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Merry Christmas! We hope you all had a great Christmas holiday. We certainly did. On Christmas Eve, we had a get-together with several other families in our area. Every family brought a different soup and dessert and it turned out very well. The kids played while the adults chatted. We then went home, where our kids opened one present: a new set of pajamas. We read the story of the birth of Christ in Luke 2 and then the kids went to bed.

On Christmas morning, Allie woke up at 4am. Luckily, Kerrie convinced her to go back to bed. At 7:30, we all went out to see whether Santa had brought gifts for the family. Here’s a video of the moment and of the kids playing with their new toys:

That afternoon, we had our family’s traditional Christmas dinner, lasagna with meatballs and Italian sausage. My cousin, Matt and his wife Amanda, dined with us and we had a great time.

In case you haven’t heard through the grapevine, we found out this morning we are having a girl! She looks healthy and is on target to arrive at the end of May. Allie has been saying it’s a girl all along so I’m glad I didn’t have to disappoint her with other news.

Now I’m going to have to sort through all of Allie’s old baby clothes and see what’s still usable. We also need to come up with a name for her. Deciding on a name has always been hard for us. Luckily, we still have 5 more months to decide. (BTW, when we told Allie the baby is a girl, she leaned over and whispered to me, “I want to name her Tinkerbell.” Hmm, not so sure about that one hon).

Here’s a scanned picture. That is her foot above her forehead and her knee above her chin. She’s a flexible one.

I know…I’m horrible at blogging lately (this is Kerrie, not Jake as it says above). It’s not for lack of time. I just HATE uploading pictures and videos; it takes forever and I’d rather be surfing all of your blogs instead Anyway…

Allie has been taking a dance class these last 4 months and has loved it. Her dance recital was on Friday and she was ecstatic to dress up in her costume and wear make up. She was the oldest in her class but it didn’t seem to phase her. She loved every minute of dance. We’re sad that her dance teacher is moving away.

Here’s a video of Allie at the recital:

Allie and I went to Disney on Ice with our good friends, Elizabeth and Iliana, last December. With Christmas coming up again the season must have reminded her of the show because she began asking to see it again this year. Luckily, our friends have a connection and were able to get us discounted tickets again. Yesterday, I surprised Allie with the announcement that we were going to Disney on Ice by putting a little picture of Disney characters in her advent calendar. (We have a calendar with little doors and every morning she opens one to reveal a prize: usually Christmas books, stickers, stencils, and family outings). She literally squealed with excitement…it was exactly the reaction I was hoping for. All day long she asked if it was time to go.

While watching the show she had a smile on her face the entire time. She danced in her seat to the groovy music and giggled at the silly parts. Although the show was fun for me to watch, it was more fun to watch her reaction to it all. Of course the first thing she asked when the show was over was, “can we see it again?” It would be fun to make it a yearly tradition but who knows where we’ll be next year and if Disney on Ice will be in our town. We might have to find some other fun girly outing.

And by the way, I’ll be blogging on Wednesday with news of the gender of baby #3, which by the way is due around May 24th. Yes, I know. Shocking that I’ll be blogging twice in one week and shocking that we are having a third May baby. We love the month of May!

We had a great Halloween! On Friday night we went to the Carrboro Carnival. (You can see a pic of me and Luke on page 2 of the website). They have the carnival every year and it’s usually held on Halloween night. This year it was the night before. It’s perfect for young kids. They get to play games and win toy prizes. Allie and Luke spent a lot of time looking through hay for toys.

On Halloween we went to the student family housing party then came back to the apartment for a chili dinner with the Greens and Morgans. Afterward, we went trick or treating. This was Allie’s first time trick or treating. In the past we got so much candy from the ward trunk or treat that we decided to go to the Carrboro Carnival on Halloween instead. Since we missed the ward trunk or treat this year (we were in Utah) and since the Carnival was the night before we got to go trick or treating. Allie caught right on and was dashing from door to door. It was hard to keep up with all the kids. We then came back to our place to snack some more and hang out. It was an awesome weekend!

P.S. I’m embarrassed to say that I lost my camera (again!) while in Utah. Luckily it was a small, cheaper one this time. Anyway, if I happen to get it back, I’ll post pictures of Utah. I’m blaming it on pregnancy (I was pregnant both times I lost the camera). Oh yeah…did you catch that? We’re expecting again.

Over the past month, we’ve been to some fun sporting events and we’ve got the pictures to prove it.  In September, I took Allie to the first UNC game of the season versus The Citadel with some of the other dads in the ward.  It was a fun game and we made it through half time before the kids wore out and we headed home.  We live about 8 blocks from the stadium, so it is a fun little adventure to walk to these games through campus past all the tailgaters.  Allie loved watching the cheerleaders and kept saying, “Daddy played football and Mommy was a cheerleader!”  I think she may want to follow in her mom’s footsteps. 

