Lately

Other than a bit of a sick house lately, we are doing well around here. Abram heard me talking about the boxes of Christmas decorations and helped me clean up the house the best he ever has so that he could start decorating the house. Since there is no Thanksgiving in Switzerland (except for a little gathering we will have on Saturday), there has been no holiday barring us from starting to decorate :)

Jacob and Abram continue to go on Saturday morning hikes together up in the mountains. And I continue to adore the iPhone pictures Jacob takes of our children on these outings.

Chloé has a keen interest in dressing up from draping pieces of fabric around her shoulders to wearing Mr. Potato Head glasses. Last week, I was reading to Abram in his bedroom and she brought me the glasses to put on her. After I put them on, she waves and says "bye-bye" and walks out of the bedroom. Sure enough, about 5 minutes later, Chloé walks back in the room still with the glasses on her face.

And for the most part, our children are better playmates than ever. I really don't think Chloé thinks that she is a day younger than Abram. They love to play with pillows. A few days ago Chloé was snuggling right on her brother's shoulder so he asked me to take a picture.

A bit of our week

We pity any play mobile character that comes into Chloé's line of sight. She knows how to get their hair off with her teeth now.Is anyone else tired of the tv seemingly ruling your child's universe? One of our "activities" to ward of the tv show beast - Painting Pumpkins. Thanks for the idea Katrina!

Chloé didn't get to paint, but I was able to give her a paint brush and a pumpkin. I think she finished and was eating a yummy clementine.

I made this activity a long time ago, but Abram is now starting to predict words by their first letter sound. This is a great activity for your child if they are working on first letter sound recognition or learning to read words individually. I made these word labels for paper plates and he sorted out by boat, car, train, airplane. You could do this with your own readily available assortment of toy trains, planes, boats and cars.

I love how in this picture Abram is puckering his lips and making the "b" sound silently in figuring out where the boat goes.Yesterday, we got home from a friends house and Chloé was asleep like this in the stroller. She remembers to bring a doll with her all by herself sometimes when we go out.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!!!

Super Weekend!

Check out the Price's Blog for more pictures of the weekend.

We had a super weekend! On Saturday morning, we got up early and went to the Bern Temple. Jessi made the 8am session just in time while Jacob watched the children. We met up with the Price Family there at the Temple and they all went to the 10am session while Jessi watched all four darling children (all pretty much a year apart)! After the temple, we had the Price's visit us in Geneva for Saturday and Sunday. The guys did a local hike on Saturday afternoon and we went on a brisk November Sunday morning walk in the nearby town of Morges as families. These are some of the only photos we took of the weekend.

Thanks for coming to see us Price Family!

Especially love the above photo, as you can tell that Chloé is saying her "ohhhh" that she likes to do to show her sweetness and affection towards her mama (and towards her baby dolls).

We love to see the temple! The temple helps us remember how much our Heavenly Father loves us and what is our purpose as a family and here on the earth.

what I can't get enough of this week

We have definitely had our moments this week of not getting along, tears, and not sharing, but we have had a lot of this as well. . . Of course a moment like this started out with Abram saying "no, no, no! that is not how you do it!" But with a little intervention by Mommy, it quickly turned into a game where Chloé picked up a shape and Abram pointed to what color to put it on. After she put the shape on the right color, she was more than happy to get a cheer and a clap-clap-clap for her good work.
Moments earlier in the week included Abram orchestrating a sleep over in his sister's room with every pillow and blanket in the room on the floor and Chloé relaxing while Abram played and said "I'm gonna bite your ribs!!!" just like his daddy does with him. I had a view from the keyhole was all. It was heartwarming and one of those moments that gets you through some of those tough ones with such little children.

SummitOnTheSummit.com Climb Tracker

As some of you already know, Jacob is going to hike Mount Kilimanjaro in February. He is not going with the famous people on the Summit on the Summit climb, but it was cool to see that they are hiking "Kili" as well. He donated some money on the 19,042 foot, on summitonthesummit.com to help give kids in Africa clean drinking water. You can see it on the website by clicking the banner. Too bad donating won't get him to the top...just keep on training honey. :-)