Some videos of our Winter thus far

Playing in the snow:
She eats a little snow and then throws a couple of "snowballs" at us and then at herself.


Playing in the house:
She was in a real "giggly" mood one night and we got some good video of her laughing.

Callie's New Outfits

Callie got some new outfits from Gami and Bebe so here are a few pictures of her sporting her new attire:



We just had to put this last one up here. This was taken one day after her bath when she wanted to show off her new boots.


And a couple of stories for your entertainment:
The other day I made a snow angel for Callie which she seemed to enjoy. Then I asked her if she wanted to try. She said, "No, I'm too big." Sounds like a lame excuse to me.

The other day Jennifer and I were washing dishes. Callie came up and said "it's my turn." We responded, "your turn for what?" She said, "wash dishes." We hope that mentality carries over through her teenage years.

Christmas Tree

The day after Thanksgiving, we continued our tradition of heading out to the tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree. This was definitely the coldest year yet (consequently, it was our shortest time at the tree farm). We waited until it warmed up to 14 degrees to head out and cut down our tree. Needless to say, Callie was not too happy to be out in the cold despite her two pairs of gloves and socks.

She was doing ok at this point.

This was one picture too many for Callie

And this is the finished product of the tree in the living room.

Videos of Callie

We had our first big snow about a week ago. This is a video we took of Callie walking in the snow and eating a little bit off of her play slide in the back yard:


We posted this video on Charlie's facebook. This is a video of her dancing to LeCrae's new song called background. Every day (multiple times a day) she asks if she can dance. This means she wants to play music and this is sometimes the response that we get:

Minnesotan Girl

Callie is a Minnesotan girl. She plays outside even when it's cold. She even sports a skirt with leggings and boots!

She wraps up in a blanket and drinks her coffee (don't worry, not really!)

She eats snow.

She even got to vote for the governor

Maddux's Birthday

As promised, here are pictures from Maddux's birthday party. Samm did a great job with the party. She had little games for the kids to play complete with little prizes for them. It was a great time.

Maddux is the bumble bee. Annie is Little Red Riding Hood. Callie is a ladybug, and Evey is a pumpkin.

Callie, Annie, and Josiah "digging for jewels!"

Our little ladybug!

Around the House

We havn't had a lot of excitement going on lately. All our visitors have left. We did have Maddux Poteat's "costume" birthday party. Callie went as a ladybug. We'll be posting from that event soon. These are just a couple of pictures we've taken around the house lately. The first is a picture of Callie next to our hibiscus. I had to take this picture of the hibiscus because it had so many beautiful blooms on it. Normally it just has one or two blooms on any given day, but today it was beautifully bloomed out. It's kinda nice to have a bright, cheery plant in the basement. I have to bring it indoors every winter. Plus this plant has kinda become my "pet" plant. Charlie and I bought it right when we moved up here-right after we got married. I know it's silly but its just kinda special to me!

There is certainly a story behind this picture. First off, Callie loves this clown. I know its kinda strange b/c sometimes clowns can be a little creepy. Actually our neighbor gave her this clown along with a bunch of other gently used toys. Because I don't want a ton of clutter, I was actually weeding through some of the stuff and thought about sending the clown to goodwill. Before I could do that, Callie became attached. She lugs him around all over the place. I will say, as far as clowns go, this one seems to have a pretty sweet disposition. He isn't scary at all. Anyway, if you look closely, you can see a little black mark above one of the clown's eyes. Callie is allowed to look through my make-up bag as long as I am in the bathroom with her. She is not, however, allowed to open up any of my make-up tubes. The other day, I was in the bathroom with her, so technically she was allowed to look through the make-up, but I was in the shower and wasn't watching her closely. When I got out of the shower I realized she had in fact opened up my mascara tube and strategically placed some above clown's right eye. Now, she had disobeyed by opening the tube, so I couldn't openly laugh like I wanted. But it was pretty humorous. I was kinda impressed though. I thought she nailed the placement of the mascara.

Nickelodeon Universe with Papa and Bebe

We went to Nickelodeon Universe (the amusement park) in the mall of America with Papa and Bebe. They have a few rides that kids Callie's size can ride with a chaperone. Lots of them had to do with her favorite show, Dora the Explorer, so she got real excited about those. We have a few videos that we may post later on.
This was the "big rigs" ride that Callie rode with Bebe. She got to turn a steering wheel and honk the horn as the mini-trucks rode around the track.

This was Callie riding on Azul, the train from Dora the Explorer.

Callie and I rode in this hot air balloon ride together. It was tough to get a good picture of this one, but we had fun nonetheless.

Callie loved seeing this big Dora statue. It was all we could do to get her to stop looking at the statue and look at the camera instead. She probably said "DORA!" about 50 times for the hour and a half that we were at the park.

This was Callie's least favorite ride. By the second time around the track, she was in tears. This one went a little faster than we thought. She was pretty much done with rides after this. Even when we tried to get her to go on a ride that she had previously enjoyed, she didn't want anything to do with it. We hope we didn't ruin her enjoyment of rides for the rest of her life.

