Cannon Turns 4!

On February 18th, Cannon celebrated his fourth birthday. Julie always makes the cutest cakes for the kids. Cannon really wanted a dragon cake, so Julie came up with this masterpiece.

"I'll huff and puff and blow you all out!"I believe he had an awesome birthday. His favorite gift was his new dvds of the Jurasic Park Trilogy. He loves dinosaurs.

Where to begin again?

It has been so long that I don't even know where to start. I might just give a brief recap of the past 2 1/2 months.

Sorry!

Sorry for not updating this blog for forever and three days. It has been busy around the Thornock household. We are currently ripping out our old kitchen. Just last night I finished tiling it. I am so glad that that phase is done, but the worst phase is still to come, grouting. I absolutely hate grouting. I thought about posting a pic of the tile but I want to give a before and after blog, so I will wait until then. I will grout the stinking tile this weekend. Our new cabinets are scheduled to be installed on Jan. 30th. I can't wait for that to happen. We are still able to use our stove (cause it is light enough to move around the room and bring it back for dinner) and microwave (for another 5 days). It sucks not having a dishwasher. So we simplified and bought alot of paper plates, bowls, cups and plastic utensils. After our cabinets are installed, the Granite company will come in and measure for our countertops. It will take approx. one more week for that to be cut and installed. All in all, we will be without a kitchen for over 3 weeks. Luckily we had that sink put in our new mud room. That has helped a ton. Still loving the drinking fountain. It will be nice to have this kitchen done......but then there is always more work to do. My next job will be tiling the entry to the kitchen. More tile, yeah! I believe my wife has plans for pergo in the palor and hallway to the upstairs bedrooms. After that I might get some time off from the inside and move my energy to the yard again.

I am in a dilema, I still haven't posted any Christmas or New Year's pics, but I am a little hazy on the blog rules. Is it too far in the past to make that type of update?

New Background

Let's see how long Julie lets me keep this up. Hopefully I will have some new stuff up soon.

Season's Greetings!

Brooke and Carson's Clogging Recital

On December 15th, Carson and Brooke had a dance recital. Both of them are taking clogging. Carson is also dancing hip hop too. They both did excellent. I already knew Brooke was a good dancer but I was equally impressed with Carson. He has moves and timing (definitely not traits that came by me, we can thank Julie for those). We didn't get very good dance pictures, however we did video it and they turned out good. I need to learn how to upload video to this blog.

I asked myself the same thing, "what in the world is on his head?" Well, Carson did a cute polar bear dance.

Here are a couple of pics of Carson showing off a move called the "Cheerio."

Brooke Wins Again

Brooke entered a Christmas Card contest at her school. She was really reluctant to enter because she procrastinated till the last night. So, Brooke designed her Christmas Card and entered it. Well it turned out that she was one of 10 third graders in the whole district choosen as a winner. There were 3 girls choosen from Monroe Elementary. The other two girls are Brooke's really good friends. She ended up winning a $50 savings bond. It is Brooke's third drawing contest that she has won.

Gingerbread House Building

Our friends the Christensens invited us over for a gingerbread house decorating family night. Being the engineer, I took control of putting the house together.

It was now ready for the kids to decorate.

And they were off.

Chloe had the method of decorating down. One on the house, two in the mouth.

Nearing completion. Everyone stopped for a pose.

The end result.

Happy 2nd Birthday Chole

On December 7th, Chloe celebrated her 2nd Birthday. I can't believe my youngest is now 2! Julie made her an awesome present cake as seen below. It was as good to eat as to look at.

Chloe LOVED blowing out candles. Julie had to light each candle at least 5 times because Chloe kept blowing them out. She has quite the huff.

She has opening presents down. Rip and throw, rip and throw! She will be ready for Christmas.

Here Chloe is showing us some of her new gifts from her birthday.

Like I said, the cake rocked.

Santa in Monroe

Every year Monroe City invites Santa and Mrs. Claus to come visit the kids in the park. It is a pretty fun time for the kids. The junior high student band always plays (which I feel really bad for because it usually is really cold). This year I took the four oldest kids up to the park, Chloe wasn't feeling very good that night. Below is the older four waiting in line.

I can't really believe Cannon didn't bite Mr. and Mrs. Claus, he seems to bite everyone else. I guess he wants something for Christmas.

Carson always acts so shy.

Now Brin is never shy. I think she asked for a fairy tale life.

Brookie giving me her cheesiest smile. What a cutie.

After the kids sit with Santa, Monroe City always has donuts and hot chocolate for everyone. As you can see below, no table is safe with my kids.It was good cocoa, ask Brooke.