Busy week before Christmas

This week has been pretty busy as I am sure everyone has been. The last week of school before Christmas break is always busy. We have had class parties, present exchanges, cookie making for teachers, etc.. I also had to work the last 2 days which made it a bit more hectic. But, we did get all the cookies made for all 5 teachers and the gifts were wrapped with help from TJ and Catbird. They have really gotten into giving gifts this year. They have been making a bunch of stuff and wrapping it up and putting it under the tree. I am glad to see them so excited to give presents. It does feel good to give. Kristina drew a picture for her homeroom teacher. It was a picture of an angel and it turned out so good! Her drawing is really coming along. She loves to draw though and if she is not reading a book she is drawing a picture. Now if I could only get her to spend that much time on her homework. :)

~Catbird has been busy making ornaments in her class. They turned out really good. Here is a picture of her with her ornaments. The picture does not do the ornaments justice though.

~TJ has been busy making things also and learning about Christmas celebrations all over the world. They are both looking forward to no school for a few weeks. The weather has been so gloomy, but at least it has been warm. We did manage to get to the park 3 days this week. First on Sunday after church, then again yesterday and today. Today was by far the nicest in that it did not rain and was a bit less soggy than yesterday. Sunday was by far the most fun though. Even though it was the coldest day, the park we went to had a lot more stuff to entertain us. Plus we got to walk around the walking trail and see bear tracks, deer tracks, and other animal tracks. The bear tracks were a huge it with the kids. They were huge. Tonight we are spending the night just relaxing. Here is a picture of TJ and Abby enjoying chair time. Abby loves to get up with whichever sibling is sitting in the chair and snuggle with them. She is such a cuddle bug! TJ is such a good big brother!

Yuck Alert !

Note: This should have posted last week but we had technical difficulty.

This was a crazy week. It started off with me getting the lovely stomach flu which came with a migraine complete with fever, chills, aches, no sleep, etc. The majority of the kids were in school and it was just me and my 2yr old home. Needless to say she found my vomiting into the commode fascinating. So much that whenever we enter the bathroom now to commence her potty training she always starts off with opening the lid of the commode and proceeds to make all sorts of vomit noises complete with her mouth open and tongue out. I'd say she is a quick study wouldn't you? I asked my husband if he thought she was mocking me. He just laughed. She thinks the whole thing is very funny and lots of fun. I'm not having any luck potty training her, but with just one vomit lesson and she becomes a pro at it. Go figure.. On a positive note, the kids did extremely well while I was sick. They really pulled together and were awesome which was so great because I felt so bad. Thanks love bugs!

~On to a better subject. Last night I was sitting on the couch and my 2 yr old climbed up onto my lap. The Christmas tree is right next to the couch so she proceeded to take off ornaments and move them around to where she thinks they should be. Once she had them all arranged the way she liked she just sat back and gazed at the tree and said, "Pitty lights". I grabbed the camera and took this picture. She looks so precious in it. I agree my little angel, pretty lights. Isn't she adorable!

Today I went to pick up my son and daughter from school so that I could bring home Catbird's class guinea pig. He is sooo cute. I always wanted a guinea pig but my mom was not very keen on the idea of any small rodent looking creature coming into the house. That and the fact that we always had a plethora of cats around. His name is Pepper. He is very friendly. Catbird loves to feed him, pet him, watch him, and even play with him. Abby (my 2yr old) loves to watch him also. She pets him only when we are holding him though. He is really a big hit with the whole family. I found one admirere that Pepper might not be so thrilled with. I stepped into the kitchen to get something and this is what I saw. I am sure he is thinking that we brought him home some take-out. Yumm yumm!

NEWS ALERT!! SPIDEY CITING!!
Spiderman has been cited in a neighborhood backyard!! A little girl was innocently playing on her trampoline when all of a sudden KABAM! Spiderman jumped down to join her. "He just came out of no where!" she replied when questioned. No one knows from where he came but rumor has it that he has been since seen in my living room scaling various furniture.

