Calista's Joy School Christmas Program

After being postponed once, we had the Calista's Joy School Christmas Program on December 30th. We had her all prepped to be an Inn Keeper, but since the person who was supposed to be Mary was sick, she was able to be Mary. She was thrilled (as you can see in one of the videos as she tells Mommy she got to be Mary). If you click through the album to watch the videos you'll also be able to see how at the end of the program best friends and greatest rivals Calista and Mykelle decapitated the poor baby in the manger.

"Christmas" Snow

Calista started crying Christmas morning when she looked outside and saw there wasn't snow. She was pleased when it started snowing the next day, and then when we awoke Monday the 27th to two feet of snow. When she saw it, she declared it "Christmas". So we had an extended Christmas! :) She had fun playing in the snow with her next-door-neighbor friend Krisha and Mykelle and Evan Winger.

Christmas Day

We awoke to see Santa had visited. He tried to be generous in his gifts as Jesus was in his greatest of all gifts. We enjoyed opening presents, playing with new toys, reading new books, eating a tasty breakfast, and then going to the church for a Christmas dinner.

Christmas Eve

We had a pleasantly surprising visit from Karl and Jolene and kids who came up to see NYC at christmas. They went into the city the 23rd and stayed over that night. Then we all went in to the city and browsed around the city, mostly just visiting FAO Schwarz. It was a great time.

In the evening, Mykelle and Evan Winger came over and played. We had a good time and finished our evening by having an "activity" (what Calista calls the nativity for some reason), and lit the angel chimes. It was a pleasant evening, and both girls promptly went to sleep and stayed in bed in anticipation for some magic to happen overnight.

Ice Skating

We went to the "Nutcracker on Ice" at the ice skating rink on Montclair's campus. It ended up being more of a skating recital with children, and then some amateurs and professionals in the second portion of the program. Calista loved it and couldn't wait to go ice skating. We took her the following week and as she would admit, she got a little scared. She got in mind to get help from a new friend named Heather.

(Be sure to click on the slideshow to link to the album so you can watch the videos.)

Christmas Open House (8th Annual)

This week has been a busy one with Jerry finishing up his semester and preparing for our annual Christmas Open House. As Danae and I discussed this week, it's a good thing we've been doing this each year because at least our house gets cleaned once a year! :) Anyway, we were glad to have so many come. We welcomed several of Jerry's work colleagues, friends from church, and our special guests Ed and Eleanore (Jerry's Mom's cousin). In all, including our family, we had about 80 people in our house last night! We don't have many pictures as we were busy with our guests. To all who came and all who are far, we wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

P.S. You'll notice from our pictures that we finally put up some pictures in our house!
P.S.S. With a little break coming up, I hope to put up some older posts with pictures within the next couple weeks.

Eden's First Birthday!

Wow! I can't believe it has been a year. Eden is so big ... AND CUTE! We are so happy to have her in our family! Thanks for all your well wishes and gifts - she truly enjoyed her birthday.

Miniature Golf w/ Kindlers

We drove a ways down to the PineCreek miniature golf course, but we had a good time with our friends the Kindlers. It was good fun for the whole family. We made a day of it by packing a lunch that we ate in between our two rounds of 18 holes of golf.

Calista's First Day of School

Calista has been enjoying attending Joy School with six of her friends from church. She's learning a lot including listening to her teachers: Sister Avery, Sister Winger, and Sister Jensen.

Our "New" Car

Unfortunately our 1998 Toyota Camry died, and so we were carless for a couple week while we shopped. Actually, thanks to several friends we were not carless the whole time, we had several people who offered use of their second cars and greatly facilitated the process of finding our new car. Calista had a lot of fun at the place we finally ended up buying a car. She loved roaming and playing in the showroom cars - especially the convertible Ford Mustang above.

Granparent's Summer Trips

We had a lot of fun with grandparents who visited this summer. See some of the fun pictures taken while they were here!

Sum sum summertime

Here's a glimpse of what summer has brought us:


Gotta go, more summer fun to be had!

The Doctor is in the House

Jerry finally closed the schooling chapter of his life with the pomp and circumstance of graduation at Maryland in May 2010, though he truly graduated in August of 2009. We relished in his accomplishment, though graduate school seems a ways behind us now. It was fun to be back in Maryland and see old friends and favorite sites.

