Child are beautiful all the time, but they are exceptionally beautiful when they are sleeping!
(and yes, Daphne is asleep on the floor next to Mom and Dad's bed. It's a work in progress to get her sleeping in her bed again)
Since Shelley bought the same house she grew up in, there's something very special for her children to grow up there as well. And even more special, some of the same friends that Shelley grew up with are still in the area and have daughters about the same age as Daphne. Now they are friends and will grow up together! (pulls your heart strings a little, doesn't it? Or is Shelley just really cheesy?)
Finally she realized just how fun jumping in them could be!
And of course, what's a birthday party without cake!
Before long, Shelley couldn't drag Daphne away from them!
Since Jude isn't even two yet, he's only saying the basics. He's putting two and three words together, and sometimes will tell you a whole story (even if you don't understand but every fourth word). But not to play favorites since the last post about Daphneism's, it's time to post some "Judeism's"!
Daphne is a little talker, that's for sure. Here's some of her recent "Daphneisms" that made us all laugh.
"I almost fell in the toilet! But God stopped me from falling in!"
"Mom! I saw a dinosaur at the zoo!" Daphne said to Shelley (mind you, we've not been to the zoo in over a year). Shelley asked back, "Oh yeah, what's a dinosaur?" Daphne looked around a moment, then said, "If you see a dinosaur on the bridge, you better run away!"
Daphne was sitting in the living room and Shelley overheard, "Dear Father, help me feel better. Amen!" Then Daphne came to the kitchen with Shelley and said, "Mom, I'm sick. My throat is sword." Shelley suppressed a giggle and replied, "You mean your throat is SORE?" Daphne looked at Shelley with a strange look and said, "Yes, I have a throat."
Daphne looked puzzled and asked Shelley, "What's Jude's name again?" Shelley laughed and said, "Jude." Daphne still looked puzzled, then like a light bulb turning on, she said, "Jude! Yeah, that's right!"
For some reason, Christmas time has become known for it's goodies. And we're not talking gifts here. We're talking about sweets! Here's some of our favorites from Christmas 2009! Aunt Kathy's dogs were treated like royalty with this goody package from Three Dog Bakery!
It's not Christmastime without Aunt Kathy's candy cane cookies!
Yumm.... Wally's Pastry's animal cupcakes and pettifores!
Shelley tried her hand at making the famous snowmen cookies! Daphne put all the M&M's on all by herself!
And a Wally's cake for Eric's birthday!!
Then of course the kids wanted to plow into gifts! Grammy and Gramps bought a big tool work bench, and even though Jude is a bit too small right now, he'll grow into it. Daphne loves it, too!
Jude got several small John Deere tractors, too... of course!
Ian's favorite gift for Jude is the miniature Honda Dirtbike that Jude got!
It was a blessed morning. Shelley made a big breckfast, too. We had big plans for the day...but they got pretty much ruined due to the mounds of snow. We couldn't get the car or the truck out of the driveway. Uncle John brought down the tractor to help us clear it, but even it got stuck! Eric, Courtney, Drissy and Tatum were stranded here, too! (Oh darn on that one!)
Since Jude was outgrowing most of the "baby" things, Eric and Tatum took a few things back with them. Including this excersaucer! Tatum loved it! Wonder if she still does?
Aunt Kathy and Uncle John hosted everyone at their house for Christmas Eve. Presents were overflowing everywhere... And as with any families house on Christmas Eve, we tried to get a photo of all four kids in front of hte tree... But with three under three, only Drissy would look and smile at the camera... Jude, Daphne, Tatum and Drissy - Grammy's pride and joy!
Then we tried to get our own family photo. Daphne and Jude are almost looking at the camera and smiling... 
Daphne became Drissy's shadow while they were here... Hopefully Drissy didn't get too annoyed with her!
But Daphne was just as enamored with her little cousin Tatum! She wanted to hold her, just like how she wanted to her baby Jude when he was first born.
The four "big" kids (Luke, Katee, Ethan and Emily) couldn't get enough of little Jude handing out the presents!
And of course we ate way too much food as usual. Since Eric's birthday was on the 21st, we had a special Wally's cake, too. Celebrating Jesus's birth with lots of family fills our hearts with joy... Our computer is still not working. We bought a harddrive, but it won't work. Trust me when I say this is a HUGE source of frustration for Ian and Shelley. We do have an external harddrive where most of our photos are saved, so Shelley is going to use a USB cable to hook that up to her netbook and try to upload some photos on here.
Sorry for all the problems....to all three of you who still read the blog.
Ian bought a new hard drive and will hopefully get it installed into the PC tower soon. Do you know what that means? Hopefully it means Christmas photos coming soon! How sad is that that it's February and we haven't been able to post Christmas photos yet?
Thanks to Ethan for coming up and watching the Super Bowl with us! Since we don't have hardly any family that live in the same state (including Ethan!) sometimes we get a little lonely. So it's wonderful when we can hang out with friends and family. Ironic side note, we were thinking about our friends and we realized that the majority of our friends are related to each other! Some are siblings of each other, cousins or step-siblings of each other. Maybe one day Jude or Daphne will marry into one of those families and we'll be related to them, too!
Gateway mailed our computer back to us. It worked the first day...and now it's doing the same thing AGAIN. So we are back to using internet on our phones and netbook. This really stinks! We are very much regretting ever buying this computer!! And we didn't buy any of the Best Buy protection plans, so they can't help us either.
Life isn't fair sometimes.
But if you've ever read "The Lottery" in your Lit classes then you already know life isn't fair.
What have we learned? If you buy something at Best Buy, get the protection plan. And don't buy a Gateway.
So until we can get it fixed...all the photos are stuck on our external hard drive and can't get posted here...
Shortly after the last post (dated Dec 16, 2009) our home computer crashed, taking everything with it that wasn't backed up. After Shelley stopped bawling, she realized she only lost a few photos. Whew! As you know, Shelley loves her photos - savors them like the best steak in the world. So the thought of losing any was gut-wrenching.
The computer was mailed to Gateway Support Center and we just got it back this week. We're back in business! Well, sorta. The computer is blank. So we've got the long process of downloading all the photos back into the PC. And then have no fear, Shelley will post up all the photos you missed out on the last month and a half!
We've missed you, oh computer...
