Merry Christmas!

What a week! We started our Christmas break with the ice storm that put us out of power for about 4 days. After spending two nights at PaPa and Grandma Schuh's house, we were finally able to come home to tractor generated power. We had a great Christmas and Santa was good to everyone. Here's a picture of Brock with Great Grandma Hurley. She and Grandpa celebrated their 70th!!!!! wedding anniversary on Christmas Eve. What a milestone! Brock was being so sweet sitting by Grandma and holding her arm. Here's Claire and Brock ready to go out and sprinkle reindeer food on Christmas Eve. It was freezing cold and windy, but they insisted on going out anyway. The smiles were all gone as they came back in with cold hands and Brock even managed to lose a boot. Here's the crew with the gifts that Santa brought. They each received a cool bean bag with their name embroidered on it.

Dance Recital

Claire had her Dance Production on Saturday at Twin Lakes High School in Monticello. She also started "Bitty Bomber" basketball that day, so it was quite a day for us all. She was soooo excited to get all dolled up and to preform on a big stage in front of everyone. She did an excellent job and we were so proud of her. We couldn't take any photos or video of the actual performance though (I think it's just a ploy to make you buy their video). Amazingly enough, both Brock and Hope were able to sit through the whole thing. I think there was enough music and dancing to keep their attention.

Claire

Claire had her school open house/music program last Thursday. We had a great time looking around and the music program was so cute. This is Claire with her 2nd grade teacher. Mrs. Rowan is a wonderful teacher and Claire loves her. I've managed to get a picture each year with her and her teacher. I doubt she'll let me do this throughout her school years, but I'm going to try for as many as I can.

This is a humerous picture because it was supposed to be of all the grandkids on the Schuh side of the family. However, as everyone else was not cooperating Mark zoomed in on Hope and Claire and got the best picture of the whole evening. The problem is the other 3 are not accounted for.

Miss Hope

A friend from church took Hope's 9mo pictures at our house a few weeks ago. We can hardly believe that she's almost a year old. Currently she loves taking baths, playing in Sissy's room (lots of things she knows she shouldn't have), cackeling at her older siblings, and eating paper. The things she doesn't like include having her face wiped, when Momma walks away, and when Brock decides to wrestle her. She has four teeth with two more on the way, lots of hair, and pretty blue eyes like Daddy. She's such a joy to have in the family!!

Choo Choo!

Okay, I got the pictures in the wrong order. Shelly's grandparents celebrated their 60th anniversary last week with a family get-together at the Whistle Stop Restaurant in Monon. Brock especially had a great time pretending to be the conductor of the train. He was on cloud nine playing on all choo-choos. Amazingly all the great-grandkids were able to make it. However, not able to look straight ahead and smile at the same time.

Trick-or-Treat!

Motherhood is spending many hours building a tractor out of a cardboard box because your oldest child convinced a 2 year old it would be cool. After all the hard work the 2 year old thinks it is cool. However, he gets freaked out at the first house by a kid dressed up with a scary face and won't get in his tractor or go trick-or-treating. A last minute scan of the house for a hat that was bought just 3 days prior turns up no hat but some bunny ears, thus child number three has a costume at last.

Fall

It's been a while since I've blogged. Mark is harvesting and things are hard to keep up with now that he's gone so much. Anyway, we went to a fun little farm yesterday to do all the fall activities the kids love so much. We went with my sister-in-law, her son (Bowdy), my mom, my aunt, and my cousin. Everyone had a grand time on a beautiful day.
Brock and Bowdy checking out a hole at the bottom of a tree. Good thing a rodent didn't jump out of it.
Claire and Brock had a great time on the pony rides.

More Camp Pictures

Labor Day Weekend

We had a wonderful weekend with family at Hanging Rock Christian Assembly in West Lebanon Indiana. We swam, hiked, biked, played in the creek, went down a zip line, made camp shirts, and even had time for naps (except Claire-of course)

Schools Back in Session

Today is Claire's fist day of 2nd grade and she was so excited that she was up at 5:30 am ready to get the day started. It makes it so much nicer than having to drag her out of bed. Mark took Friday and Monday off work and we had a weekend vacation before school started back. We hung out on the beach of Silver Lake at St. Joseph Michigan. Some of the other favorite activities of the weekend were picking peaches at an orchard, playing at a great park in Berrien Springs, and eating Chinese takeout at our hotel while watching the Olympics. Now it's time to get back to the routines of a busy school year. Luckily I got Hope to nap in the tent, because she definately doesn't like being confined to a small area and crawled out of the tent soon after I put her in it.
We got to the beach early enough that we had it pretty much to ourselves for a little while.

Olympic Dreams

We've been enjoying the Olympics the last few days and the kids are definately getting in the spirit of the games. Brock has mastered the sommersault with great form and sticks the landing every time. Claire is moving up in her skills and is currently perfecting the head stand. She's been able to hold her head stand for up to 10 seconds. Go USA!!

In the Army Now!

Hope is officially moving now. She started doing the army crawl today and is really proud of herself. She also has her bottom two teeth to show off with her smile (they came in late June). It's hard to believe that on the 29th of this month she'll be 6 months old already. She adds so much joy to the family.

County Fair Time

It's County Fair time once again. We had to go twice because Claire was on a sleep over the first time. Brock's favorite place was on a piece of farm machinery. Mark was afraid we might have to buy one the way he was pulling and jerking on all the levers.

Of course, the rides are always fun too! Claire even rode with Brock on a few of them.
Hope being introduced to a baby goat for the first time. Brock doing his belly laugh at the rabbit house.

Family Fun!

This is for all the guys out there that enjoy a good fish story. Just ask Mark, because I wasn't out there at 6am getting bit by mosquitos in the most remote place in Jasper county to catch this one and many others. But he obviously was and had the foresite to bring the camera. (He has more pictures and would love to show them, just ask) I think he was trying to out fish the Canada team.


We took a trip to Indy this past week for a little fun. We stayed at the Holiday Inn with the waterpark and spent the next day at the Children's Museum. A fun time was had by all, however not much sleep was had by Momma.
Who's this clowning around???