happy anniversary to my love

Happy 7th anniversary, Natie!  I love you so much and I thank God for you all the time.  You are a wonderful husband and friend!

Christmas!

Here are just a few Christmas pictures.  We had last weekend off duty and spent a few days in Bluffton having family Christmases.  We had lots of fun!  It is hard to fit so much fun stuff into a blog post!  But here are some of my favorites.

This is typical of Halle, or probably any other baby.  As you can see, Halle would rather play with the bow from her gift, instead of the toy!  It would be a lot cheaper to just skip the toy!

Jill and Halle before bed

This is Kaine's new funny face.  It looks a little creepy, but he was getting such a good reaction out of us, and he thought it was so funny!

Kaine opening his big present from Grandpa Jim and Grandma Jan--he was super excited!

They got him a new John Deere bike!  He is a little small for it right now, but I predict that next summer he will be riding it all around campus:)

Aaron decided to try out Kaine's bike (and you can see Nathan in the background, wearing the annual Christmas vest.  It is a Christmas tradition for him--he got it in a white elephant exchange a few years ago:) )

The beautiful Halle with her beautiful great-grandma Lil!

Here is Halle getting ready to open a present

Here is Halle with another beautiful great-grandma (Leona)

This might be hard to see what is going on, but this is the fish pond that my dad made for Kaine.  It was so cute!  Kaine would throw his fishing line over the barrier-thing, and my dad would attach a present, then pull on the line.  Kaine would "reel" it in.  He loved it!

Here is my studly grandpa, with the game that we play in our Yergler family.  It is a spin off of Hoosier Millionaire, but they call it "Yergler Pennyaire".  (although, we get more than just pennies:) )  It was lots of fun!

Halle is not too sure about Kaine's new bear:)

Merry Christmas and God bless, everyone!  We hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

this is what happens when we get bored at the Maple House...

Last Friday night the Maple House girls (and their houseparents:) ) were feeling unusually hyper.  The girls, along with our assistant hp, Lisa Zaagman, were doing exercises, cheerleading jumps, etc.  Then they started doing this:

I don't know what to call that.

Then, our tiniest resident (she is 4'8"!) was challenged to fit into multiple furniture items around our living room.  This is her in the end table:

Another girl thought it would be fun, too:

Then Nathan decided to get in on the fun.  He decided to try to fit through our rather narrow coffee table.  Here he is, starting out:

Unfortunately, he got stuck.

 

However, he then went on to impress us by fitting through this incredibly small table thing (I don't know what it's called).  He really did go all the way through!

Kaine wanted to get in on the action:

I think this is so cute.  Kaine thought this was the coolest thing!  He still calls this girl's name, trying to get her to go in the cabinet with him again.   
I know, a very random post, but it was lots of fun and I thought the pictures were cute:)

she's on the move!!!

Yes, it's true--our sweet little Halle is officially CRAWLING!  What a fun milestone!  She is 2 days past her 9 month birthday, so that puts her about a month ahead of her brother, who started crawling at about 10 months.  She is still pretty slow--the farthest she has made it is about 2 feet:)  But it is so adorable and you can tell that she is so proud of herself!  Here are some action shots:  

she's thinking about it...

...and she's off!

Good job, Halle!