Little Bear and Baby Strawberry Shortcake

Every year the Youth Group has a progressive dinner Christmas party and each year there is a theme. This year it was cartoon/animated characters. Evie went as Little Bear and Gracie went as Baby Strawberry Shortcake. :) Little Bear didn't want her picture take, but here is Baby Strawberry Shortcake.

All my creativity was used up on the girls so Nathan and I just went as generic elves from a generic Christmas movie. I know, lame, but like I said, my creativity juices ran dry. ;) The kids did an amazing job with their costumes (you'll see some below) and the three host families were incredible with the food. Thanks Ickes, Mortiers (senior ;)), and Clearys for hosting!
(Elastigirl's costume may have been my fav ;))
Tinkerbell and Peter Pan
 
Evie's friend Timothy's parents hosted the appetizers. Timothy was excited when he saw Evelyn dressed up that he wanted to go put on his bear costume too! They were too cute together. :)
Such a flattering picture, girls...
Gracie with Puss in Boots who also actually made the hat that Grace is wearing. :)
Oh no! Someone stole Mickey's ears!!

Such a fun night, and to top it off, bed time stories with daddy!!

Jessie and James come to visit!

Earlier this month my friend Jessie and her son, James, came to visit. We missed Josh and are praying for him while he's deployed!! Josh and Jessie were stationed here when James was born so Jessie and I got to go through the end of pregnancy and first year and a half of motherhood together. :) We hadn't seen them in almost a year and it was so fun to catch up and watch James and Evelyn reconnect and enjoy playing together. :) James is all boy - he moves twice as much and twice as fast as Evie (which is saying something :)), eats three times as much, laughs easily, does everything with 110% energy and is just as sweet and delightful as can be. We loved our time with him! :)
The first evening they were here we raked a big leaf pile for the kids. Evelyn hadn't been that interested in leaf piles before. I think she didn't know what to do with them. Thanks, James, for teaching her the joys of leaf piles! :) Oh and the bears had to of course play in the leaves as well. :)

Gracie, wishing she could join in the fun. Don't worry, little girl, you will be right out there with them next year! :)

Watching George together to wind down while we made dinner.
Trader Joes is way more fun with a friend :)
James' special blue bear and Evie's bears were quite popular during the visit. This picture was very hard to get with two squirmy two year olds, but here are James and Evie sharing their most special bears with each other. They were so sweet in agreeing to share with each other!
Eating breakfast on the floor together in their jammies.
On the day Jessie and James left we went to the Richmond Children's Museum with our friend Amy and her kids. Joshua, James and Evie had a blast! These pictures aren't the greatest, but trying to get three two year olds to look and smile at the same time is pretty much impossible, but these pictures give you an idea of how much fun they had. :)
Love this picture of James "rowing" Jessie in the boat :)

Ambulence drivers...

Don't worry Katie Ruth and Gracie Grace, you'll be able to run around soon too :) 
Running around the infamous cave, shortly before Evie's fall. :(

Christmas Train!

Thanks for coming to visit, Jessie and James! Come again soon! :)

Oh the Weather Outside is Delightful...

On one of those 70 and sunny days this week that I referred to before, Molly and her girls came over for a play date. The weather was too nice to stay inside so we decided to take the girls for a wagon ride around the neighborhood and to the neighborhood swing set. Don't worry little Gracie, you'll be able to join them in here before too long!
Admiring (??) the giant blow up nativity down the street. ;)
It was during school so we had the swing set to ourselves. :)
Yes, it is December is my baby is out barefoot. I love Virginia!
Heading back for naps...

Come again soon, Margaret and Caroline!

December is here!

While it's beginning to feel like Christmas with all the decorations, parties, baking, shopping, and Christmas events, we've been enjoying amazing weather. If I can't have snow, I'll definitely go with the sunny and 60/70 degree days we've been having! :) Last weekend in the morning it was only sunny and 50s, but that turned out to be perfect weather for the annual Williamsburg Christmas parade! :) Grandma came with us and we ran into the junior high girls group and their families and sat with them as well.

Evie LOVED the parade. We made the mistake of trying to take a family picture after the parade started. Evelyn was very worried because Grandma was blocking her view and we were all missing the fire truck to take a picture! :p
"Hi firetrucks!!"

The parade was great and we enjoyed it, but it was looooong. We all felt like this by the end. ;)
After the parade our friends the Williams and Muellers, in town from Alaska and DC, came over for lunch. They're Ticket to Ride fans so once the girls went down we got a game in before they had to head back to DC. Feel free to ask who won this game. ;)
To close out the first weekend in December we went to Williamsburg's Grand Illumination. There is always a big party with our church friends and we usually hang out there until the fireworks. These were Grace's first fireworks and she loved them! She was mesmerized and flapped her arms and kicked her legs the whole time. :) (sorry for the blurry pic, this was the best phone picture we could get)

Such a fun weekend to start off our December!

Decking the halls...

It's a long standing Walker tradition to decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. I love Christmas and why not be able to enjoy it for as long as possible?? :) Some how a few years ago black Friday shopping also snuck it's way into our post Thanksgiving tradition. After trying the 12am shopping experience once just for the novelty of it (we did it the first year our outlets offered it), we quickly decided that that was a little intense for us. If you go out between 8-10am now though, you're after the crazy shoppers, before the next round of sleep in but still crazy shoppers, AND you still get some of the good sales. ;) AND you still have your whole day to get your tree, decorate your house, and blast Christmas music (my fav - Amy Grant ;), Nathan's fav - Sufian Stevens of course!).
After the full Thanksgiving day though, this is how I found Gracie when I went to get her to go shopping.

Now that she's a rolling queen she flips right over to her belly, tucks her hands under her and sticks her bum up. It's pretty cute. ;) I had left her wipes in the crib for some reason and of course that is the place she found to put her head.
Evelyn was quite intrigued with the tree process this year. She thought it funny that we were going to buy a tree to put on top of our car to bring into our house. She loved all the trees at Lowe's! (btw - there isn't a place around us where you can actually cut your own tree, :( so since we can't cut our own anymore, we now swing to the other end of the spectrum and just go to Lowe's)
Grandpa, this pictures is for you. I know how much you love these and I just wanted you to know how much your granddaughter does as well... Her favorite one is the jumping penguins ("Whack a Penguin") although the snowman was a close second. If you really want to speak her love language I'd suggest one for your yard when we come up in a couple weeks. ;) ;) No using Nana as an excuse now... ;) You can see how she was so busy smiling at them that she couldn't even look for a picture!

Eating lunch and watching dad put the tree on top of the car.
Evelyn LOVES helping Dad with projects and was so excited to be his tree set-up helper. She grabbed the stand and confidently said "I got this, Daddy, I got this." ;) You can tell by her face how proud and pleased she feels. :)

She wanted to hold the saw as well...

But once she started trying to saw things, we decided we better put it away. ;)
Helping Dad get it straight and secure.

Enjoying our first evening by the tree as a family of 4! :)