it's poppin' time!

roman received many fun/noisy gifts for christmas. he tends to have a favorite gift-of-the-week... and this week, it's the popper from uncle conrad! thanks, uncle conrad. :\

welcome back!

this little greeting was to myself, since i haven't posted anything in awhile. we had a great month of december - roman seemed to enjoy the christmas festivities very much! the three of us celebrated christmas on the day before christmas eve ("christmas adam", as joni would say!) we got roman some toys, since most of what we had around here were more "baby" toys... but the new ones we gave him were surprisingly noisy! what were we thinking!?! thank goodness for "off" buttons!

we traveled to denver, co over christmas to celebrate with jake's family. roman did well on the trip -- we actually splurged and got a portable dvd player (especially with the bad weather forecast which ended up being correct!) -- so roman became a fan of "veggie tales". here are some pics of his driving experience... parenting at its best, right? :}

while out in denver, we went to the denver chidren's museum - very cool! we were there for about 2 hours... think roman could have spent the day there! we highly recommend it to anyone traveling through!

we traveled down to wayland over new years weekend to celebrate with my family. had a fun time watching movies and just hanging out! raefe and roman got toy tops that they were both very interested, and so was grandpa!

grandma rosie came down to visit us on saturday - she and roman spent some serious time putting puzzles together, which is a new love of roman's!

holidays always seem to be busy - lots going on but so much fun! another little fun christmas "gift" was that we got to share that we are expecting a baby in august! we are thankful for good health so far and pray for good health going forward!

random catch-up...

speaking of catch-up... roman loves dipping things in ketchup. that's one of his newest favorite things.

another new favorite thing... christmas lights. he is easily distracted by christmas lights as we're driving - he "oohs" and "aahs" with us. and he loves the lights on our christmas tree. he walks around the tree in circles, touching every ornament that he can reach (not grabbing the ornaments, but just touching...)

roman also loves the giant, glowing Santa that waves in the wind every night across the street at our neighbor's house... roman stands at the front window and yells "Santa!" in a jackie chan-type voice (try it out loud right now... funny, huh?) :) definitely makes us smile!

here is a pic that was taken on our thanksgiving trip to hesston with the yutzys -- roman and raefe are sporting their new, matching long underwear (thanks grandpa mark & grandma susan!) ... they don't look very happy in this pic, but trust me, they were having fun!! :)


hope all are surviving the holiday season and looking forward to spending time with family and friends in the coming weeks!!

Two "firsts" in one day...

Jake and I have both convinced the other at some point or another to NOT cut Roman's hair... but this weekend, we were both in agreement that it needed to be cut. It was getting in his eyes, and he had been called a "she" one to many times at Wal-Mart. :( So Roman had his first haircut (thanks to Barber Jake) AND.... his first sucker (to keep him happy while the cutting was going on!) He did very well - sat still while Jake trimmed away and enjoyed his sucker to the end!

This first pic is "pre-sucker"...

and the end result... a short cut, a big smile, and still enjoying that sucker!

little musician

my college roommate, jess, gave me a harmonica for my birthday senior year - i don't play it, but roman seems to have a knack for it!

more fall fun!!

we've been enjoying a few more days of nice fall weather!

here is roman practicing for senior pictures - looks like happy about it, doesn't he?

... cheering for the hawkeyes!
... helping daddy rake the leaves

happy halloween!

roman was a frog for halloween - he seemed to like his costume, except for the webbed-finger option so we opted to let his fingers flow freely. :)

last thursday, my office had a day of trick-or-treating so roman came to work with me for a few hours in the morning -- here he is on his way to iasb. looks excited doesn't he?!?!

and then we see how tiring trick-or-treating can be! we weren't more than 5 minutes from leaving the office and roman was already asleep.

roman had one day to recup from the iasb trick-or-treating... here he is, patiently waiting for trick-or-treaters to visit our house!
checking out the stash of give-away candy...

...and then calling some of his frog friends to come over and visit!

unfortunately, roman did not master a "ribbit" sound... we were instead entertained by a "roaring" frog! (guess roman's parents didn't find the right costume for him this year!)