Happy Birthday wee princess!

Today my dear little wee princess, you turned 2. This means that I am not supposed to call you my baby girl, (yeah right) and that you are officially a toddler. I remember 2 years ago, we had just moved here and I was so nervous about having a new doctor, a new hospital, the c-section that was to happen, everything. Ironically it ended up being the best of everything. I still remember when the doctor said "You have a big baby gir!" I heard you way before I ever saw you as you screamed from the minute you saw daylight. That is understandable as I would have screamed too as you were being taken from your warm and cozy environment into such a bright cold one. I remember crying as they put you on my chest and thinking how beautiful you were with your boochy little cheeks and sweet little nose and beautiful blue eyes. I think daddy teared up too. He was busy checking you out and making sure the doctors and nurses were doing everything right by you. He was so proud. I also remember your brother coming in with your sisters and taking one look at you and saying, "Aw, I wanted a baby brother! Do you have another one in there?" (This being said because my sister had just had twins 6 months earlier.) It didn't take long for him to warm up to you and for you to wrap him around your little finger. In no time he was telling me how happy he was to have his new baby sister. Big sissy was a bit frightened by your coloring and kept asking, "Why's she so red!" In her defense you were a bit pinker than most, I now attribute this to the fact that you apparently inherited both your daddy's and my tempers. You may even have surpassed us as you repeatedly throw things when mad, bite individuals when angered, and have been known to slap. Although, in your defense I do believe cousin Nate showed you each of these things and so I will blame it on him;) My how fast those 2 years have flown. You have grown so much and each day you amaze me with a new word, action, or ability. You are also very much mommies girl in that you love to snuggle with me, love to help me do the chores (especially the dishes) , and love to just love on mommy. You love to give kisses and do so often by taking my face in your little hands and puckering up. You love to talk on the phone to daddy and I now cannot answer the phone without you begging to talk. You also have your daddy wrapped around your finger and have convinced him that the "cow" movie will solve all your dilemma's. Daddy will be happy to know that you rarely ask for "cow" anymore as you are to busy getting into whatever mischief you can find. Your favorite thing to do is to seek out the markers that your sister has left out. You take them and go and hide and eat the markable tops off them until you can no longer write with them and your mouth has turned whatever color the marker was. This is when I happen to find you and proceed to wrestle the marker from you with you screaming and flailing about. I then get the fun job of carrying you into the bathroom to try to clean the marker off your face, hands, body, tongue, teeth, ect. all while you continue to scream and flail and act like the water is poison to you and the cloth is sandpaper. You also do some very cute things like come crying whenever big sissy is mean to you and when I proceed to tell big sissy to apologize to you, you turn to her instead and say Sowwy! Which is so endearing. Your biggest sissy loves you to pieces and constantly kisses your cheeks until I think they are going to fall off. You are a wee bit spoiled by your siblings and they may get annoyed with you at times but are the first ones to come to your defense when you are in trouble. Needless to say we all love you so very much and thank God each and every day for blessing us with you. Your smile lights up the room and your cuteness surpasses any other. You make me smile all the time and I love you dearly. You are a very special little girl and I hope you had a very happy birthday baby girl!!

- "Are those my presents!"

- Here she is trying to steal my plate after eating all her icing and ice cream off from hers.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

We have finished decorating the Christmas tree! I say this because we added ornaments here and there and I think we will be moving ornaments for days to come thanks to my 5yr old decorator. That and the fact that I keep finding ornaments on the floor under the tree, behind the couch, chair, over by the wall, etc. You get the picture. For those who have little ones you know exactly what I am going through. Between the kids and the dog who for some reason prefers the tree water to his fresh spring water in his bowl (go figure), I will be lucky to have any ornaments left at the bottom. I keep threatening to just put lights on the tree next year, but maybe it won't be a threat as I will not have any ornaments left to put on after its all said and done. For some reason my 5yr old princess likes to take off various ornaments that she thinks is pretty and moves them into a pile on the floor where she oohs and ahas over them and then conveniently forgets about them. Then the 2yr old finds them and moves them all around the room and hence I find them in odd places. Such fun this is! I took a picture today after church of my little darlings looking their best in front of the tree. Say cheese!!

