The kiddos are all good at walking around now, and are slowing getting better at a small number of words.  Hi, bye-bye, cat, ball, uh-oh, bad, and no is the current vocabulary.  Anna was the one has told us "no" twice so far.  Since it wasn't over anything important, we did not scold her for telling us that.  Lydia learned "cat" the first time she wore new pajamas that had a cat on them and daddy told her it was a cat.  Now, everything is a cat to Lydia.  Jonathan is not as vocal on a regular basis yet.

The girls especially are getting more interested in stacking up blocks.  Jonathan is usually more interested in knocking them over once the girls have stacked them.  They also like rolling a ball back and forth with us.

On Daddy's birthday, we headed out to the mall.  We got dinner from Sbaro's as soon as we got there, as we wanted to eat before the kids decided to get cranky and tired.  Then we went to see if they would see Santa.  The mall itself was not real busy, and no-one else was there seeing Santa so we tried it.  Since the girls were scared to sit with him without us, Santa had us sit on the edges of the chair to help hold them while we leaned the top of our bodies out.  They crop the photo on the computer and add a nice background around it in an oval shape so that we are not shown in the picture.  Even with taking out time, no-one else came up to see Santa the entire time.  It was nice to not have to wait in line and have the kids get antsy waiting.

Then two days later we went to a new photography studio in the new plaza close to the Galleria mall (it sits where the Bon-Ton distribution center used to be.  Anyways, that did not go as well as we would have liked.  We got some good pictures, but none of the kids wanted to sit real still or stay together for the group shots.  Unlike the last place, this studio does not have the ability to give you low-quality proofs that you could take away and choose from later.  We were forced to make decisions on which shots to keep/print right then.  That's no fun when the kids are at their breaking point.  The place in Lancaster gave up proofs and told us we had up to at least one year to have any of the shots printed.  The good thing about this place compare to the place in the mall we used last Christmas is that this place could print the Christmas cards onsite.  The place in the mall sends the order to another location and you end up waiting at least 10 days to get the cards in your hands.

Daddy is still finishing up the painting, etc from having the area above the kitchen cabinets boxed in with recessed lights.  Hopefully that project will be completed this weekend.  Meanwhile, decorating for Christmas has fallen behind.  Daddy got the Christmas tree out of the box and up tonight.  Hopefully the lights and ornaments will go on tomorrow night.

As it is now 1:30 a.m., its probably time for bed.