Up, up, and away!

We had a fantastic time on our way the Pittsburgh on Wednesday. Although both kids have flown a number of times (Brayden quite a bit), this is the first time they've flown in over a year, and certainly the first time that Brayden has been excited about it. He'd been counting down the days for over a week and woke up Wednesday morning thrilled out of his mind. When we got to the airport, the kids ran to the windows of the terminal to look at the planes:

Checking out the planes!

We flew to Pittsburgh via Atlanta, and when we got on our connecting flight from Atlanta to Pittsburgh, the pilot invited the kids into the cockpit to take a look around! Brayden was a little overwhelmed at first, but he warmed up quickly and walked all the way into the cockpit to take a picture!

Showing the pilot his new airplane toy

Brayden with his new buddies

Thanksgiving Feast!

We're on our way to Pittsburgh today to celebrate Thanksgiving with my dad's family! The kids are thrilled to get to ride on an airplane -- Brayden's been counting down the days (he's been waking up in the morning and announcing how many are left before we "fly in an airplane!").

Since I won't have pictures of our big family holiday for a few days, I thought you might like pictures of the kids from their school Thanksgiving Feast last week. Parents bring a dish to share at the feast, so Nicole (surprise!) put on her baking hat and went to town creating super-cute mini-cupcakes!

Fall colors, of course!

Showing off her special placemat

...then getting down to business

Brayden wanted to show off, too, with this...

...and his own placemat!

Digital Jesus

I preached on Sunday and wanted to share. Click here to read the lessons from Sunday, then click here to listen to the sermon. (Although I'd rather you listen to it -- sermons are for the ears, ya know -- if you must, click here to read it.)

Let me know what you think!

Baby lover

Layna is a total girl. She loves her baby doll like a real baby. She'll cart the doll around, pushing it in her stroller, then take it out a rock it to sleep (making sure to tell all of us to be quiet with a "Shh!"). Nicole caught her the other day walking around with her baby in her arms and one each of Brayden's and Nicole's shoes on her feet. It was too cute! After showing the baby the backyard, she gave a quick smile!

Backyard, up close and personal!

What a sly grin...

AND, and BIG Happy Half-Birthday to Brayden!! :)

Happy Veteran's Day!

Brayden's special tribute. Enjoy!

Around the house

There's no real story here, just some fun pictures around the house yesterday:

Swing, batter!

Our redneck ball player

Later, they dressed up as...

Lady Marmalade

...with a (very attractive) cowboy!

Stay tuned for a special Veteran's Day post from Brayden on Wednesday!

Our Reader

Brayden has always loved playing with letters, which naturally developed into a love of spelling words (LOTS of words). Now he has taken another giant step -- he's reading! In the last week, he has taken to grabbing books he's never seen before and trying to read them. We have a great set of books (that I highly recommend to anyone with young children) called Bob Books. They're designed to progress phonetically from extremely simple to appropriately complex. He's been loving them!

We've been so excited about his reading that we only remembered to document it last night... so here's the first reading video. (NOTE: this is the first time he's seen this particular book, so he isn't simply reciting it from memory.)

Our climber

Layna is certainly becoming an active little girl. At 19-mo-old, she's finally taken to chasing Brayden everywhere ...even up the rock wall at the playground! I was floored on Monday when she just took off after him up this:

On her way up!

Almost there...

Got it! Here I come Brayden...