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!