M. Christmas

a Star

For two years in a row now Henry has played the role of baby Jesus in our church's telling of the Christmas story. And now you see why they keep calling him back year after year. He really makes a good one, and he gets lots of practice thanks to his big sister.

Hope you all have a very blessed day tomorrow as we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Christ the Lord.

"Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

Love,
The Dirks Fam

Henry as Edward Cullen

Merry Christmas from Edward.

the decorating duo

A few days ago Maggie and Sam decorated some fabulous graham cracker houses in substitution of the ever popular gingerbread type. Sam's mommy, Melissa put them together and brushed icing all over the tops and sides, Maggie and Sam had the fun task of making them extra delicious, yet aesthetically pleasing. While the Mommies stood on the sidelines coaching them to keep putting the treats on the houses and not into their mouths.Cinderella Maggie hard at work.
Nothing suspicious here...
They both kept at if for considerably longer than either Melissa or I could have imagined possible for two fidgety two year olds.

"Mary" Christmas

We talk a lot about what Christmas is about in our home and we read the story of Jesus' birth over and over again, as I'm sure many of you do to. Maggie loves this story and we are so glad that she does, because we love it to. We love that our great God took on the form of a helpless baby and lived the life we fail to live on our behalf. So, we'll probably continue to read it over and over again, make that a definitely. And, we pray that our children will grow to love it in ways they can't even understand yet. But for now we play pretend. Oh how we love to play pretend in our home. We've found that this has become one of Maggie's favorite games to play with Daddy when he gets home from work. At least once a night Tyler plays the role of Donkey and Maggie takes the Mary lead. Every now and then Maggie appoints Henry to the part of Joseph or a shepherd. He does a spectacular job. They both do really.

RUF Christmas Party

Last night we had our RUF Christmas party and it was a blast. We had great food, games, festive outfits, white elephant gifts and even birthday cake. Our students really are the best and so much fun to be around. One of our students made Jesus a birthday cake and we all sang happy birthday. Our students are so sweet to show our children that even cool "JWU students" celebrate our risen King's birth. They love our kids so well and have been such a blessing to us. I can't imagine a better group to celebrate the holidays with.

Henry sportin' a birthday hat for the par-tay.

Ready for a rockin' birthday/Christmas party!
Yum-yum
White elephant gifts.
More white elephant gifts.

Piano Concert

A night in Bangledash

Friday night our friends the Parshals came over for an evening with us and our RUF students. Julie cooked a delicious and authentic Indian feast. They served in Bangledash for 21 years as missionaries and had some amazing stories to tell us as we sat shoeless on our living room floor eating fine cuisine with our fingers. Phil shared his testimony and spoke of the Lords work in his and Julie's life, and as one student put it, it was such an "edifying" night. You can't help but be inspired by this couple as you hear about the Lord's work in and through them both. Julie dressed me in a Sari and she wore one throughout the evening, I felt just like Jasmine and I am contemplating starting a sari wearing trend in Uptown.


And if you're thinking man is Carrie pregnant here, allow me to calm your fears, no I am not. The sari is more than six yards long and tucked into my pants in the front, so no that is not a baby bump.

JWU tree lighting

Johnson and Wales University has a really fun Christmas tree lighting event every year and this year was by far the best. Usually they have hot cocoa, snacks, singing groups and Santa Claus (and you can get your pic with him for free). But, this year in an effort to open up to the community they had (on top of the usual) crafts for kids, pictures with the Grinch, story telling and even a little snow. They really turned it up a notch and we enjoyed it so much. Last year Maggie cried when she was even a little close to Santa, this year she and Henry both were hunting him down and Maggie talked to him several times. So, much in fact Santa would call Maggie by name when he saw her. Unprompted by her parents, Maggie has steadfastly held onto the desire for Santa to bring her a baby doll for Christmas. And she told him every time she saw him, pretty cute stuff. In other cute news, Maggie is convinced that we are celebrating the birth of Baby Moses this Christmas. I caught her in bed after a nap the other day playing like she was Moses mommy. It's sort of stuck in her head but every now and then she will say correctly that is Jesus' birth that we are celebrating, and our prayer is that she will understand this more and more as she grows. And, as distracting as Christmas time can be we hope that she and Henry both will know the true meaning of Christmas which is Jesus Christ. He truly is the reason for the season.