The little stuffed monster that my princess is holding is one that she saw at a consignment store yesterday and just had to have. Never in a million years would I have ever picked this out for her because: a. I would never have thought that she would have liked it. b. It plays the most annoying song I have ever heard. In the end I told her that if she wanted it she could buy it and she promptly borrowed 50 cents to make this awesome purchase. Her big sister has already hid it numerous times and want to know WHY IN THE WORLD I let her get this ANNOYING THING!! It has caused many a fight amongst those two and the wee princess also loves it and fights sissy over it. Who would have ever thought this ugly thing would have caused such fuss?? I am not allowed to share my views that this monster is ugly as I was promptly told how very wrong I was and that it was pink and purple, her favorite colors and therefore beautiful.

Here is close-up of her newest awesome toy! (Yeah!!)

Organized Chaos

We spent the past 5 days with my sister and her hubby and her 4 boys who came to visit for Thanksgiving. We had some happy children. The good news is the house is still standing. ;) They played themselves silly, literally. We only had a few meltdowns and uncle was good enough to watch all 7 little ones for my sister, my big princess, and I to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving. This is our annual tradition that we enjoy immensely regardless of the $ we have to spend, it is just fun to get out and enjoy ourselves. Luckily it was a nice day and the kids were able to spend the bulk of it outside and run themselves out. Apparently they spent some of that time chasing our little hen around and catching her to pet. I am sure she had as much fun as they did with this game. Other than keeping the chaos down to a minimum and keeping up with the mountain of laundry that 11 people put out we enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Unfortunately, we did not get any snow while cousins were here which they would have enjoyed. But, the very next morning after they left it snowed and kept on snowing all day. I called my sister and told her that she should have listened to me and spent another night. It was a perfect day for decorating the Christmas tree which we did with a vengeance. Little princess and wee princess keep moving the decorations on the tree so I will be amazed if I have any left for next year. That and if the tree stays standing. :) The big princess took the time to decorate the rest of the house so now we are all set for Christmas. We will be making crafts the rest of the month including a gingerbread house, yum. Big princess had an idea to make a decoration each day until Christmas to add to the tree. We liked the idea so we will be doing just that. I will try to take pictures of what we create. After the tree decorating was done the kids went out and built a snowman. It was a combined effort of the prince and the little princess and it turned out pretty cute. Then we all bundled up and went sledding. Even the big princess got involved in the fun. Of course it ended up in a big snowball fight in which she and her brother took turns pushing each other down and pummelling each other with snowballs and finally making the other eat snow by sitting on each other. Sibling love, what more can I say. One funny thing that happened is that wee princess started running down the hill with her arms out and I could not figure out what she was doing. It turns out she was trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue. It was so cute. She would chase them down and throw herself on the ground and put her face down in the snow. I don't know how her cheeks didn't freeze off. She was a little snow bunny today in that she did not want to come in at all. Needless to say I think everyone will sleep well tonight.



Little princess enjoying her snow time. She had just raced brother down the hill and was climbing back up to the top for another go. Oh to have that much energy again!

