Artists in Residence....

I have been meaning to break out the art supplies with Colin and Gillian for a while now, but really hadn't gotten up my nerve. They received some nice markers and paper for the birthday from Mrs. Kathy and family, and I had gotten them nice fat crayons and paper earlier. On Wednesday, I decided it was finally time!

I tapped some paper to the coffee table and got out two, fat crayons. I broke the crayons in half, since their hands are so little. They did show some interest, and liked it when I scribbled. Gillian eventually made some dot, dot, dots of her own. Colin mostly wanted to take the crayon and run (and then eat it). Hopefully with more exposure, they will be making some real masterpieces soon.

Colin was such a ham for the camera! You can see the beginnings of the nasty cold he has now...


Gillian doing her most recent funny facial expression, we call it "Muppet Face." She was really getting into the coloring!


This is Gillie's other common facial expression right now, the open mouth-stick out tongue face....


Orange crayons taste the best, apparently:


TADA!

Nom, Nom, Nom. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

Last week after trick or treating, the kiddos had a yummy dinner that included some saucy noodles and, best of all, BLUEBERRIES. Now, it's November and fresh blueberries are not exactly easy to find, so Colin and Gillian are eating thawed, frozen blueberries. Not what I would call delicious, but, as you can see, they are really enjoying themselves!

(Please pardon the really loud oven timer, it's really annoying!)

Jack O'Lantern Fun

Before the Tricks or Treats fun yesterday, we finally got around to carving our pumpkins. We should have been better parents and let C&G play in the goo, but it wasn't going to happen yesterday. Next year, I promise.

Anyway, Michael and I gutted the pumpkins and then brought them into the living room to carve with the kiddos. Daddy wielded our carver, and later needed some oversight from Gillian:



(It was pajama day in our house yesterday until it was costume time!)


Cut right here Dada!


Colin wasn't so interested in the carving aspect as he was in EATING the pumpkin. Yes, eating the cold, slimy, hard, bumpy gourd. He also LOVED sticking his hands inside and trying to eat the goo he found! (But, yet, he won't eat scrambled eggs or mashed potatoes!)

So darn cute!


Nom nom!


So, we just went with plain old pumpkin faces this year. However, we did replicate each kiddo's current teeth situation in his/her pumpkin. So, Gillian has four teeth (and two more on the way, sigh):


And Colin has one lonely tooth (with another that has been threatening to pop out for two weeks):


Here's the money shot, all lit up! (For our pitiful TWO trick or treaters. Boo.)

Battle Maraca!

Last night Colin and Gillian went on a limited tricks or treating outing. Gillian was a Penn State Cheerleader

and Colin... well, Colin was Originally going to be Joe Paterno as he has some khaki pants that are now a little sort, but I dropped the ball with respect to finding him a black baby wig. With his red hair, it was fairly apparent that he wasn't Joe Paterno, but our friend Ken had a good idea: Colin could be Mike McQueary. So that's who he was:

After getting dressed up, we headed out to visit Miss Amy (she watches Colin and Gillian while Lea works). We visited there for a while and then went over to the Miller's.

Julia was also destined to be a Penn State cheerleader for Halloween, and we had hoped to get some cute pictures of Gillian and Julia together in their outfits... alas, that was not to be. This is as close as we came:

We had also wanted to get a picture of all four kids together and that didn't happen either. It was like herding cats! Though our attempt at a group photo did yield this amusing series of photos in which Colin sees Gillian with some maracas, Colin decides that he wants to have them, they fight over the maracas, and Lea laughs as Julia has now wandered away from our photo area during the maraca battle. You can click on the image below to see a bigger version.

Fun to look back....

So, this is a rather funny look back at where we were a year ago. Trust me, both Michael and I remember this night very, very well.

Oh, and last night Colin slept for 11 1/2 hours without a peep, and Gillian slept 12! Phew.

http://uhlfamilyblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/baby-photo-shoot-or-morning-after-mommy.html

A Year of Faces

With the kids having reached one year, I thought that we should look back at how they've changed. I've combed back through our photo archive and come up with pictures of both Colin and Gillian at about one month intervals. I'm hoping to expand this project into something like this.

Colin:


Gillian:

Post-Party Fun!

After their big birthday bash, Daddy took our little people home and put them down for a nap (successfully on Gillian's part, not so successfully on Colin's). After their nap, they had some fun with their new toys and helped Penn State beat Michigan!

Of course, we took a few pictures!

Daddy is trying to get Miss Gillian to smile and it really wasn't working....


He did a better job of pleasing her by pushing her on her new Radio Flyer!


I also took the opportunity to get some shots of the back of the shirts I ordered for C&G. I think you could read the front in the last post, but in case you couldn't, they said, "Team Birthday." Here are the backs:




And one last shot of the attitude our little princess is developing! She is roaring into toddlerhood!


And, of course, we had to get a family shot! One year of being a Family of Four! Hooray!