Santa Claus is comin' to town...

We took the boys to 'Breakfast with Santa' and to 'Dinner with Santa'. Jack wasn't impressed with Santa at either place. If you look closely, you can see his mouth wide open screaming. St. Nicholas did come visit (those are the pics of the kids in their jammies opening presents). Enjoy the pictures. We are anxiously awaiting Christmas. Drew has an extensive wish list and Jack just wants candy...

The picture below is the four of us at the Christmas Tree farm...

A Holly Jolly Christmas Tree

We have a neat tradition in our house. Each year, the boys have a Christmas tree in their play room that they can choose to decorate with anything they want. Then we make the ornaments together and hang them. Last night, we made this year's ornaments. We have a Chicago Cubs/Thomas the Train/Star Wars/Batman/Pooh & Tigger/Dora Christmas tree. The Cubs and Thomas ornaments were on the tree last year and we just keep adding... Drew is all about the superheroes. Jack is all about Dora and Pooh.

We put out the finger paint and let them paint some ornaments. Jack has a great dislike - getting dirty. He got paint on his hands and just kept saying, "Mess" and "Towel" till we cleaned him up.

The night was complete when Drew set up our child's stuffed nativity set. He got everyone in place and then I heard him singing "Away in a Manger" to the set. It was very sweet... Here are a couple pictures (pretty recent)...

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's that time of year - Thanksgiving. Tomorrow morning, we'll make traditional 'pigs in blankets' for the kids for breakfast and watch as much of the parade as we can handle (it does tend to drag on).

We are looking forward to some time together with the boys this weekend... BIG NEWS for us - we are expecting a third Burke... The arrival date is set for June 28th (but we'll see if that sticks). You never can tell!! I'll post 'peanut's' first picture some time next week. Drew has decided we should name the baby Peanut...

Things I've learned from my 4-year old

• Having a band-aid (covering a tiny scratch on your foot) is reason to stay home from school.
• Never cancel an activity promised to a preschooler. POSTPONE. You may have to bribe with candy.
• Birthday planning for your next birthday begins at 12:01am the day after your birthday.
• Heaven is the Batcave.
• God made all of us special. And some of us (like Batman) really special.
• When you get weak, apparently you die. Not frail, specifically weak.
• All toys cost the same. Regardless of whether it's a matchbox car or a two-foot tall knight's castle. So, why not get the castle??
• People have to get married at nighttime. Why? Because the Incredible's did.
• Preschoolers wake UP when the power goes out at night (too quiet) but can sleep through the awful weather radio that blares throughout the house.
• There's no place in the world like a grandparent's house.

One more post today...

We've added several folks to the invite list (we're paranoid and have the blog available by invitation only - John does work in IT and knows more than he'd like to at times)...

I wanted to add a couple other pictures from the weekend. We went to Tennessee with Liesa's family and there are pictures of Liesa's parents with the boys (and cousin Henry). We had a wonderful weekend and took the boys to the aquarium in Gatlinburg. They had a blast with the pirate display - argh, matey!!

Halloween pt 2

Bear with me - I am just learning how to do this! Here's Drew decked out on Halloween night.

Halloween

Jack enjoyed Halloween - he's all about candy!! He didn't catch on that we slipped him in the Bob the Builder costume!

Welcome to the Burke Family Blog!

Welcome to our blog! We are excited to keep everyone up-to-date with our family news and pictures of the kids.