YEAH Christmas!

We've been having fun getting ready for Christmas here. This year I vowed to let go of some of the ideals I had of everything we would get done (aka - not be so much of a control freak. Shocking, I know). The advent calendar (where you add treats for each day) has been filled and promptly emptied by little fingers numerous times. The "days until Christmas" blocks are changed hourly and currently reads "2" (thankful that's not accurate), and the link chain we made has 20 more links to pull off (1 per day) before Christmas. I can't say that I am at peace with all of this, but I am trying to let it go.

We have had fun making some homemade treats. I'm am quite sure that more have been eaten than given away, and it's no wonder given my helpers:

On the way to school this morning, Ashley reminded me that we hadn't made anything for her friend, Caity. I explained to her that our Care Group is doing a kid exchange instead of giving presents to everyone. She took this to mean that we were actually exchanging kids. Not a bad idea for next year. :)

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This morning Ashley took this card that she made for her teacher. I thought it was really sweet:

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I just realized that she didn't sign the card. Something tells me that her teacher will know who it's from. :)

How do YOU dress in 9 degree weather?

Don't let the sun fool you, it has been COLD here the past few days. I am becoming more of a wimp with each cold day that passes. I am hoping for monstrous amounts of snow or a 90 degree heat wave. Is either really too much to ask? Anyway, by day 4 of Arctic Blast 2009, the kids knew what to expect, and this is how they prepared:

Abby - at last count she had on 3 top layers and 2 bottom layers plus coat, hat and gloves. After arriving at school, she decided to keep all of these layers on, and apparently during the day she only took her gloves off to paint. I found her this way 2 1/2 hours later at pick-up.



Ashley - She came out in a t-shirt (short-sleeved) and jeans. After insisting she put on a jacket, she put on this lightweight sweatshirt. She kept her winter jacket in her backpack "in case she got cold." Didn't happen.



Charlie - socks, socks, socks!!! Drastic times call for drastic measures.

More like it

So, my friend Lindsey watched Charlie last month while I was at Ashley's school. She's working on showing me that there are appropriate ways for boys to play dress-up. With her having a 4 year old boy, Charlie got quite the lesson. Here are a few samples.

Some sort of Bob the Builder something:

These look like safety goggles or those sport glasses that old guys wear:

I have no idea what this is. I'm new at this - remember?

And of course, Pirates:

Charlie seemed to enjoy this more than the wigs and princess dresses. That hasn't stopped the girls from trying though!

update on "Charlie turns 1!"

I almost forgot the best part of the birthday party! We had a basically theme-less party except for these doggy cupcakes:



Anne sent me a link to these cupcakes that someone had made for their son's birthday party. (his name happened to be Charlie too) They had done a doggie bowl that looked really cool as well with coco puffs in it for dog food. I wasn't that on top of it, but the cupcakes turned out pretty well. Thanks, Anne, for the great idea! Wish you could have been here to enjoy them!

Charlie turns 1!!

We had a test run of Charlie's first birthday just after Thanksgiving when my Dad and Marge were here. Marge and the girls went to great lengths to make a Bronco cake for Charlie and Andy, complete with a Bronco head and 2 cheerleaders. Here is a picture:

It was actually pretty amazing. Charlie was not showing the love though. He did not appreciate the entire bottle of blue food coloring that was in the frosting and now all over his hands.

And he certainly did not find any humor in putting frosting on his nose. (what kind of parent does these things?)

His birthday party went slightly better. He may have been a little nervous when he saw another flaming mass of sugar headed his way, but he quickly caught on.

He didn't seem nearly as intimidated with the mess on his hands and actually even took a few bites!

I little too much sugar maybe?

Don't be fooled, he didn't actually eat all of that cupcake. He got us back by breaking off bit by bit and tossing it on the floor (or missing his mouth and dropping it on his sweater).

The weather was beautiful (COLD, but sunny) so the big kids got to play outside. Hard to believe that next year Charlie will be out there too!

For Allison's eyes

This is the picture where Abby said, "I look like Alli!"

Abby-isms

If Ashley is our Drama Queen, Abby is our Queen of Opposites. If you say it's wet, she says it's dry. If you say we're late, she says we're early. And there is no point arguing with her either. We were at the dinner table the other night and Ashley was fretting about how she was going to have to move out one day and where was she supposed to live and she didn't even want to go to college anyway. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Andy said - "well, you can live at home while you go to college. You can even live at home for awhile after you go to college." I was starting to get uneasy at this point. I am in no way anxious for my kids to move out, but just HOW LONG after college was he thinking it's ok to live at home still?? I was in the midst of this thought process when Abby spoke up and said, "When I grow up, I'm going to live far, far away." Of course.

On another day, I was trying to tell Ashley that she was going to have to take the bus to school since I had an early dr's appt. She is actually ok with taking the bus in the afternoons, but she can't have something new sprung on her. She needs details and time to process everything. It was after this conversation that Abby said to me (who is also the Queen of Make Believe) - "mama, they put a new note up on our door at school." I asked her what the note said, to which she replied, "It says - no more picking kids up at school. They can only take the bus." Thankfully they don't offer a bus at her school or she'd probably ride it "far, far away!"

