighborhood pool the last couple of weekends. Natalie wears her Dora life jacket and jumps and swims all over the place. Eric spent a bit of time in the water as well, but he spent just as much time playing in his little shade tent. He went back and forth through there a whole lot of times, smiling every time.

Baseball practice

Eric has recently taken a liking to Natalie's baseball bat, which is nearly as big as he is. He still manages to hit the ball around with the bat, and he cracks himself up doing it. He also likes hitting the ball off of the tee outside. We've tried getting him to use a smaller bat that we have, but he prefers the one he can barely carry.




Meanwhile, Natalie and Mom were outback hanging out in the clubhouse :-) Natalie has been having a great time outside this summer!

Natalie's goggles

Inspired by her recent success in swimming lessons and with swimming by herself, Natalie decided she needed some goggles after watching a few of the bigger kids swim around with them. After finally acquiring her first pair she decided that she needed to try them out for a lot of the first day, whether she was swimming or not. It was pretty darn cute.

Ironically, after wearing them so much inside the house she hasn't yet worn them while swimming in the pool. I think the realization that she needs to put her head under the water to make use of the goggles has slowed the adoption of them :-) She'll still think it's pretty cool to see under the water when she does get around to using them. When that happens we'll be sure to let you know. Until then, here are a couple of pictures of Natalie using her new goggles above the water only.