Hail, Alma Mater!
Hail to thee Maryland!
Steadfast in loyalty,
For thee we stand.
Love for the black and gold,
Deep in our hearts we hold.
Singing thy praise forever,
Throughout the land.

one two THREE

She can brush her teeth. She can turn on the lights by herself. She uses the toilet alone (mostly). She eats without help. She can walk around NYC for hours without a ride. She climbs any of the playground equipment at the park by herself. She answers the doctors questions by herself...
It is happening subtlety, but surely. Calista asserts her independence daily by reminding us that she is THREE and she is BIG now. She approaches a group of middle school girls to let them know that she is big and can play with them now.
She loves music. If you followed her around all day you would feel like you were in a musical because she sings about everything.
She loves flowers. You'll see the theme in the photos.
She loves to play princess, with mommy as prince. But she's not afraid to get dirty, play doctor or cars.
She loves greeting cards, and sent her first email from daddy's phone to an unknown user. (Watch out, Jerry's contact list!)
The terms email, GPS, and Skype (as in, "You wanna Skype?") are old hat for her.
She wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up so she can "touch a dolphin and shark, and orcas and fishies." Or a zoologist so she can take care of a polar bear.
She reads many letters of the alphabet, and gets ecstatic when she sees a C anywhere. Costco is very special, because there are two C's (for Calista).
Our lives are so joyful with you, Calista!

PA Trip & Easter Weekend

Happy Easter everyone. May your lives be blessed as you remember Him who brings us hope and through whom we can experience eternal joy.

It's been a while since we've posted to our blog, but things are going well. We've been busy. A couple weeks ago we went to PA and visited the North Family (Jerry's sister, Joanne's family). Jerry had a conference nearby in Pittsburgh and Latrobe (Fred Forward 2010, organized by the Fred Rogers Center) where he demo'd some of his dissertation work. We had a great time visiting the North's and Calista and Eden really had a fun time with their cousins. We'll be heading back in a few weeks for Emily's baptism.

The weather the end of this week was beautiful so we enjoyed being outdoors. We spent several hours outside yesterday, doing many things: working on Calista's "new" dresser (pictures hopefully to come soon), and even worked on the yard, including fixing the fence that blew down in the storm a few weeks ago.

Well, we love you all and are grateful for our Savior. Enjoy the pictures.

P.S. In the slideshow there are two videos; click on the "photo" to open a window with the videos.

Snowy Days

Here's a taste of what we've been up to when is snowed.
(Currently however it is about 50 degrees and the snow is almost gone.)

Big girl, house updates, and portraits

It's been a while since I've posted to our blog, Danae's been doing them, but I had some alone time, and just had to compile some pictures of the family! So please enjoy these posts below.

First, we have a few pictures of our new BIG girl, Calista! She has been working hard on learning to use the potty. She's really enjoyed filling in her Dora, Diego, Thomas the Train, Princess, etc. potty charts; and of course the potty treats! Here she is putting away her diapers, which she announced to Mommy on Thursday that she wanted to put away. Also a couple pics of her special Dora panties! :)



Next up, some house updates. It's been a while since we've posted anything on the house, but we've been so tired from all we did before Christmas that we haven't done much lately. Here you can see our new living room chairs, roomba (75% off), blinds in Calista's room, elliptical (forgive the grungy basement), and kitchen computer. As those who know us can guess, we got great deals on them (we can tell you more if you're interested). Danae loves having a computer in the kitchen. It isn't new, just our old, refreshed one, but it is nice. We look forward to using the new (to us) elliptical - maybe Jerry can get below 500 lbs!



Lastly, Danae had posted some candid pictures, here are some more (OK, a lot more) candids capturing my three beautiful girls! With my new camera, and three beautiful models in the house, it's easy to take a lot of pictures. Sorry if it's too many, I really did whittle it down from about 1,000+ pictures. Hope you enjoy, I know I enjoy them!

Ugly pics

Jerry received his new Nikon D5000 graduation present this week (5 months late, or 4 months early, depending on when you like to give a graduation gift). Since it arrived he's taken pictures constantly, capturing some of our most cherished ugly moments.
Time after time when we're out with our girls we have strangers complimenting our beautiful daughters. When Calista was a baby, it was "Oh - she looks just like the Gerber baby!" and now she "looks just like a doll". Her curly hair turns heads all the time too.
So here's to show you that the hair is not always done, and we're not all sugar and spice all the time :). These are the pictures that usually don't make it to the world wide web... but are more interesting than the usual smiley cute posts.

HAPPY New Year from the happy gals

Eden is smiley and happy as ever. Jerry can even make her giggle - very cute.

Calista is flying high on the fun she's had with her cousins and friends lately. We had a fantastic Christmas with Grandma Fails and Jennifer at our home. Then we welcomed the Gockeritzes, Norths, and Karl Fails families for Eden's baby blessing on December 27th. Calista's obsession with Frosty the snowman came to fruition when she and Jerry made her own, real life Frosty in our yard this week. She told us just what was needed to make him complete- "a corn pipe pipe, a button nose, and toys made out of coal". Then Calista said we needed to put a hat on his head, "so he can come to life and sing and dance". Luckily she wasn't too crushed when the hat we supplied wasn't magic enough, nor when Frosty melted a little and his head crashed into the lawn.