Ho Ho Ho!

We have had a great Christmas holiday. Lots of time with family and friends and lots of new things to play with. Air hockey, race cars, Rokenbok, and even new underwear. Here's Graham and Carter on Christmas morning...

After checking out what Santa left...

Carter got in on the giving action and gave Graham $10 of his own money...

I think they had a great Christmas!

Isaac and Graham take Courtney's

Another Saturday morning, another trip to Courtney's. This time, we got to dine with Susan, Eric and Isaac. What a holiday treat. Carter spent the night out last night, so he couldn't join us but Graham and Isaac had fun enough for everyone. Isaac brought a truck and Percy and was really quite calm when Percy fell behind the booth. We had to disturb a table full of men who rode in on motorcycles to move the booth and retrieve poor Percy. Never a dull Saturday at Courtney's!

Welcome Benjamin & Elizabeth

We got to see our good friends Benjamin and Elizabeth yesterday and as if that wasn't treat enough, we went to the McWane Center and lunch together. The three boys brought lots of energy wherever they went. Here they are in a rare moment of stillness. It's hard to believe these boys are growing so fast.

Christmas cookies

Now that the boys are out of school for the holidays, we have lots of festive activities planned. First on our list was making Christmas cookies. OK, I admit, I bought the precut sugar cookies so we could concentrate on decorating and skip the rolling and cutting which usually ends up with someone screaming, someone crying and flour all over the floor. I think you'll agree that we look much more relaxed and the cookies are just as good.

Under Construction

Our church is undergoing some renovations in the fellowship hall. Carter and Graham got to ride on the bulldozer last week.

The workers have been ripping up the floor in the fellowship hall and discovered a couple of wells and an old drainage pipe. For some reason, we thought it would be fun for Carter and Graham to take a picture in the pipe. I guess so that they could say they were two of the very few people who had been in the drainage pipe under the church. Whatever. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Courtney's - under new management

Most Saturday mornings you can find a portion of the Harper Holder clan at Courtney's, a diner on Southside in Birmingham. Graham usually stacks creamers while waiting on his food.

Carter usually talks one of us into playing tic tac toe with him using straws, utensils and sugar packets.

Last Saturday, we were just about done when our friends came in. Virginia was kind enough to pose for a picture.

You never know who you'll meet at Courtney's. Most Saturdays we run into Marie Jeff and her daughter Gail. You may have heard of Marie's grandson, Tyler, who is quite well known in the blogging world. This Saturday we're meeting our friends the Crowbermillers - watch future postings for pictures. Even if you don't see anyone you know at Courtney's, the cinnamon rolls are still good.

Christmas Pageant

So this past Sunday was our annual Children's Christmas Pageant at our church. It was realitvely simple this year with two narrators, the congregation singing hymns, and children making different scenes (fancy name - tableaus). Carter sang "Still, Still, Still" beautifully and purely and Graham made his Christmas Pageant debut as a cow. In the story I believe they mention an ox but Graham insisted on being a cow, go figure.

Carter meets Carter

Last Friday, Carter and I had the opportunity to say a quick hello to President Jimmy Carter and get him to sign his latest book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Our friend Sara took this picture and she was so excited she was shaking, but you can make out Carter standing there admiring the President's penmanship. (The man is a wizard - he signs 800 books an hour!) Jimmy thought Carter was a very handsome young man and told him to stay in school. Carter and I got a chance to talk about Palestine and Israel while we waited in line for about 90 minutes, although it's a complicated subject - maybe you need more than 90 minutes to explain it to an 8 year old. What Carter knows is that we named him for Jimmy because we admire his peace-building efforts (even in complicated situations like Palestine) and we want for Carter to be a part of peaceful efforts. He's got a good start.

But he went far...

