The Jolliff Family

I am a few days late but we did celebrate Thanksgiving the day after and had a wonderful day. Abigail was looking beautiful in her tights and turkey dress! My handsome boys and precious girl! These two add so much to our days! The three amigos!  I have a feeling these three will be quite the trio in the years to come. The kids performed two songs singing and one song playing a homemade instrument.  They are precious, precious children and we are so thankful that our kids have American friends on this side of the world!! These kids all love their Abu Ben and Em Ben!!  This picture breaks my heart and makes me smile all at the same time, we will certainly miss Paul and Harriet when they fly out later this week! After the meal, there was a reception in honour of Paul and Harriet and their years of living and working in the Land.  They had an amazing turn out and it was so fantastic to watch people honour...

I don't think I have posted these yet but this little girl is a climber!!  She climbed out of the walker yesterday and climbed in and out of the rocking chair all day today!  She is so proud of herself. And this guy loves to stand up!! He reminds me so much of Sam as a baby in the way he looks!!! There is really something special about twins!  I just love when they follow each other or laughs at the other one or shares food at lunch time! Hello beautiful girl!  I posted this picture of Facebook but I want to have it to keep on the blog! Random is good!

Around our house, we are getting teeth in and loosing teeth almost daily it seems Andrew lost his first tooth last night.  He was SO happy and proud of it!

Dearest Abigail, You are 11 months old today.  Wow, time sure has gone fast since the day you were born.  You have had a fun month!  You now have four teeth, your bottom two teeth, your top right tooth and the tooth next to it.  It looks like you are really close to getting one more.  You have your hands in your mouth a lot, they must bother you.  You are very social and like to babble to us and visit with your brother Abram.  You have gotten so strong and have started letting go when standing up.  You don't stand by yourself very long but you are getting stronger every day.  You are learning to clap and like to listen to music!  You wear a size 3 diaper and wear 9-12 month clothes.  You usually get up at least 1x per night.  You nurse about 3 or 4 times a day and take a bottle the same amount.  You are eating three meals a day and have really taken to your sippy cup this month.  You are very curious and have gotten ...

While Hap was away, the big boys played lots of games of Pengoloo and Candy Land.  They had a fun time playing together. The babies are enjoying the new snack cups that I recently filled for them.  It is intriguing to them to pull the snack out and they like to sit on the ground to have their snack.  They are learning everyday and the world around them is so big to explore, which makes these days busy but fun!

I don't remember if I have mentioned it on the blog but our dog had another litter of puppies about a month ago.  She had 7 of them outside our back door (while Hap was out of town, but that's another story).  They are cute, of course, but we certainly can't keep have any more pets.   This weekend while Hap was away again, I took some Christmas pictures of the kids.  The puppies had to make an appearance in the pictures also.  So at one time I had 5 kids and 3 puppies, needless to say that pictures didn't turn out but I do love this picture of Andrew and his "favourite pup."

Yesterday we had a special day trip to the zoo!!  Our friends, Paul and Harriet... better known as Abu and Em Ben visited with us at the request of Sam.  Abu and Em Ben will be retiring at the beginning of December and when Sam found out last week he was devastated.  Through big crocodile tears he asked if we could go to the zoo with Abu and Em Ben. Saying goodbye is the hard part of this life.  Abu and Em Ben have not only poured into our lives heavily over the last three and a half years but they have invested in the lives of our children as well.  They have attended birthday parties, came to Kindergarten graduation, visited in the hospital after the twins were born, sang "Holy, Holy, Holy" over and over at the boys' request, looked at backyard forts, encouraged them, listened to their stories, given them treats, prayed for them, played with them... they have loved them.  The boys know it and it is hard to see them go. But yesterday, we didn't th...

It's Thursday and this girl is ready for the day!!! I wasn't even tickling this little princess, she is just happy!!

I love all things fall- changing leaves, pumpkin candles, the cooler weather, and Thanksgiving!!  While we don't have all of those things here, we have made a new tradition since moving overseas to have a thankfulness tree each year!  This year I decided to make the tree a little bigger and on a more sturdy cardboard so that (maybe) I can use it again next year!!  We also had to put it up as a certain little girl likes to eat leaves  ;)