Happy 3rd Birthday Jillian!

At 8:24am December 30, 2009 Jillian Grace entered our world. She was our miracle baby, and proves that she has the fight, stubbornness, joy for life, and love that Josh had as well. Jillian truly was brought to us by the grace of God and continues to shine life and love into our hearts. Our little drama mama and dancing queen, Jillian definitely lives in the moment and enjoys it all. Happy 3rd Birthday Jill! A year in pictures...

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to you and yours! We hope you had a happy and healthy holiday. We certainly enjoyed ourselves, even if Joey ended up getting croup at 1am Christmas Eve and is still having some rough nights. He was still in the best of spirits considering and both Joey and Jill got more than they could have ever asked for. We started out Christmas Eve day at Joey and Jillian's school for a Children's Service. It is always followed by singing Happy Birthday to Jesus and having cake! What better way to start the Christmas celebrations than to have cake in church! I have one picture on my phone which I of course forgot to transfer, I'll try to get that up here. We host Christmas Eve with Kurby/Klinger family and had a great time! Even though Joey was up a good portion of the night he managed to sleep enough for Santa to make his way in to fill stockings and bring presents! Joey rested when he could, but was running around and doing well all day on Christmas. Jillian also cooperated with an early nap so we could head to Grandma's for Christmas dinner and family fun! Christmas night was rough for Joey, we took him to the doctor and he is resting up and getting better for Jill's birthday party. We are hoping that Jill doesn't get it as well. I guess its that season though! More fun to come this weekend, but we hope you had a wonderful holiday!

Merry Christmas!

Ok, the camera has been cleared. The following posts are the past week, and I will not post til after Christmas with all the joy the holiday is sure to bring! We hope you have a great holiday!

Joey's Holiday Program

Friday was Joey's turn, and it was a different program with different songs and poems. Joey had a big smile on his face and did a great job. He was very excited to bring us our gift of an ornament he made for our tree. Since it was one week since the horrific events in Conneticut, before the program began the pastor says a prayer and speaks a bit about the services for the holidays and about his children when they were our kids' ages. He did this both days, but this being the week after, he also said the name of each victim, followed by a bell being rung, there was a moment of silence and a nice prayer for those that are grieving. He spoke how the bells changed their tune in a moment as the kids outside were ringing their bells to start the program. Whenever Joey has programs like this I can't help but be a bit more emotional or sensitive wishing Josh were alongside him. Joey is such a patient and loving boy that I know if Josh were with us he would be holding his hand, including him, and spreading so much love. So after the bells ringing one tone to another, reflecting on grief of losing little ones so innocent, followed by a bunch of smiling sweet faces the same age as many of the children's lives that were taken, and ringing bells... lets just say it was an emotional moment!

Jill's Holiday Program

Here is Jill's first holiday program at school. She loves being in the spotlight, and had a lot of fun singing her songs and ringing her bells.

Sheldon Christmas 2012

Last weekend we finally got together with our friends that we hadn't seen since Joey's birthday! It was way overdue, and the kids had a blast together while we were able to catch up as well. Joey and Jillian loved their gifts and play with everything! Thank you for hosting us, and for catering to our vegan ways! ;)

Our Gingerbread House

Total Hockey!

Our great neighbor, Mr. Sole aka Mr. Hockey himself was kind enough to set Joey up with his first set of hockey equipment! This is a pretty penny if you couldn't gather from all the equipment you see Joey wearing here, so a huge thank you to Mr. Sole for going with Joey to make sure he was sized correctly, Mrs. Sole for offering some great tips that I will probably ask her about again, and for being patient with our shy guy. He was and still is ecstatic! He puts his equipment on daily and takes his stick around the house...we've limited him to the kitchen and outside of a foam puck going under the stove which was quickly retrieved we've only had one casualty- a candy dish that was on the counter- No High Sticking! Thank you so much!

Lots of updates

So I fell behind in blogging right before Thanksgiving, and with the Christmas around the corner we have been very busy. So here is an update in pictures (or at least some of what I took when I remembered!). Last night was Jill's first dance "Holiday Showcase." She did terrific, she was hilariously adorable. If you are interested in seeing the 1 minute clip of her dance we have it! Bravo, Jillian! A week ago Phil had off of work on a Monday when Nonna and Grandpa are here, so after school Grandpa and Joey went skating. You can tell by the look on Joey's face he loves the ice and Grandpa out there with him was a treat! Last weekend we had Christmas party with friends from high school and their kids. Since we don't see everyone as often as we'd like we spent more time catching up than taking pictures. So here is the before shots... The first Sat. of December we had Breakfast with Santa at Joey and Jill's school. We had our usual routine of hockey then dance, but after eating as fast as they could get away with (meaning not eating much anyways) they ran to Santa to sit and tell them their wishes. Thanksgiving was spent at Nonna and Grandpa's. A yummy meal and lots of family fun, but of course the camera was thrown aside and forgotten again! Just before Thanksgiving Joey went in for his fitting. Joey will be in Uncle Kevin and Auntie Nicole's wedding in February. Joey has the lucky job of walking the little lady Amelia down the aisle. As you can tell he is very excited about this job and adores Amelia. We were very early in putting up our Christmas tree, the weekend before Thanksgiving, but we were very excited and wanted to enjoy it since we usually take it down before Jill's birthday much to some people's dismay! Here are the kids helping with the tree decorating. The following day Andrew and Emma were over so we had all 4 kids help decorate the living tree for Josh. And finally some random November and December shots, mostly of hockey and dance. Ok, I'll try to stay a bit more on top of things, but I'm not sure I can make any promises!