Papa and Bebe

Last weekend Papa and Bebe came to visit. We had a great visit with them and the weather was really nice. These are just a few shots from the weekend. We will have more to come in a few days, including our time at the amusement park in the mall of America. But for now, I'll leave you with these. Sorry these are not the greatest pictures. Most of them are from the sculpture garden in Minneapolis and it was hard to get Callie to look at the camera!

A few more videos

This is a video of Callie playing in the yard. She is working on kicking a ball around. It looks like she is well on her way to getting a scholarship to play soccer in college.


And this is a video of her playing at the Children's museum. She enjoyed playing with this super high-powered hand dryer.


We took lots of pictures from Papa and Bebe's recent visit and will post them up later this week.

A couple of videos

Callie in the tub - we had a good time singing "if you're happy and you know it." Callie will regularly say "happy?" when she is asking if we can sing it. She has also enjoyed singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes."


Callie watching Dora the Explorer - We let Callie watch one episode of Dora the Explorer every day and she absolutely loves it. THe two main characters are named Dora and Boots, so she runs around the house shouting "DORA! BOOTS!" a lot. There is another part of the show where they tell Swiper the mean fox to not steal things by saying "swiper no swiping" he responds by saying, "aww man!" Callie does a pretty good imitation of this that is in the end of the video. (we wanted to give all that explanation to those who had never seen the show before).

Friends

Callie has had a lot of good times with her friends this fall. This first picture is from a walk we went on with Evey. We now have Evey living just down the street from us. Callie really enjoys seeing her on a regular basis. And, Evey is getting old enough to begin interacting more with Callie. It's fun to watch. Note: This is not Evey's mama. This is Hannah, one of the girls in my Bible study. She was hanging out with me one day while I was watching Evey.

Every Sunday night we have couples' time with a few of the other staff couples. We all get together and talk about how our marriages are going. It is a great time to connect. We used to bring the kids in tow, but now as they have gotten older and more "active" shall we say, it's no longer feasible to bring them to couples time and expect to have good conversation. We have been getting some of the Northwestern girls to watch Callie and Annie for a couple of hours during that time. These pictures are of Callie and Annie at our house. The babysitters were nice enough to email me the cute pictures they took of the girls.

Apple Orchard

Probably my favorite thing we did while Gami was here was visit an apple orchard. There was this cute, little orchard/family run farm about an hour away from our house. It was a beautiful day. Callie saw goats, chickens, cows, cats, and even a peacock! We got to pet some baby chicks and feed an apple to a cow. We went on a wagon ride, picked gords from the field, and of course picked apples. It was Gami's last full day with us and it ended up being a good one to end on. Thanks for visiting us, Gami. We love you!

Children's Museum with Gami

While Gami was in town, we made another visit to the Children's museum in St. Paul. It's so awesome that you can get a library pass to the museum. What would normally have cost us $36 for the four of us, only cost $4. It's neat to go back to the museum with Callie now that she's a little older. She can enjoy everything a little more.

She's got something cooking in the wok. She loved the mini asian restaurant.


now for some grocery shopping

And, of course the water room! Stay tuned for more of our adventures with Gami.

Gami is here!

Gami is here! Callie has had so much fun having another "playmate." Gami has been quite the reading buddy, and she has watched a number of Dora the Explorer episodes.

This is before church. Callie is in the little dress that Gami made for her. It fits perfectly! She'll enjoy wearing it this winter.

The Wheel

For those of you who don't know, Charlie absolutely loves the Wheel of Fortune. He's pretty good at it too. So, when we found out that the wheel mobile was coming to our area, we jumped on the opportunity to try out for the show. A couple of fridays ago, we headed up north to the Grand Casino in Hinkley, Mn. We were hoping that Charlie would get the chance to try out. As it ended up, about 2000 other people had the same idea! Needless to say, our hopes of Charlie getting randomly selected to play a mock game on the stage kinda dwindled as we were waiting with the mob of people. He did attend one of the 1 1/2 hour long programs. They ended up calling about 30 people to the stage. Unfortunately, he was not one of them. So, our big opportunity passed, but at least we can say we tried.

Callie and I tried to kill time in the casino while we waited on Charlie. No one under the age of 18 was allowed in the auditorium which was unfortunate. But, we survived much to the help of the video arcade.






Probably the highlight of the trip was our family pic. with good ole Pat and Vanna! That's really all we have to show from our Wheel of Fortune adventure.

Twins Game

A week ago Sunday, we went to a Minnesota Twins game. The Twins have a new stadium, so it was fun to see it. A friend of Charlie's gave us the tickets, so it's extra nice when you don't have to buy them yourself.

Callie did great, and I was shocked that she slept for over an hour in my arms! I really enjoyed it actually. She doesn't do that much anymore. The only downside was that she drooled all over the front of my shirt! Thankfully it dried before we had to leave.