gingerbread wonders

some good friends invited us over to make gingerbread houses. they had us a house all ready to decorate (and made from scratch), with all the candy and trimmings that you could imagine for us to stick on. who is that nice, really? apparently they are. apparently i am not. if i had gone to that much work, i would decorate it myself. instead they shared it with our family and their family shared one to decorate. really really nice. wow. i have a lot to learn. anyway...here is the house.




do you see the section of roof that jake was in charge of. it took me a moment to not freak out that it wasn't all lined up and stuff and then i remembered that i didn't even make the gingerbread house or buy the candy. i could share in a little generosity with our little elf.

anyway, Merry Christmas to all of you out there that we love so much! sorry, no Christmas cards this year, but we are thinking of you and hope that you have a wonderful holiday season!

Christmas joy

the evening started out so nice...my boys were even matching (not intentional, but cute nonetheless)....


and then we saw santa claus or as jake calls him "Noah". an experience that jake will not soon forget.

i really love these guys!

They are "On the Rocks" an acapella (spelling?) group from University of Oregon and they are hillarious.

jake loves...

his animals! we all know that cows are his favorite, but he occasionally distributes his time with the other members of his farm. he feeds them, they kiss, when they fall down he rocks them saying "ohhh" and then asks "okay?" with his head tilted to the side. his animals also have to go "night-night" and he makes sure to snore for them and then he says, "wake-up" and helps them stand up. i love to just watch him, but he usually ends up wanting me to play too. i don't mind that either.

the blue shape is where they eat, but of course you already knew that.

when he goes to bed, he gets to choose two animals to take with him. it works like a charm. who needs a soft cuddly stuffed animal when you have a hard animal toy to leave imprints on your face?!?