winter is here

Yesterday we had out third snowfall for November. We received about 4-6 inches, enough to go sledding. Even with the blustery wind and swirling snow it was fun. Everyone took turns sliding down the hill until their cheeks were as red as Santa's and hot cocoa was on every one's mind. I took pictures but something was wrong with the file so I cannot post them. It finally stopped snowing around 4:00pm and after several times of going outside the kids were ready to enjoy some indoor games. By the evening we were all tired (them from playing and me from trying to pick up after their many games) the house was sufficiently destroyed and they were ready for sleep. This morning we woke up to a beautiful day. The sky was such a beautiful shade of blue against the starkness of the white snow, it was breathtaking. We bundled up and headed outside to check out which animal's had been around the house. We found that a baby deer had been their with the mama within a foot from our back door. We also found many other tracks that I could not identify in the rush of finding so many. I thought our dog Scooby was going to explode from all the excitement. He loves to search out the animals, but is not allowed to as he is in the house and cannot escape to do his bidding. I then took the girls sliding down hill and today I was able to get some pictures. They enjoyed today better than yesterday as it was sunny and warmer today. Catbird (our little princess) is the type of sledder to bail out when she gets scared. But the wee princess (soon to be 2) is not scared in the least and laughs all the way down, then gets up and proceeds to try to drag the sled back uphill. She gives up soon and insists on being carried which is what wears me out the quickest. We had a lot of fun though. I then decided it was time to go in and decided to bring in the wood since I was already dressed. Wee princess and Catbird decided to join in. They enjoy helping out. We then went in and undressed and they decided it was lunchtime. We saw our friendly male cardinal at our feeder so I grabbed my camera and took his picture before he flew away. Here are the pictures of what I could capture.

Shots and shopping

Today was spent with school being delayed which caused me to have to contact the doctor's office and change my appt. for my biggest princess. This enabled me to drop the others off at school and proceed to the doctors with the oldest and youngest in tow. We occupied our time that we had to wait in the examining room by taking pictures with my phone. Unfortunately, I cannot post them here as I do not have that capability. This is to bad because I got some really cute ones. We then spent the rest of the day shopping, or in my case looking and reigning in a soon to be 2yr old while my oldest spent her gift card $ that her aunt gave her. We then took more pic's in Claire's of the big sunglasses on each other which were hilarious on wee princess. I had to make her leave the store she liked them so much. We then went to the library and the big princess proceeded to take out every book know to mankind. Not kidding here, the stack was over her head! Then we picked up the kids from school and went to the park since it was such a warm day (I am kidding here about the warm as we still had snow patches which meant snow ball fights) and I chased everyone around and locked them up in my pretend dungeon. I was chasing my oldest princess when all of a sudden she stopped dead in her tracks and looked mortified. I stopped wondering what in the world was happening. She immediately began walking away slowly and trying to look cool. It was then that I realized that a school bus was stopped right by the playground. Definitely NOT cool to be seen playing a game of dungeon tag with your mom by your fellow 8th graders! But as soon as the bus left and was down the street, we were off again with our game. We soon left and headed for home. Back at the ranch we heated up the frigid house and spent the next hour doing homework, eating, family devotions, then the wee one played the CD player as loud as she could while we cleaned up the kitchen. Here as the picture of wee mix a lot and her groovin peep's.

Snow Day

Today was a snow day so no school which caused much excitement. Starting with the prince wanting to go outside and play in the snow at 7:30am! Needless to say I held him off until 9:30. He would stay outside all day if allowed. Before lunch I bundled up the little princesses and headed outside to slide down hill. I showed them the proper technique for sliding and away they went. I then forgot my age and decided to try my famous run and jump, land full body on the slide while careening down the hill at a very high speed. Needless to say I realized my age when I got to the bottom. We all had fun.

Here is the Little Princess in her snow attire.

We then came back in for some warm lunch and a rousing game of Monopoly with the wee princess throwing our money, moving our playing pieces, and trying to eat the dice. We decided to retire until nap time for the wee one. The rest of the day was spent playing with trains, more outside play which involved plowing roads in the snow on the trampoline with toy tractors, and then coming inside and running around like crazed animals chasing each other. Unfortunately the snow is already melting so no more sliding. We did check cousins blog and here is a picture of the Prince's reaction to Tristan going hunting. The Little Princess had to get join in the fun. The Prince said to tell Tristan that this is what he is gonna get next week for going hunting without him! ;)