Flashback to the Christmas Concert

I haven't taken a lot of pictures lately, unless you count taking pictures of the kids' artwork so I can make it into a bound book and get rid of the really large piles of original artwork I have diligently kept since they each started school.  Consequently, unless you want to see the work of Picasso-prodigy children, there isn't much to tell.  So I thought I'd flashback tonight to their preschool Christmas concert because I promised I would do this at one point, they were really darn cute that night, and I have nothing else.
Here they are, Liam distinctly saying "cheese" while I take the picture, ready to go to the concert and sing their little hearts out.

Liam walked in with his buddy Tbit, whom he hangs out with at church and school.  They have the same sense of cool style.

It's a blurry picture, but it's the best one I have of Micah making his entrance, and naturally his hands are in his pockets.  That kid came out of the womb practicing that move, I think.

Liam's group was up first.  He stood between a nose-picker and his friend Nicolina.

How cute is he when the nose-picker stops digging and you can see our little guy?

Micah's group was last.  It's a little blurry again, but I love it because it shows that he was actually singing, something Micah isn't always quick to do in public although you should hear him belt it out at home.

Mr. Cool again.  Loving how the crown is making his ears jut out!

Liam got a little upset at the end because I changed positions in the crowd to get a different angle, and he couldn't find me.  Look at how the lips are crying and the eyes are filling with tears!  Thankfully, his friend Nicolina talked to him and made him feel better, and he finished the concert just fine.

The grand finale!

So proud of our performers.

Cookie time - their reward for singing loudly!

Ms. Kathy, the preschool director, had a little chat with Liam while he was waiting in line to see Santa.

Two (three?) excited guys, ready to see the guy in the red suit and give him their wish lists.

I can't believe how great this picture turned out!  This is the best Santa picture so far.

I fell in love with this picture.  Santa looks like he's really listening to Micah, who is actually telling him something he wants, and Liam is looking on in glee at the whole thing.  They must have been good because they got what they wanted on Christmas morning!

Pet Parade

Yesterday was the (fake) pet parade at school.  It's good that it was with stuffed animals because I don't think Heinz and Samson could have contained themselves around all of the kids.
The parade capped a week of learning all about different kinds of animals and the kids were encouraged to bring a "pet" from home to be in the parade.  From his cadre of animals, Micah chose Max, the stuffed dog that he coerced the dental hygienist into giving him the last time he was in the chair.  He named the dog all by himself and we have no idea why he chose that name. Max (we're told by Micah) had fun in the parade. Max also sleeps with Micah every night.

Of course, other animals get to share in that privilege as well. :)

Oh, and we ran a half marathon!

Back in July, Tim and I thought that signing up for the Disney World half marathon would be a great idea to hold us accountable to getting in shape.  Fast forward five months to the alarm going off at 3:00 in the morning on Saturday, January 7, and it didn't seem like such a great idea anymore.  But we had trained (mostly) and were excited (as excited as you get at 3:00 in the morning), so we drove ourselves to the Epcot parking lot.  Here we are, waiting for the race to start.  By the way, you get to the parking lot at 4:00, start walking to the starting line at 4:30, the race starts at 5:30, and we actually hit the starting point at 6:15.  It's a long morning before you even start running!

It's impossible to get a good picture in the dark of how many people participated.  More than 22,000 people finished the race, and there were probably at least several hundred that started and didn't finish.  Lots of people trying to run in occasionally small spaces made for a sometimes-trying run.  And those white things you see at the back of the picture were the port-a-potties.  I have never seen more port-a-potties in one area in my entire life.

I have no recollection of being this insane at the start.

Tim just looks ready to go.

We finally see the starting line, although it's hard to tell from the picture!

When do you ever get to stop in the middle of the road to the Magic Kingdom and take a picture?!  We had to take advantage of this.  It was right around mile 3.

Running towards the castle in the early morning hours.  Not a time of day that we usually see the Magic Kingdom!

Tim left me at mile 10 and finished about fifteen minutes ahead of me.  This is the picture he took crossing the finish line.  The time says, "3:24", but you have to subtract 45 minutes because that's how long it took us to cross the starting line.

Final time for Tim was 2:42. Final time for me was 2:59.  I finished thirteen seconds under three hours, which I was thrilled about.  I was hoping for three hours and fifteen minutes, so I was happy with where I finished - and that I finished.  Way to go us!  Liam snuck in our end-of-the-race picture, but he's cute so we let him.

Goodbye 2011, Hello 2012

New year, new blogging.  I still don't have the hang of this new photo editor, and I feel like I'm about 90 years old when I complain about it, but it's true that I've resisted blogging because I don't understand it.  That's changing today.
The theme of 2012 in our house is "Just Do It".  True, I could be a little more creative than ripping off a late-80s, early-90s Bo Jackson-featured Nike campaign, but it really fits.  All those tasks that I've put off either since a.) having kids or b.) moving to Florida (and that's 7 1/2 years, folks, believe it or not), are going to get done this year.  So far, I've started back to blogging, have deep-cleaned portions of the bathrooms (okay, it hasn't been that long since I cleaned the bathrooms!), and started on the process of writing our will thanks to the kind folks at Office Depot.  What handy legal paper packets they sell.  Who knew.
But here's the blog part, which is probably the only part anyone reading this cares about.  This is a quick recap of our Christmas and start to the new year.
We took our annual trip over to Disney to see the Festival of Dancing Lights at Hollywood Studios.  Their smiles are bright, but these guys weren't part of the display, just waiting for it to light up.

Here it is - from the wrong end of the street. :)

While this experience is pretty much the least peaceful one of our holiday season, I do appreciate the effort to put out the wish for it.

Liam was explaining something about the lights to me.  Sadly it was raining a little so the "snoap" (snow made from soap) didn't fall as it usually does.

We got all dressed up for Christmas Eve.

We left food out for the reindeer so they'd have something to snack on while Santa was doing his thing. (We used to do carrots inside the house for the reindeer.  What were we thinking?)

We didn't forget about the jolly guy in the red suit, either.

A final picture of our Christmas tree prior to Santa's arrival.

Miguel, our elf on the shelf, ventured off the shelf for his last night with us before returning to the North Pole.

See how high up he was?  He really needed a good place to make sure that Liam and Micah were super good on that last day.

Santa was good to both Micah...

...and Liam.

Maybe because we were good to him.

Liam's new Spiderman bike!!

Micah got a collapsible bridge for his train set.

In disbelief that Santa actually brought the monorail he asked for over and over and over and over again.

One of Liam's favorite presents?  Raisins.  Seriously.

Playing with his beloved monorail.

Turns out that Santa dropped some presents off for us in Pittsburgh too.

These trains glow in the dark.  A little creepy when you stumble over them in the middle of the night, but very fun!

Baby cousin Tyson got into the act too.

Ah, Thomas stuff.  We love trains of all kinds in our house.

We had the annual Williams family reunion the day after Christmas.

The boys snuggled with their cousin, who looks a little unsure about hanging out with these guys.

Micah made indoor snow angels with Chloe because there wasn't any snow outside to do it.

Liam helped Aunt Heidi feed baby Tyson.

We celebrated when our beloved Steelers beat the Browns on New Year's Day...

...but mourned when they lost to God Tebow on January 8.

And now we're chilling, riding off into the Florida sun and into a bright 2012!