I was also in Chicago for a conference a couple weeks ago. I was able to sneak away for a couple hours to catch a Cubs games with some friends. The pictures are blurry because they are taken with a cell phone. The game was super fun–it got rain delayed in the top of the 4th inning–but it didn’t matter: I was at Wrigley Field chowing on a foot-long bratwurst and a giant Pepsi. All in all, a great night.

And just yesterday, we took the whole family to another UNC football game and had a blast. It was Kerrie and Luke’s first UNC football game. The kids probably liked the half-time show the best. We took off during the third quarter because the kids were worn out and it was a blow out (final score: UNC 42, GSU 10).

It’s been a fun month. Here are few pictures of the games:

My super cool sister-in-law, Kelli, took pictures of Allie and Luke when we visited them in Carson City a couple months ago. She put Allie’s photos on her blog and Luke’s will probably be up tomorrow. Check out her Photography blog. I LOVE the pictures she took! She really knows how to capture their personalities. She is so much fun and my kids adore her. Thanks Kelli for sharing your amazing talent with us.

This is officially my last year with my little girl before she goes to all day kindergarten. I’m getting a glimpse of what it will be like now that she is in preschool 3 days a week for 4 hours. She had her first official preschool day today and although I couldn’t get much out of her on how the day went, I think she had a great time.

It was really weird not having her home. I should have gotten a lot done but somehow I didn’t. I found myself watching the time pass wondering what Allie was doing then, if she was enjoying it and if she was getting along with the other kids. I did, however, blog while she was gone (two blogs in one day…what the?) Anyway, hopefully I’ll become more efficient and productive with my time while she is gone so that I can focus on her when she gets home. Luke naps in the morning so I will be getting a lot of “me” time (although I’m not sure how long that will last since he is going from two to one nap).

Here is my sweetheart right before preschool:

Things I learned (I’m a novice at this preschool parenting stuff):
Send her with socks: she hated getting sand in her shoes at the playground and they wouldn’t allow her to take her shoes off.
Get her a backpack: she came home with like 10 different papers/flyers.
Pay tuition before the 10th: I just assumed that they would take the tuition on the FIRST day of school with out any fees, but I was wrong. It was due YESTERDAY! I was a little embarrassed and frustrated that I had to pay a late fee as were five other parents who assumed the same thing.

All in all, it was a good day for both of us and we are excited for the preschool year.

Here are some photos of our trip to Sacramento, Carson City and San Diego last month. For some reason, I didn’t get a whole lot of pictures from our reunion in San Diego (so family members, please feel free to send me some). I was having too much fun to get the camera out. Anyway, we had a wonderful summer. Allie started preschool today and will go 3 days a week. She’s super excited about it. Maybe I’ll have more time to blog. Don’t bet money on it though.

Sorry folks.  We started this blog almost six years ago, and we’ve never had such a long foray away from it.  The summer was busy and we’ve had a blast.

Many of you were a part of our travels and playtime–thanks for the good times.  Because of that, we’re going to start from scratch.  It would just take too long to update you about the entire summer and include pictures, video and commentary from the summer.

So what are we up to now? I’m back at school and regular life.  It’s nice to have a rhythm again.  I’m working on a dissertation examining the effects of taxation on short selling activity around ex-dividend dates.  Yes, it’s an extremely titillating read.  When I finish a draft, I’ll post it on SSRN.com and you can put on your fuzzy slippers, make some hot cocoa and read a delightful treatise on taxation next to the fireplace–just don’t throw it in the fire.  I do have a couple of other papers up on ssrn.com–just search for my name in their search field if you’re interested.  I’m working towards graduation in 2010, but who knows– I could be forty before I get a real job.

Kerrie is back at raising our two little munchkins, which is at once extremely challenging and rewarding.  Allie is now questioning every thing and realizing her autonomy.  She is curious and imaginative and is the purest girl we’ve ever met–she even prays for her princesses every night.  She is working on reading and numbers and will begin preschool at the United Methodist Church in September.  She attended Bible School for a week earlier this month and had a blast.

Luke is everywhere and into everything.  He’s much more physically able than Allie was at this age, but not nearly as good at communication and words as she was.  The kids are awesome.

Other than that, all is good.  No news is good news.  We just plug along each day, working at our goals and catching up on sleep.  Life is indeed good at thornock.org.

Our little man (aka Buster, Jej, bub, Lukey-poke) turned one last Friday. My mom and Dave came to visit for the occasion. We had a wonderful time with them, however, it went by way too fast. We did some fun things and ate way too much food. The pictures pretty much tell it all. However, we did go on a double date (thanks Tammy for babysitting) and saw Star Trek. I’m not a Trekky fan but it was awesome! Way better than I expected. Anyway, I’ll update ya’ll on Luke later. For now, enjoy the pictures.