So in Montessori preschool, there's this activity where kids draw a picture and then dictate a story about the picture to the teacher who writes it verbatim on the lines below the picture. Well, we have about a billion of them from both boys but yesterday, Graham brought home one that he wrote himself and I love it so much I just can't stand it. I will have to translate, since he has written in his own Graham-phonics language. When he read it with me last night, it went something like this:

"Once upon a time, there was a little boy and he went outside. He saw a big tree. There were lots of apples in it. And his mom told him to stay close by her house but he went far."




I think we'll definitely be having baked apples for dinner tonight.

alright already

Yes, once again, I've let nearly a month slip by and haven't posted. So here you go:

For my birthday (back in October) my parents and my sister gave me a wonderful gift - a professional photographer who is apparantly skilled at getting very active boys to be still, smile, and act like they like each other. It's a wonder... I have yet to order the pictures, but here's a preview.

Life has been really full lately and it looks like it's not slowing down anytime soon, so I'll do my best to keep posting but I'm making no guarantees!

Baba's 60

We celebrated my mom's 60th birthday last night and realized that she's now the matriarch of the family. I guess that means we should treat her with awe and respect. Only problem is, there's not much awe and respect when the HarperHolderAvery's get together.

Mostly just chaos. And then someone mentions the hot tub...

And everyone jumps in...

Except for Harper, who's inside busy trying to keep her balance...

Move Over Daniel Radcliffe

OK I'm in love. Not with Harry Potter, but with my 8 year son who is more excited about his Halloween costume than anything else in the world, at least today. Check out his dyed black hair and AUTHENTIC Gryffindor sweater and tie.

Watch out for that spell cast by the AUTHENTIC replica of a Harry Potter wand. I am in love.

Late October Daze

Ok, so I borrowed a title from Kelly's blog. My creative juices are very low this time of year. I guess that's apparant as there has been no real update in nearly a month. Well, never fear for much is happening in the Harper Holder world.

This past weekend we were SO EXCITED to visit our friends Prentiss and Darianna for a hayride and pumpkin carving party at their cabin in Springville. As you can see, Carter and Graham have different approaches to carving pumpkins...


Also in the past couple of weeks, the boys have had an opportunity to try out their Halloween costumes. Here's a preview of Graham (aka Darth Vader) -

Carter is going to be Harry Potter, complete with dyed black hair and glasses. Oh yeah, and the AUTHENTIC Gryffindor House sweater and tie. But of course, it's not Halloween yet so I don't have a picture of him in his complete Hogwarts attire. So we'll just have to settle for the green and blue dyed hair shot from the Fall Festival yesterday:

It's certainly never dull for the Harper Holders in October!

The World Is Flat (or at least red)

Taking a page from my friend Mollie's blog, I decided to make my own map, showing all the places I've been (they're in red). In the interest of full disclosure, there are several countries I have only flown through, not leaving the airport, but I included them all. Check it out:

Create your own map: http://www.world66.com/community

Tennis Pro

This summer Carter and Graham both took tennis lessons from "Tennis Dave" at West Homewood park. They really enjoyed it and Carter decided he wanted to continue this fall. So every Monday night, we trek out to West Homewood and spend an hour and fifteen minutes watching kids hit "rally balls" back and forth. Tennis Dave is an amazing coach - he teaches techniques through games and fun activites so that the kids are constantly encouraged and actually improve. Our friends, the Estes family introduced us to Tennis Dave this summer. Below you see Lane (who I understand is not such a bad tennis player himself) helping Carter with his swing.

Notice Carter's tongue hanging out as he concentrates on making contact.

Haircut Time

On Saturday, all four of us got much needed haircuts. Carter and Graham have decided to grow their hair out in preparation for Halloween (stay tuned!), so you can hardly tell that they got any hair cut. Here they are browsing through magazines while waiting on Mom and Dad.

Fun with the cousins

So football season is underway and Kelly and Dan scored some sweet tickets to the Auburn LSU game last weekend and I got to keep Jackson and Harper for the day. Carter and Graham joined me at 7 am and pretty much entertained their cousins all day long. If you ignore the red eye in these pictures, they're really pretty cute. Notice the Avery children decked out in their War Eagle attire.

