Here Comes A New Shelmet

As some of you probably already know, we are selling our house and buying a new one. Since we won't be able to hop right from old to new, we are sliding into a temporary house that's still out in West Philly. The big move out of the old house happened the weekend after Thanksgiving. While Zoe hung out at Mimi and Joe Pop's, Cheryl and I made sure that she came into the new house in a welcoming way. Once big change was that we said goodbye to her crib and moved her all the way up into a big girl bed. Here's what things look like right now. The first two pictures with the purple bed are Zoe's new, temporary playroom. She is sharing it with Cheryl's clothes in the closet, but she has plenty of space to play and the TV is all set and ready to go. The next two pictures with the pink bed are Zoe's new, temporary bedroom. She has her big girl bed and a large bookcase for her books and clothes and other knickknacks. The last one is the living room, which sti...

After the long Thanksgiving feast, we were able to meet up with Annabelle and Baby John at Tyler Park so the kids could frolic in nature and the playground. Right away Cheryl tried to run off with all of the kids to live among the trees. That didn't last very long. Next, Annabelle and Zoe, or more accurately Batgirl and Princess Lady, were investigating rocks along the creek. There was some throwing, a little skipping and a lot of splashing, but everyone remained relatively dry. When the kids got tired of throwing rocks into the water, because I could do that all day, we made our way over to the playground. There was a good amount of swinging, some climbing up the slide the wrong way only to go back down and a monster chase or two. They really seemed to enjoy the swings the most. There were some tears when it was time to go, because saying goodbye is always sad, but we leave knowing that there will always be a next time to hang out and play. Can't wait!

During Thanksgiving this year, the weather was nice enough to be outside once we got to Mimi and Joe Pop's. That being the case, Joe Pop was ready to entertain all the kids with tractor rides. Zoe and Harlie seemed to really enjoy just sitting on the tractor. There was also some rides in the trailer. Zoe took a quick circuit around the yard and enjoyed every second of it. I'm not sure Fairbanks thought the ride was that funny, but he didn't seem to mind. As always, it was great to get together with everyone and see all of the kids interacting with one another.

Yesterday the three of us went to meet with all of Zoe's cousins for some holiday pictures. I'm not very good at counting, but there are about a billion pictures. That being the case, I will let them do the talking. All of the kids were really great at the photo shoot and super adorable. You can see these, and a whole lot more, in the set on Flickr. Enjoy!

We made our annual trek out to the mall to have our holiday pictures taken. This year we really lucked out in a lot of ways. The photographer was great and did a wonderful job of taking a nice mix of nice, portrait style pictures along with a number of goofy ones. Some of the nice ones include. Along with those, there were quite a few silly pictures. These elicited the most laughter while the person packaging up the pictures was putting everything together for us. That last one still gets me. We made sure to get these done early this year so we can get our cards out on time. Let's hope that plan works. In the meantime, enjoy this little cutie.

There is a lot to catch up on here, so I will just jump right in. Two weekends ago we swung by Mimi and Joe Pop's where Zoe enjoyed hanging out in the front yard and just acting cute. Cheryl took some video of her singing her pumpkin song (which may get posted here later) but she also took some nice pictures too. Here she is among the decorations and grandparents. After that, earlier last week, Zoe got dressed up to take care of her baby. There's something about her looking in the mirror to see what she looks like with her baby while getting her picture taken that really gets me. Later that day, after the sun had set, the weather was still nice so I decided to put up the screen on the porch for a bit of a movie/television night. Zoe is enjoying the Great Aunt Venture episode of Sofia the First. It's one of her favorites and, because I can't keep my eyes off the screen when she watches it, it is one of my favorites, too. A few days later, Zoe was just sitt...