A Change For The New Year...

I've decided to move the blog over to WordPress since I like it's user-friendliness more than Blogger. 

Here is the new link:

https://lavidakoch.wordpress.com/

This one is still active, I just won't be publishing any new blogs on here. Sorry for the change! 

Just For Fun...

The kids took over my phone a few days ago and the results are pretty funny. Well, this might be a case where we find this pretty funny.  Enjoy!
 

Twelve Days Of Christmas

in the Koch household. We’ve been in full Christmas mode the last few days with end of school activities before break and home activities to keep the kids busy. Both kids had school events on Friday beginning, with Claire singing, “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas” with the entire 1st Grade at an assembly. It was really cute:

Henry’s school then had a winter celebration with all sorts of activities, food, and games for the kids to do. Henry’s favorite was the glitter skating; an entire room with glitter on the floor and paper plates to use as “skates”:

                                                

The glitter still somehow made it back to the house and on our floor. I think it had to do with Henry doing a “glitter angel” in the glitter on the floor. My nightmare.

Yesterday we did some baking and the kids helped for all of 10 minutes. I don’t blame them, it was finally not raining and they just wanted to be outside.

The kids have been asking for the last week to start wrapping presents and we finally sat down and did it this morning. They were surprisingly helpful and make it an enjoyable experience. Of course it had to be done when Cameron was napping, that would have been such a free for all for him!

Cameron has been loving playing catch with the kids this week. It is so much fun to watch:

We are so happy for break, Paul has been travelling a lot the last couple of weeks so it’s nice to have a quiet break at home!

A Star Is Born...

...well, maybe if the star develops more enthusiasm. Claire started ukulele lessons in September after expressing some interest in learning how to play. It started off with eagerness and excitement and kind of fizzed out by the end of the term. Sound familiar with kids? She had her first concert last night and it was so much fun to watch her play. It’s a great music school and hopefully in January when she starts again she will up the enthusiasm again…

A Rainy Saturday

 

Paul had the great idea to go downtown and look a the giant Christmas tree at Pioneer Square. The first problem was that it was raining. We geared up and headed downtown. The other problem was that there was a holiday ale festival set up all around the tree. So the tree looked like half a tree with beautiful white tents set up below it.

  

The beautiful tree:

After spending 10 minutes walking around the square, we decided to walk some more and take the kids to Powell’s. If you look closely, there is a baby in there…

 

It was actually a lot of fun walking around on a very quiet Saturday morning and spending it at Powell’s, one of our favorite Portland places.

   

The rest of the day was spend watching a movie and Claire’s basketball game. A perfect Saturday.

Yesterday Paul was a good sport and put up our outside lights with “help” from the kids. Thankfully he got a small break in the rain.

Junie B. Jones

 

A few weeks ago I took the older kids to the Oregon Children’s Theater to see a production of Junie B. Jones. It’s based on a book series for K-2 children about a 1st grader that writes in her journal about her life at school and home. After the play I realized she is a theatrical version of Claire. Perfect. The kids had a fun time going to downtown and seeing the start of Christmas decorations.

This was taken after the show. They were not in the mood for pictures:

Eleven Months

 

Cameron is eleven months! Time is flying by and it needs to stop. He is so much fun despite his inability to sleep. He is taking more and more steps each day and every time he is so excited and shrieks. A few more things he is up to:

• Cruising everywhere. Especially around the giant rectangle that is our family room/kitchen area.
• Mimicking sounds he hears. Especially a cough or kiss sound.
• He is determined to figure out how the dishwasher and refrigerator open:

 

• He loves when the pantry is open:

 

• Such a chunky monkey:

• He still adores his older siblings more than ever. It’s so cute: