Visiting Santa

I have to say, this year's visit to see Santa is one I would like to continue. Our local rec center had breakfast with Santa a couple weeks ago and it was awesome! For a couple bucks a person, you came in at your reserved time and had pancakes, sausage and juice, served by the nice sponsors. Then, when you were done eating, you could stand in line to go see Santa.

As we were watching the people in front of us, we noticed that a lady would come from behind the curtain and hand presents to each child as they got off of Santa's lap. I quickly conferred with John to see if we were supposed to have brought wrapped gifts for our kids so that they could get something?!? When it was our turn, they asked the ages of our kids and, after the kids said Hello to Santa, they each got an age appropriate toy! How cool is that? Eli will never settle for a mall santa again! Also, they took pictures, printed them out with a cute little border stamped with the date and place, and you went to the table to pick them up and take home as a souvenir. Soooo much easier than the mobs of people at the mall. (Here are the candid pictures that John took. At some point, perhaps I will scan in the souvenir pictures, or you can just imagine how cute they looked!)

Advent Celebrations

We've been celebrating advent over the past week in several different ways. The kids have been playing with their Nativity Set, we've been reading Christmas stories, dancing to Christmas songs, watching Christmas movies, making Christmas cookies, and in general enjoying the season. There have been several occasions where John and I have just looked at each other and smiled because it's so much fun to be able to celebrate this season with our 2 children! Here are some pictures so you can join in on the fun. :)

We found out that Maddie and Eli share the same love for popcorn. Here they are watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.



What better way to let the kids help cook than to make cut-out cookies? It's just like play-dough, right? Well, the kids definitely had a blast, but let's just say that the clean-up took longer than the entire cookie baking process!

Everyone ended up with a masterpiece, though, even daddy! They were so proud and I think they even liked eating the finished product better than eating the dough (well, maybe).














And, I just had to include this picture of the kids playing in the snow because it is so typical of Colorado. Notice they're outside without the snow gear. Am I just a bad mommy? No, that's because it was so warm that they didn't need it and the snow was all gone by later that afternoon!

So Thankful...

This season, we are especially thankful for the privilege of parenting 2 children and for God's sovereignty. In the past month or two, we have been reminded on numerous occasions (from situations with numerous families) that we are not in control of our children's lives nor are we in control of our own. God has a master plan and it does not necessarily involve us having an easy time here on earth. Suffering is just as real as the joy that He chooses to provide for us. And, He is more concerned with our character than with our comfort. (who said that one? I didn't come up with it on my own)

With all of that said, we feel very humbled to have been entrusted with the lives of Eli and Maddie for the time being. May He have all the glory in their lives and ours!

On a lighter note, we have been enjoying taking the kids out to see the lights of the season. The day after Thanksgiving, we went to see Main Street light up and our kids' eyes followed suit! They have both been enamored with all of the "Christmas decorations." And, as we prepare our houses for Christmas, we are also attempting to prepare our hearts for the celebration of Jesus' birth. I will try to share some of our advent celebrations along the way...

She's One!!

Ready for all the cliches? I can't believe she's gotten so big. It's gone by so fast. It seems like just yesterday that she was born. Those are all true and, yet, it also seems like Maddie's always been in our family. Just as Eli was and is a perfect fit for our family, so is Maddie. God is so cool that way! :)

I must confess that we are not used to buying "girl" toys yet, though. Maddie's favorite toys have been dump trucks, fire trucks and trains. We don't think that there's anything wrong with that, but we also feel like we should at least expose her (and Eli) to some typical girl toys too. So, for her first birthday, we bought Maddie her first doll. And, as you may have guessed, she loves it! She carries it around, gives her kisses, climbs into her new chair with her dolls, etc. It's quite adorable.

Even though she's only 1 yr old, I think Maddie figured out that this day was all about her. She was quite the little princess and loved all of the attention. She especially had fun playing peek-a-boo out of the fort on our playset and making everyone laugh. And, I must say, Eli was very good about it! He sang "Happy Birthday" to his little sister several times, helped her open her presents and even let her have the attention. (of course, it also helped that one of his grandmas brought him a big firetruck to open before the party;))

While we didn't have an official "theme" for Maddie's party like we did for Eli's, we did have quite a few flowers involved. So, here's a look at Maddie's flower cake. It was really a bunch of cupcakes frosted together to look like a cake and it worked out pretty well. It was the perfect sweet ending to a birthday brunch.

Maddie, you are our little red-headed sweetheart. We love your belly laugh, how you pose for pictures, and that you love to play chase with your brother and the rest of us. You have truly enriched our lives and we thank God daily for entrusting you to us. May God put His hand on your life and help you become a goldy woman as you grow. We love you!!

(By the way, did you notice the beautiful November day here in CO? Amazing. :))

Railroad Museum

We took the kids to the Railroad Museum last week and Eli was in seventh heaven! He got to climb on any train he wanted, push buttons, move levers, walk on the tracks, what more could a little boy want?!? John took the morning off of work to come with us and that made it even more special. Look, Eli even dressed for the occasion. :)

Maddie had fun too. She liked pushing buttons and even just walking around the train site with daddy. It was a bit windy, but otherwise, we really can't complain about the weather considering it's November in CO.

Here we are "driving" the trains and checking everything out!

Happy Halloween

You must know how difficult it is to get a family picture with 2 little ones, especially when they're excited about trick or treating, but we tried anyway! Here are the best ones we could get; one from Neewollah Palooza (church's fall festival) and one from last night.

And, here are our little munchkins. I think Eli has told everyone that's walked by for the past 3 weeks that he's going to be a fireman and his sister is going to be a dalmation doggy, and it finally happened!! Actually, we were a whole family of firemen, thanks to a friend of ours and his old bunker gear. :)

Recent Happenings at the Keller House

Let's see, what's new at the Keller house?

Well, Maddie got her first haircut! She had some long tufts of hair around her ears that we wanted to get trimmed and the stylist actually gave her a hairstyle at 10 months. :) She looks adorable, of course. Here are some pictures with a little clip in her hair. I have yet to be able to get it back in, but one day...

And, Maddie's walking now! She's been cruising for quite a while and taking a few steps here and there. But a little over a week ago she decided that all she wanted to do was walk. Now she can keep up with the best of them, with her hands up in the air, of course. :) So cute!!

As for Eli, he's currently very into construction vehicles and fire trucks. He has several "construction sites" in the yard where he builds and fixes roads. He knows the names of all the vehicles needed and has the process down pretty well too. And, can you guess what he's going to be for Halloween? Here's a picture to help you out!

Just for laughs, I thought I'd include a short video from the week that John was out of town for business. The kids were burning off some energy in the basement and it is quite hilarious to watch!! (this is the first time I've tried to add videos, so we'll see if they actually work)

And the reminiscing ends...

OK, I think this will be the last post on our Oregon trip. Perhaps its time to move on and update you all on more recent happenings. But, you have to see these fun pictures...

This is Haystack Rock! John told me about this place when we first decided on our OR trip. It really was quite beautiful and, if it wasn't for a veritable sand storm when we were there, Maddie and I might have been able to enjoy it too. The boys seemed to have no problem with the wind and the sand. :) They went right up to Haystack Rock during low tide and saw lots of sea creatures, even a jelly fish swimming in the water! (thankfully, they weren't stung by it)

John took this picture of Eli and I think it's awesome. Not only is it a cool photograph, but it captures Eli as we think of him...always running, with his feet barely touching the ground. ;-)

On the last day at "our" beach house, we realized that we didn't have any family pictures. How sad would that be if we had no family pictures from our first official family vacation?! So, some kind people down the street snapped a couple for us. As those of you with children know, it's quite a challenge to get the kids to look at the camera at the same time, much less smile, so here's the best we could do.

And, last but not least, here are our little cuties hanging out in front of our beach house. It has been so much fun seeing them play together in the last couple of months. What a cool bond there is between siblings. I know that it changes with each phase of life, but right now I'm enjoying watching these two little ones learn how to be friends. :)

Life at the beach

One of the perks of being at the beach, especially for the kids, is getting to play in the sand every day. What could be better than having a larger-than-life sandbox to play in with mom & dad? Here are a few pictures of our adventures with sand.

Since we weren't able to bring any sand toys with us (somehow they didn't make the cut for the one bag we're allowed to check these days), we bought the bare necessities when we got there...a shovel, a bucket, and a dumptruck. Our (Eli's) favorite thing to do was to dig and "make roads." Maddie's favorite thing to do, other than eat the sand, was to crawl in the said holes and roads.

We took several library books with us on vacation and one of them came through in our sand play. It was about a garbage man and there was a little rhyme..."dump it in, smash it down, drive around the trashy town"... So, after we made a huge trench in which Eli could drive his dump truck and Maddie could crawl, Eli & I sat in the middle and pretended it was "Trashy Town" and Eli, of course, was the garbage man. :) (Please pay no attention to the little girl eating a magazine in the foreground of the picture.)

And, in case you're wondering, yes, we did venture down to play in the waves a little bit too.

Tillamook & Astoria

On our 3rd day in Oregon, we went out to Tillamook and visited the creamery there. It was a self-guided tour of how the cheese is made. Eli & Maddie both enjoyed the interactive computer information as well as the yummy cheese and ice cream that we got! Too bad they don't sell their ice cream in CO.





On our way home from Tillamook, we decided to head out to Astoria. We went by the Goonie's house and did the "truffle shuffle" and, while we were up there, we heard sea lions and saw a trolley. So, we thought we'd go catch the trolley and see if we could get closer to the water. Great impromptu idea, right??



As it turns out, we got to the tracks for the trolley just as it was passing by, so we knew we were at least in the right spot. Eli was so excited to ride "charlie" (trolley) and we were having a great time looking at the huge barges in the water. After a while, though, the wind started to pick up and we started to wonder if the trolley was ever going to come back. So we set off in search of the trolley. We walked to the next "station" (bench on the side of the tracks) and saw a sign that said THE trolley (only one) makes a 55-60 minute loop of the town. Nice. By the time we caught up with the trolley, we were able to ride it back to where we came from. :) Oh well, it was still fun for the kids to ride and we did get to the see the sea lions at Pier 39!

Our 1st Family Vacation

September marked our first official family vacation for the Keller 4. We didn't visit family or friends, but headed out on our own adventure. It was a great success! While the plane rides weren't perfect, they weren't terrible either. And, both kids slept in the car on the way from the airport to our adorable little beach cottage in Seaside, OR. Here are Eli & Maddie checking out the bunk beds in "Eli's room".

Our beach house was literally 100 yards from the beach, so we were able to walk over anytime we wanted to play in the sand and watch the ocean. Since it was Sept in OR, we pretty much had the beach to ourselves with a few passerbys here and there. It was great! Here's the kids right when we arrived. We didn't even stop to put bathing suits on, but let them dive right in (quite literally for Maddie who tried to eat the sand).

While the water was quite cold, we still put our feet in the ocean and let the waves "get" us. Here's Eli checking out the vastness of the ocean and wondering whether he wants to venture out or not. :) And, here's Maddie exploring everything on the beach with her mouth. What better way to "take in" the experience??

I'll post more from our vacation soon...

Fun on the East Coast

So, I made the trek out to VA by myself with the kids and, all things considered, it was well worth the stress of traveling. We had loads of fun with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends!

Eli isn't as excited about posing with other people to have his picture taken these days. He finally agreed to get his picture taken with Aunt "Doe" if they each held a ball and he could stand up!

Here's Eli having the time of his life on the scooter that Aunt Doe got for her 7th birthday. Grandma & Grandpa still have it in their garage and I think all of the grandkids have played with it. Eli though of it as a little bigger skateboard and zoomed down the driveway with it!

Here's our photo shoot as we were waiting to be seated at a restaurant one night. Notice only Maddie wanted to have her picture taken. Eli was too busy exploring the outdoors. :) Here you see cousins Trey, Drew, & Lindsey Beth as well as Uncle David (or Uncle "Doofus" as John taught Eli to say), Aunt "Doe" and grandma Marcie.


If you ask Eli what he liked about VA, most likely he'll tell you it's that he got to drive Uncle David's "tractor." It's really a riding lawn mower, but it was green and said John Deere, so Eli considered it a tractor. And, you should have seen him waving to everyone that would watch as they mowed the yard, Eli thought he was a celebrity!

Here are some other fun pictures of the cousins playing together. Lindsey Beth taught Eli to do somersaults (which he calls handstands) and even Maddie thinks she can do them! She puts her head on the ground and waits for someone to flip her over. :)

More pictures, I even managed to get all the kids on the same bench with me (although you might be able to see that Eli was resisting). And we can't forget Aunt Amy, who graciously let us be loud and destroy her house for several days. Let's just say that Eli loved his cousin's karaoke machine and guitar! And, here's grandpa Dave with Maddie too.