New Guinea anyone?

So, this year Santa brought my boys two Guinea Pigs! That's right--despite Brian's "No rodents" rule, we are now the proud parents of a boy and a girl guinea pig (don't worry, the boy is fixed). Here are some pictures from Christmas morning. The boys were excited, and we were surprised at how big Guinea Pigs really are! They're like little rabbits, and they're great with the boys as you will soon see:

Brady with his Guinea Pig named "Hamster"

(he named him himself)

Kalen with "Leafy" who evidently loves to eat
leaves (Kalen named her)

Here's Kalen posing with Leafy the next day--like I mentioned,

they let the boys handle them in all kinds of ways.

.

Here's another one with Hamster and Brady--I like this one

because it really shows Brady's excitement.

.

And to not forget about Trace, tonight he was feeding

Hamster and when I turned my back...

.

He stole the carrot!

We hope you all had a fun-filled and loving holiday.

We're grateful for each of you in so many ways.

It's not candy mom!

I feel so bad, I haven't updated my blog in a MONTH!! But here it is, and I hope to get back into the swing of things. What can I say, I'm a busy busy lady right now.

So, this past week we had a FUN family activity with Grandma and Grandpa Graham and Uncle Chris. We each were able to make our own Gingerbread House and show off our individual creativity. If you want, you can vote for your favorite in the comment section! (ps--I didn't make one--I helped my boys of course)!

Here's Kalen's lil' house--sooo cute. You'll notice others with snowmen on the sides, but Kalen was the original to place a snowman outside his gingerbread house. He also did all the "gluing" of decoration all by himself!

Brady was so proud when he was done. You'll notice that behind the snowman on the right there are three little gingerbread boys. Brady was adamant that one of the lil' boys have red hair, thus the licorice stick on top of the head of the boy farthest to the right

:-)

Here's daddy's beautiful masterpiece. I love how Brian always takes such pride and joy in his edible creations, this Gingerbread House being no different. Brian was also the one to create the icing everyone used, which was perfect for decorating. It dried fast!

Uncle Chris had high hopes to make a giant house, but we ran out of crackers before he got to his roof. He had fun decorating none-the-less.

Grandma stole ALL the mini-marshmallows!! You'll notice no one else has any on their houses...

And last, but not least, Grandpa took great care cutting all of crackers into pieces to create a log cabin Gingerbread house. It was pretty creative, I think, although all that cutting made him pretty stingy with his knife. By the end, we knew not to ask him to borrow it :-)

AND A FUNNY FUNNY STORY:
So, throughout all of this, the boys were eating lots and lots of candy. About half-way through, I made a firm rule that they were not allowed to eat any more candy---they had had enough, we all had. After Brady got done with his house, and while I was helping Kalen, I noticed Brady trying to get my attention. "It's not candy mom...MOM, look, it's not candy." Without thinking about the earlier rule, I said, "You're right buddy, it's not candy, it's a marshmallow." At that announcement, Brady grinned and promptly shoved a whole large marshmallow into his little 2 yr old mouth! (I grabbed the camera)