More Christmas Activities

I caught Sterling and his aunt Kara playing under the table one morning-- I don't know what they were doing but they were having fun!


Sterling has really gotten into playing with tractors lately. During Christmas he just wanted to push them around and pretend the whole time. He knows the difference between all the equipment too- he knows tractor, plow and combine!




Here's our little foosball champion. He's been playing since we lived in Thailand, so he's getting pretty good :) Here he's playing with my cousin Kolten.

We went to the Indianapolis Zoo because they put up all kinds of Christmas lights and decorations. Sterling really loved it. He loved seeing the animals and running around everywhere, and he thought the dolphin show was really cool.

Christmas 2007

Here is our little reindeer! He thought he was pretty funny putting these on.

Here he is with his aunt Kayla on Christmas Eve. I wanted to get a picture of him all dressed up for the service we went to at church. He did pretty well for the firt 30 minutes, but then he got mad at me because I didn't have a snack for him (I'm a bad mom). He started crying so Luke had to take him out. :)

This was also on Christmas Eve. He stood there so well to get his picture taken in front of the tree! We taught him to say "cheese" and he thinks that's pretty funny.

This was Christmas morning. We got up around 7am to open presents. Unfortunately, Sterling ended up with us in our bed at about 4am. The night before was his first night sleeping on the floor on a little mat, and he did well at first, but then kept crying and wanting in bed with us. He's done better and better each night. Hopefully by the time we get to Japan he will be all adjusted to being out of his beloved pack n play!

This was a present he got for Christmas-- it's a little Thomas the train backpack. We're hoping he will carry it through the airport with his stuff...we'll see!

Children's Museum and Basketball

These first three pictures are from the Indianapolis Children's Museum. We went last week and Sterling had to go with ALL girls, but he still had a fun time. The first two pictures he is playing with Alexandra Dobbs (Kyle and Alison's little girl). The third picture is in the dinosaur area and he's with his friend Keeli Pastore. He really liked everything we saw that day- esp. the dinosaurs!



We took this picture at the highschool basketball game. We have some friends from the youth group that play on the team so we go to watch them. Sterling isn't too interested in watching, he mostly wants to go out on the court and play too. He's only managed to run out there once when my dad was supposed to be watching him. Luckily, it was only during half time, not the real game!

Wintery Fun

On most days, Sterling goes out farming with his daddy and grandad. He's gotten pretty ornery about getting his picture taken, so I just have to snap them when I can get them. Here are two right before they left one day.



We went and had dinner one night with our friends that have two little girls. The top picture is Sterling at their little table with them, and the bottom picture is of him with their slippers on and carrying their baby doll. I couldn't resist taking a picture even though Luke didn't want me to!


Another fun winter activity is drinking hot chocolate! In this picture Sterling is sharing with his aunt Kara.

A Day At Uncle Brian and Aunt Erin's

During the time we were in St. Louis for Thanksgiving we went over to Brian and Erin's house to visit with Tom, Cindy and Meemaw. I went shopping with all the girls, while all the dad's stayed with the kids! :) They had way too much fun while we were gone!

Sterling and Paige having a snack together.


Sterling, Ava and Granny playing with Elmo- which Sterling loves these days.


I wanted to snap a picture of the two dads with each other's boys, but Sterling wasn't behaving very well. He was ready to go outside, not get a picture.


They all went outside and played with Ava's toys while she took a nap. Blake and Sterling rode in the wagon and on the John Deere together.




Sterling got his granny to push him around on the John Deere.


Sterling loves to wrestle, and Ava put up with him pretty well, even though he was completely overpowering her!


Here they all are for a picture...Ava is being so sweet, but Sterling wasn't...It's hard to get that many kids to at those ages to sit still.

Thanksgiving

I didn't get very many pictures at our huge Thanksgiving celebration with all of Luke's Dad's family, but here is one of the guys eating cookie dough (which I personally think is disgusting, but they love it!) In the picture: Payton, Jon Ferguson, Luke, Dave Ferguson and Brian.

This was Sterling's favorite activity during our stay in St. Louis, wrestling with his cousin Payton!

The next few pictures are all from the City Museum in St. Louis. A bunch of us took all the kids and it was SO much fun! Everyone loved it, from the littlest to the oldest of us! Sterling's favorites were the area where you could touch the animals, and the room full of ramps and half pipes you could run or slide up and down.

Sterling and his aunt Lettie

Sterling with his cousin Zion and uncle Shane

Sterling with his Uncle Patrick and cousin Emma

Sterling with Payton again

We're Back!

Well, I have a lot of catching up to do after taking such a long break from blogging because we have taken lots of pictures since we moved back to the Midwest!

This was one of the last nights in California. We went to dinner with our neighbors in Hollywood. This Elmo was on the street and Sterling thought it was really fun because he loves elmo.

As soon as we got home Sterling immediately went for the little trike my parents have outside. His feet still aren't quite long enough to reach the pedals, so my dad got roped into pushing him around.

We went to the National Missionary Convention and lucky for Sterling,a New Orleans house building mission was two booths down from us. They had Mardi Gras beads they gave out to all the kids every day and they kept Sterling entertained for a long time!

While we were there we all stayed in hotels. Sterling decided one night to put on my brother's boots instead of going to bed. It was very funny to see him try to walk around in them.

He also thinks my brother's hats are really cool, so here he is in Kyle's hat. He actually wore it for an entire day.

The Zoo

Well, this will be my last post for about a week or so because we are disconnecting our internet today to get ready to leave! It's hard to believe that our time here is already over because it's gone so fast. We have been able to do so many fun things and we are grateful for the time we've had to train with our team.
This is the last fun Los Angeles thing we did- the LA zoo. It wasn't the best zoo we've ever been to, but it was still fun. Luke took pictures of every single animal we saw, but I will spare you of that and just put three pics we took that day. We love you all and we'll be seeing everyone soon!

Just Playing

Luke is really good at playing with Sterling and lately they've been playing "farm". They set out all the animals and the barns and it's really cute.

Sterling's newest favorite thing to do is to "fwy" (his way of saying, will you please put me on your feet and make me fly up in the air!) After he does this for a while, then Luke just tosses him onto the bed and Sterling laughs like crazy and wants to do it again.

Everyone on our team has realized that Sterling's love language is wrestling, or what I call "wollering" (which means him climbing all over you). In this picture he is wollering on Nick :)

Our neighbors (a different neighbor than the ones that gave us the Disney tickets) gave Sterling a new Scooby Doo stuffed animal the other day and he loves it! Every day when we get up we all have to give Scooby kisses- Sterling insists on it every morning.

And here he is giving scooby a ride on his bike.

I'm not sure who he was calling in this picture, but he thought he was pretty big stuff.

Owen's B-day/Halloween

Owen's birthday is Oct. 30, so we did a halloween/birthday costume party on Wednesday. Sterling refused to take a nap after lunch and the party was at 2:30, so at about 2 o'clock he was extremely cranky. He fell asleep, but I didn't want him to miss the whole party (b/c I had bought him a costume!) so I woke him up and took him to the party. It was going well at first because he got to eat a cupcake...

...and then there was a puppet show, which he thought was okay...

...and then we tried to put his costume on! He was NOT happy about that at all!



But once we got it on him he was the cutest little dinosaur ever. The tag said it was a dragon, but he has a book about dinosaurs that he loves, so we told him it was a dinosaur.