Monthly Archives: December 2013

Finn ~ 41 weeks

DSC_0507Wow, what a week we’ve had! We started out our week on Sunday with a brief trip to the zoo for Wildlights. We were meeting Amy, Andy, and the kids there – except we were delayed by the crazy traffic. What normally is a 7 minute drive to the zoo took us 45 minutes! So our meeting up with the Bethune’s was brief to say the least! But we enjoyed walking around looking at the lights with Grandma Armstrong. We also grabbed a bite to eat there before heading home. Grandma watched Finn on Monday and they enjoyed some nice time together. Finn loves the attention and Grandma loves to play with him.DSC_0440 DSC_0441 DSC_0442 DSC_0446 DSC_0447 DSC_0449 DSC_0457 DSC_0462 DSC_0473 DSC_0475 DSC_0476 IMG_20131223_203658113 IMG_20131223_192937504

Monday night we headed up to Mansfield for the holidays. Christmas Eve my dad, sister, and I headed out for our annual tradition of shopping! We hit plenty of stores and surprisingly not a lot of shoppers. In the evening we took family photos before heading to Christmas Eve service with my parents. We added lots of sound effects to the service with 4 kids under the age of 4! Griffin did really well and even sat in his car seat for the first 20 or so minutes. The official family photos that Amy took will appear at a later date!!  Here is Finn with his hippocampus from Grandma!DSC_0485DSC_0487 IMG_20131224_191508905

Christmas morning was loads of fun. We had four kiddos roaming about the room and six adults to add to the excitement. The 5 dogs were cozy in the family room out of the commotion! Griffin enjoyed ripping open the presents for a short bit but then found it more fun to either be cuddled with someone or roam about and get in to any and everything! Here is our little santa (in the same outfit Graham wore his first Christmas) and the rest of the Beilstein troop. You’ll notice Finn and Greta (and maybe Graham and Rowan) in awesome custom capes that Aunt Amy made for each of them. Super Finn sported his for quite awhile! Grandma and Grandpa gave the giant teepee to G & R and the kids table and chairs to Finn. He enjoyed sitting in the chair for a few minutes too. We wrapped up (no pun intended) our visit by putting the hostas to bed for the weekend on Friday morning, covering the hoop house in the woods until next spring!IMG_20131225_150341913 DSC_0495 DSC_0497 DSC_0507 DSC_0508 DSC_0519 DSC_0526 DSC_0533 DSC_0543 DSC_0552 DSC_0554 DSC_0555 DSC_0557 DSC_0558 DSC_0564 DSC_0572 DSC_0578 DSC_0585 DSC_0596 DSC_0597 DSC_0602 DSC_0607 DSC_0612 DSC_0618 DSC_0620 DSC_0623 DSC_0629 DSC_0630 DSC_0631 DSC_0633 DSC_0642 DSC_0650 DSC_0658 DSC_0660 DSC_0664 DSC_0669 DSC_0682 DSC_0706 DSC_0719 DSC_0734 DSC_0735 DSC_0739 DSC_0744 DSC_0748 DSC_0759 DSC_0773 DSC_0775 DSC_0782 DSC_0797 DSC_0813 DSC_0820 DSC_0803 DSC_0806 DSC_0765 DSC_0826 DSC_0827On Saturday we hosted the Armstrong Christmas at our house. We had a nice relaxing day filled we lots of lounging, chatting, and food. Kevin made “the breakfast” for brunch and we had a scrumptious ham dinner with lots of extras to top things off for dinner. We all enjoyed opening gifts together and especially watching Finn sit on his new bike from Grandma and Grandpa. It was an absolute hit – it plays tons of rock songs and Finn just dances and rocks back and forth. You must see the new scrunchy face that is accompanied by snorting. He makes it mostly when he’s dancing and excited. Check out the video:

DSC_0841 DSC_0845 DSC_0847 DSC_0860 DSC_0864 DSC_0873 DSC_0876 DSC_0884 DSC_0887 DSC_0888 DSC_0896 DSC_0899 DSC_0909 DSC_0892 DSC_0914 DSC_0917 DSC_0922 DSC_0933 DSC_0942 DSC_0954 DSC_0955 DSC_0956 DSC_0969And if you’re still reading…or scrolling…you’ll want to check out Finn playing peek-a-boo all by himself these days!

 

 

 

Finn ~ 40 weeks

DSC_0406Finn is becoming more independent all the time! We sat him on his rocker this week and he just had so much run rocking himself back and forth!  You can see for yourself here:

He also absolutely loves to bounce in his bouncy-chair-play-thing. We keep this in our bathroom so when we are getting ready or need to put him somewhere that he can’t get in to anything we plop him in there. He loves to spin around and his latest activity is crazy jumping and bouncing!

We started our week on Sunday with Kevin joining our church, NPC. We’ve been attending church together since before we were married and I’ve been a member for quite awhile. So it is nice to now me members as a family! It was a large membership group, you can see him in the middle left here 🙂 IMG_20131215_104427_987

We’ve had a busy week full of fun Christmas parties. Tuesday night was our Small Group Christmas Party. Finn loved being around so many other young kids. He and Caroline loved playing with each other and the glass door to the Kessler’s study!IMG_20131217_203342_573 IMG_20131217_203408_841 IMG_20131217_203559_680 IMG_20131217_204938_828

We attempted to give Finn another minor hair cut for his 9 month birthday, we only did a so-so job this time. We are planning to make it to a real stylist soon as momma and daddy aren’t quite cutting the mustard! DSC_0325DSC_0424 DSC_0421 DSC_0417 DSC_0415

DSC_0335 DSC_0390Finn absolutely loves to eat when we do. Every time we sit down to eat or get food ready when he is with us he starts to lick his chops! His newest foods include greek yogurt, purple carrots, zucchini, prunes, and amaranth – and the bad parental foods that we’ve shared of our own include mini tastes of a waffle and donut! So far he isn’t allergic to anything and he hasn’t refused to eat anything either! His new upper lateral chomper is showing more and more. DSC_0316 DSC_0318 DSC_0320 DSC_0323He absolutely loves to have free reign in the family room and play amongst the dogs. He doesn’t always play the most gently, but the girls are wonderful with him and tolerate anything he does!

DSC_0293 DSC_0299 DSC_0301 DSC_0312 DSC_0315

Finn’s most favorite day this week was Friday, when he opened a most wonderful Christmas gift from his sitter, Tricia. It was an instant hit as you can see here! Tricia has been such a loving caregiver to Finn over the last 7 months. Being our first in home care giver things couldn’t have turned out any better. He sleeps so well, is happy and well cared for every day.  He smiles every morning when he sees her and she gives him the best cuddles. She will be moving on to begin student teaching in January and we are definitely going to miss her!

Despite the ugly and constant rain on Saturday, we enjoyed a nice stroll through the North Market followed by a lovely Christmas Dinner with friends at the Howards. I’m gonna sound like a broken record, but Finn just loves being around other kids and observing everything that is going on. He ate dinner with the adults and then had plenty of kiddos to watch him the rest of the evening! Kevin is modeling his white elephant gift (the scarf/hat) and his lovely gift from Mr. Howard, the boxers. DSC_0428 DSC_0431 DSC_0434

DSC_0436 DSC_0437IMG_20131221_204340323 IMG_20131221_210203653 IMG_20131221_210353397 IMG_20131221_213437795