Oh Christmas tree...

We, like many of you, put up our Christmas tree last week, and this year Maggie actually helped us decorate it. I can't believe she is old enough to do this, I'm not sure how to explain it but this is a big deal for this mama. It was pretty cute, she concentrated really hard as you can see in the picture above with her tongue sticking out.
We hung the breakable ornaments above Henry's arm reach because he was and is convinced that we have hung "balls" all over our Christmas tree for his enjoyment. And we have, but more so for his viewing enjoyment and not so much for his throwing enjoyment.
But, we did let him get up nice and close to a few.
He preferred putting beads around himself like Mr. T after we banished him from ornament bashing.
And the following morning we lured our children in for a sibling picture with some (at least a year old) candy canes. That's how you do it folks.

Thanksgiving

I didn't take a single picture on Thanksgiving mostly because I knew my sister and sister in law would capture the day better and I could steal their pictures. And they did not disappoint, so if you want to check out our Thanksgiving take a little trip over to my sisters blog at http://expandingtylers.blogspot.com/

New York New York!

Most of our blogs are full of kid pictures, but not this one. This is a post dedicated entirely to a fun grown up trip Tyler and I went on the week before Thanksgiving to New York City. It was a late 5 year anniversary trip and a much needed get away. We had such a great time and even though we love our kids very much, sometimes it is nice to be alone just the two of us (and the millions of people in NYC). And, of course the kids were in great hands with their Grams and Dog, whom made the long trip from Kansas to watch them for us (and celebrate Thanksgiving).

One of Tyler's favorite apps on our camera is the panoramic, so we have a few of these fab shots. This one is of time square, it was just a few blocks from our hotel and the first stop on our trip.
We met this guy.
This is just outside of Macy's, we were there on Monday and they were already setting up cameras and such for the parade.
We weren't planning on seeing the Late Show, but when we were in Time Square an intern from the show gave us some tickets. This was one of the highlights for me, we saw Natalie Portman, Paul Schaffer, Adam Lambert and of course David Letterman. It was a really fun experience.
Since we were only there for two and half days we packed in a lot. After David Letterman we went to the Broadway show, Chicago. It was really well done, but both of us preferred Shrek, which we saw the second night. I know who would have thought. Shrek was just a lot of fun and the costumes were incredible and did I mention Goose from Top Gun was sitting two rows in front of us. Well, he was ..only in New York.
Day two was a lot more sightseeing, we took a trip to the top of the Rock and enjoyed the Manhattan view. We also toured the NBC studios and Al Roker was signing books in the NBC store for his new publication, I think it's some sort of murder mystery.
On Day 2 we also headed to Soho, Chinatown, Little Italy and the World Trade Center sight. And we braved the subway to get there, and we felt pretty awesome as a result. This is us after Shrek our two shows were being advertised together so we had to take a pic.

Halloween party #2

We had another fun party on Saturday night at our place with some JWU students. And it was another fun fun party. There was bobbing for apples, pumpkin carving, games and one of our students, Setlar, didn't stop frying things until the rain came... and even that wouldn't stop him. He continued his culinary pursuits in the kitchen with more and more mozzarella sticks and chicken wings.
I had to take a picture of these adorable spider and mummy cupcakes made by Nicole, a baking and pastries student.
The firepit.
Tyler showing Maggie proper smore eating form.
Pumpkin carving contest in full swing.

The bobbing for apples tub.
And the brave individuals that actually attempted bobbing.
The finished pumpkins.
Playing games in the living room.

And even more games at the table.