Soccer Star

So Graham had his first soccer game last Saturday and he scored two goals. In this soccer league, we try not to keep score, but Graham was VERY aware that he scored the winning goal. He was so way cute. I'm not quite sure where his athleticism comes from but we're just going with it. Carter started tennis yesterday and starts dance today, so stay tuned for pictures of him...

A Budding Artist

As our fall gets underway, the chaotic dance of after school activities has started.

Graham is enrolled in a Young Rembradts drawing class and playing soccer while Carter is playing tennis and taking jazz and ballet. Today I thought I would share a picture of Graham's first drawing - a beautiful ladybug. It's on display at his school with others like it.

As soccer, tennis and dance begin, we'll post other pictures of our boys in action, that is, if we can catch them...

School Daze

We're closing in on our second full week of school - 3rd grade for Carter and kindergarten (or as Montessorians call is, Extended Day) for Graham. Here are some pictures from their first day on August 28. Notice Graham is ready to be Harry Potter ready to play quidditch.

For those who are interested, Carter has determined that this year, for his science collection, he will be working on rocks and minerals. We're almost through his first report which is due tomorrow.

In Extended Day, Graham is getting used to contracts. At Montessori, students have contracts with their teachers to accomplish a certain number of lessons at their own pace in about a week to ten days. Graham was a little nervous about the prospect of deadlines, but he finished his first contract two days early. What an overachiever!

Our Favorite Lake

Each time we go to the mountains, we spend at least a full day at Cliffside Lake. There's a mile hike around the lake with a creek along the way that they boys like to play in. This year they built a dam with sticks and rocks. Then we swing and play on the beach for a few hours and enjoy a picnic lunch before leaving. We successfully ran off an old woman and her daughter during one of our two trips there this year. Although we didn't really fish here (you have to have a license and a trout stamp, whatever that is), Carter and Reggie did enjoy playing Go Fish. And Graham discovered an inch worm which he held very gently for several minutes. Aaaahhh nature...

The Bear Series

We spent a lot of time talking about bears. We never really saw one, a live one, that is. But the boys had a good time posing with stuffed ones. In this picture on the left, you'll notice they have their native american outfits on and they have successfully hunted a bear for dinner. Whatever it takes to keep the peace...

Alright Already

I know it's been a while since our last post. We went to the mountains and had a great time. As soon as we returned, school started, first for me at BSC, then for the boys at Creative Montessori. Needless to say, we haven't had a lot of time. And there's another problem. We have so many good pictures from our vacation, it's hard to figure out which ones to post. One of these days I'm going to figure out how to post whole slide shows but when you don't have time to make a single post, well, you know...

Anyway, here are a few of our favorites from our time in the mountains. THANKS to Mike and Gayle for sharing their fabulous home with us!

TED : Majora Carter (2006) video

Majora Carter is the Macarthur-winning founder of Sustainable South Bronx, an organization dedicated to holistic community development, sponsoring projects that create jobs, protect the environment and bring beautiful green space to the inner city. In this charismatic presentation (which received a prolonged standing ovation), she explains the inspiration behind her commitment to environmental justice and her vision for a renewed South Bronx. [Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA]

Webb comes home!

The Harper Holder family was lucky enough to have lunch with these fine folks yesterday. Our friend Webb Lyons is in town for a couple of weeks between his Washington DC jobs - sounds so important. Of course it will never be as satisfying as the job Webb held for over a year picking up Carter and Graham from school and hanging out with them until Mom and Dad could get home from work. I guess the DC job pays better. Whatever.

Webb's brother, RG is new to Birmingham and is building a new church community in West End through Urban Ministry. Our family is enjoying getting to know him better. And I'm so happy that Sara Doughton has joined me in the Service-Learning office at BSC. Needless to say, this lunch was a highlight of our week as you can see by all the smiling faces!