The McPherson Chronicles

Andrew has kind of been on a roll lately associating people he knows with pictures of other people. The first time was on Thanksgiving at my parents' house. Andrew saw Mary See on the box of Sees candy and excitedly said, "It's Miama!" Over and over again throughout the night he pointed her out to us. Hilarious! Then, the other morning when he got up he saw The Night Before Christmas book on the shelf and said, "Look it's Uncle Greg!"

I always loved watching the bond between the girls. They have been two peas in a pod since birth and truly are best friends. I wondered how Andrew would fit into the mix and how their relationships would form over the years. I'm truly amazed watching them interact and care for one another. The girls are so loving, sweet and accommodating of Andrew and he adores them and wants to do everything they do. This picture sums up so much of these 3 best little buddies.

  Olivia's first top tooth popped out at a birthday party over 2 weekends ago! I keep telling her if she loses her other top tooth by Christmas she can sing "All I Want For Christmas Are My 2 Front Teeth". She refuses. I'm still hopeful.

This kid's hair is WILD! I think I need to get it cut again and that will help. It's SO curly! But, the funny thing is sometimes, depending on how he sleeps, he can wake up with perfectly straight, well groomed hair. It's like he's 2 different kids. I just don't know what to do with these curls. Hopefully it gets thicker so I can do something with the curls otherwise I'm going to have to keep it constantly short. Also he finally had his 2 year appointment and he weighs 29lbs and is 35" tall. Getting big!

Happy arrived right on schedule on December 1st! This year he brought along pajamas for each of the kids as his Christmas season gift. They were all so excited to see him! Every day the girls get out of bed and before they do anything else they search the house for Happy the elf. He's always in a new place waiting for them to find him. Sneaky little elf!

This year there hasn't really been much time for the girls to completely obsess over all the catalogs and commercials about what they want. I thank Nutcracker for that. I'm also completely done with my shopping so they better not put in any last minute requests. Besides wanting every thing they see in the Toys R Us catalog Olivia really wants the Puppy Surprise and Lucy wants the Sing Along Elsa doll (yes, they are getting both of these already).  They wrote their letters to Santa and promptly taped them shut (with an excessive amount of tape) so I didn't actually get to see them. They did tell me they only asked for those things though. Andrew is the hard one. He has plenty of toys already but mostly just follows the girls around and plays with them/their stuff. He can play very well on his own too and is good about playing with all his toys equally but I feel like he is the kid that has everything. I'm sure Santa will figure something out ;)

We took a quick trip out to visit Aunt Sarah, Uncle Tim and Zack the weekend before Thanksgiving since they weren't going to be able to come home for Thanksgiving. We left Saturday after Nutcracker rehearsal and made it in time for dinner. Sunday we ventured out to a nearby ghost town to explore for a few hours. It was a fun little place with shops, a train, some activities like mining and shooting and a wild west show. The girls were scared of the show the first time we watched it and then later asked to go watch it again. Well the second time was too much for Andrew so he and I ended up hiding out in one of the little shops. The girls insisted on having their own little pink cowgirl hats and how could I resist when they looked this cute?   The little train tour around the town was Andrew's favorite followed shortly by the pre-lunch ice cream we had. It was a fun little adventure on a warm and sunny afternoon. Monday was already time to head home so we walked the kids...

I can't believe we are already 1/3 of the way through 1st Grade! Right before Thanksgiving we had parent teacher conferences and got the girls' report cards. They are doing amazing! The teacher just loves them and said they are always willing to help, love to learn and are well behaved. Their reading and writing in Spanish astounded us. There hadn't been too much writing in their homework up until this point so when we saw their writing samples with neat handwriting, proper punctuation, accent marks and correct spelling we were pleasantly surprised. They are right where they should be with their math, reading and writing. The teacher said everything will start getting harder (and we've already seen that on the homework) but the girls don't seem fazed by it in the least. We are so proud of them and how quickly they adapt to everything and just excel. I even had to use Lucy to translate to a lady who was lost at Church the other day. The lady couldn't believe th...