The Langkaus and Wichards come to town

We celebrated the Wichard side of the family Christmas over MLK weekend.  Jennifer and family came down from Wisconsin and Diane and Wally came up from Cape.  It was fun to have everyone together.  Walt and Baxter had A LOT of fun.  As can be seen by some of these pictures.  Baxter is always very sweet to his younger cousin.

Oh, and check out that sandwich that walt has while they watch bob play hockey.

Francine is 18 months!

Dr. Schmidt said that Francine looks great.  She is jumping, running, and talking a ton!  She knows the sounds of about 8 animals (will try to get it on video soon).  She loves to say please, especially when it is for cheese! 
We love her so much! 
I also included a picture of Walter, helping to celebrate his sister being 1 and 2/4 (as walt says)

Back in St Louis with the engaged...

Troy and Jessica actually came back to St Louis before us.  They settled right back in to their old "home".  They are getting married in St Louis on Sept 22, 2012 (if i have not told you) and they had some planning to do.  They got a lot done, and we got back to spend some good time with them as well.  We hope that someday they might come back to live in St Louis, we LOVED having them here. 

Although Francine and I will see them in March, we booked a ticket to go to LA for a long weekend over spring break.  YES!!!

More Des Moines Photos

Sorry Blog readers, I am sure that it is super annoying to see that we have updated the blog day after day (I am the most sorry to Wally!). 

Here are some more pictures from our wonderful time over the holidays in Des Moines. 

Christmas Day

We woke up and had some Santa fun before we headed out on the road.  Walt was excited about his lego sets that Santa left.  We had a great ride to Des Moines, we left around 9:45am and arrived by 4pm.  Francine and Walt were awesome on the drive. 

We got there and changed into our "dress" clothes and got ready for dinner and fun with the Ginthers.  We opened a few presents tonight.

Christmas Eve

This year we started a new sara and bob wichard family tradition.  We are going to stay home on Christmas Eve and then head to Des Moines on Christmas Day.  Diane and Wally were going to join us, but as with a lot of people this winter, Diane came down with a nasty cold.  (I am happy to report that she is feeling much better now)

So we had a great day.  We went to the Botanical Gardens Winter flower train exhibit.  My mom would have loved it, but none of us were too impressed, I mean it was beautiful, but flower-looking is not my thing.   Walt liked that they had a seek and find.  So Bob and Walt looked all over for different plants and toys.  Then we did all of our grocery shopping for the night.  Nap time,  and then off to Church.  It was a really nice Mass with the children's choir singing.   We had the kids open presents from us before bed.  Walt loved (more than toys or books) his new Mario Bros shirt.  So cute.  :)  Francine said "Yay" to just about each of her gifts. 

December at the Magic House

We actually went to the Magic House (St Louis Children's Museum) twice the week before Christmas.  We are members so we went to Cookies with Santa, and then Walt was into so many things that he wanted to go back 2 days later.  Here are a couple pictures.  yes that is Francine under a car, she was working on it :)  And walt is pretending to be an injured soldier.  

Christmas Card Photo Shoot

So this year I had some ideas for what I wanted our postcard/picture Christmas card look like, but I think that the kids are at a hard age to get them to 1.  look at me 2.  follow my strict directions and 3.  are not as concerned at getting the picture that I want. 

Here are some of the trials, I ended up going with the Francine crying on santa's lap.  It was just super cute.  And really so not like Francine. 

Hockey Update

So today, Walt made some good progress during hockey.  He's been skating on his own for a couple of weeks now, but today, there were a few milestones he accomplished.  First, the big problem that he'd had in the past is that he wasn't able to get up on his own after falling.  He would need either the assistance of a coach/bigger kid or a walker, but early on, today, he realized that he could get up on his skates on his own.  This is key for him to continue moving forward. 

This first video is of Walt skating on his own. A couple of notes here - it really looks like Walt skates over early on, and knocks the kid in the blue jersy down, but he never really makes contact with him. It's funny, from my camera's perspective, it looks like Walt just skates over, "takes care of" that other kid, and then just skates off on his own, but that wasn't the case.  Secondly, this is the first time that Walt has really been on his own without anyone encouraging or helping him as he skates.  At about 1:00 into the video, Walt falls down, and begins the process of getting up on his own.  The video doesn't show it to completion, but he did get up on his own, and throughout the day, he got much better at that .

Much has happened between the last video and this one.  First of all, Walt has been skating on his own for a while, but also, a "coach" has handed Walt his stick to help him balance, but it was too long, so I went over and got Walt his own stick to make things easier on him.  At that point, he immediately went from the area of kids learning skating skills to one of the other zones.  It would help to give a bit of defitnition of how they lay out the rink.  The Learn To Play program at Affton encompasses all 4-8 year olds with a very wide variety of skills.  In any given session, the three hockey zones are separated into chaos, controlled chaos, and skating drills.  Once I handed Walt his stick, he went straight for the Neutral Zone (controlled chaos) which is kids working on puck skills including passing, shooting, and generally playing with the puck.  He did this on his own without the urging of any of his coaches.   It was like once he had a stick in his hand, he  thought that he needed to start playing with a puck. The next video is Walt passing back and forth with one of the older kids.  Based on where I took the video, it's not easy to pick him out, but he's the kid in the center of the frame that is passing with the bigger kid.

This next video is Walt on his own near the far net.  He's kind of struggling to get good control of the puck, but eventually he does shoot the puck into the net.  He was very focused on getting that done, and it was fantastic to see him actually put he biscuit in the basket.    Again, I'm sorry for not being a better photographer, but Walt's the farthest player, and during this clip he's alone at the net.  I tried to keep him at the center of all of the videos.

This last video isn't very eventful, but he does do a great job of keeping his feet when he would have earlier fallen down.  For much of the shot, he's on the right side of the frame and you can see him going back and forth

Visit to Santa

Every year Bob's company has a family Christmas party at the office with Santa, face painters, carolers, food, and lots of fun.  WAlt got into this year.  He got his face painted with a penguin, got a green balloon dog, and got to talk to Santa. 

Francine did not like Santa this year.  As you will see in the picture.  Once she was off his lap, she was fine, but didn't let go of me for a while.  She is talking a lot and says "Ball" every time she sees an ornament.  Walt says that he wants EVERYTHING for Christmas, which I guess is good.  :)