Bats say - bock bock??

This is just a random video that we took before Halloween. I laugh every time I watch it. Not sure why. Maybe because Andy is yelling "bock bock" even though Charlie is dressed up as a bat. I'm sure Charlie will look at it one day and laugh too. Or maybe not.

How can it be?

I was recently thinking - I can't believe Charlie is 11 months old already. What I didn't realize until just now - is that means he's going to be a year old soon!! Yikes. How did that happen? My tiny little baby who I still swaddle to sleep is maybe not such a tiny little baby anymore! I had lots of pictures and videos to post about new things that Charlie was doing, but because of lack of time or denial, those posts never happened. He started doing some worm crawl type thing about a month ago which got him slow access to anything within a small radius. It looked like this:

Two days before our trip to Virginia, he started full-on crawling. I can't complain holding him off for 11 months, I mean, I didn't hold him off, that's just when he naturally began crawling of course, nevermind that. Anyway, it is a different story with him crawling now. He is everywhere, but fortunately he has 2 older sisters that LOVE to remind him what he can and cannot grab. Also, just yesterday he started dancing. Not sure where that came from. He definitely gets his moves from Andy.

Trick or Treat!

It was nice having Halloween fall on a Saturday this year. No racing home from work, trying to get the kids to eat some sort of a healthy dinner so they can get dressed up and fill themselves up with sugar. We had all day to do that now!!! Ashley and I went to a party in the afternoon which was actually pretty fun - if you're into Halloween stuff. The snack table was enough to send anyone into a diabetic coma. Of course Ashley had to sample one of everything. We then went to the mall where each store was handing out candy. After that we came home and got the little ones up from their naps, ate dinner, and let the fun begin. Charlie was ready first so he had time for a little pre-trick-or-treating stretch:

Yes, his shoes were too big, but you can't very well be a football player without shoes!



Still waiting for sisters to get ready...

Finally the cheerleader emerges:

Charlie is starting to be done with Halloween at this point:


This is the ONLY picture I got of Ashley (she was Jasmine). I got 2 total of Abby and about 147 of Charlie.

The gang of trick-or-treaters (we went with a few of Ashley's friends from school). You can see Ashley and Abby - they are the only ones not dressed in black. And Abby is bringing up the rear.

This is the way to trick-or-treat!

Checking out his loot. Between all of them, we had at least 7 full size candy bars! Score.

The bartering begins. Ashley definitely won this year. One of her trades to Abby was 2 peppermint discs for a candy bar. Abby was so thrilled because she got 2 things but only had to give away 1. We let Ashley win because something tells me it will come back to get her!

Charlie got all of the glow-in-the-dark bracelets seeing how he's not even eating food, let alone candy! I mean, of course he's eating food, just not candy.

Apple Festival

I'm a little behind, but last weekend we went to the annual apple festival. Despite the cool weather, it was a lot of fun. I'm hardly ever one to turn down a free sample, but I have to say I reached my maximum that day on apple samples. The tasting tent had over 70 different apple and 10 different pear samples. Wow. Abby didn't miss one and I had to keep reminding her to only take one from each plate and then move on! Here's Ashley and her friends voting for their favorite scarecrow:

I've never taken a photography class, but I'm pretty sure they would say that taking pictures from above accentuates head size. And when your subject already has a, um, larger head, this would not be a good idea. Note for future use.

It really wasn't that cold, but Abby's new dressing theme is LAYERS! I seriously have to peel a few layers off of her before we leave the house each morning. And I'm not talking normal layers. Try 3 or 4 pairs of leggings and then 3 or 4 short sleeve shirts with maybe a tank on top. I made her take off 2 pairs of leggings this morning and 3 shirts to get to layers that matched. Then she was helping me paint in the garage and I saw that she spilled paint on her leggings so I had her take them off so I could wash them, and was surprised (even though I shouldn't have been) to see 2 more pairs of leggings underneath. It's a different dressing obsession that Ashley had at this age. At this point I can't say if it's better or worse. Definitely creates more laundry than Ashley's phase of wear one dress for 4 days, another dress for 4 days, repeat with dress 1.

Back to the apple festival, here is Charlie. He had a great time too. Between my safety/protection police friend, Erika and her mother-in-law from Hawaii, they had a time making sure Charlie was warm enough. He seemed fine to me, but I think he liked the attention.

Tooth #3

Ashley has been very anxious for her first top tooth to fall out for some time now. Both are loose but one was getting very close. In my opinion it wasn't quite ready, but trying to convince Andy and Ashley of that in the midst of their determination to pull it out (on the night before picture day) literally fell on deaf ears. Once it was out and the celebration had ended, I restated, "just in time for picture day tomorrow." Which was met with, "oh, man, I wish you would have told us! We would have waited." Anyway, I'm sure it will be a story we re-tell every time we look at her first grade picture.



And, Ashley style, she got pale and shaky after it fell out. She didn't run off to her bed this time though. She was too excited. She overheard Andy say, "it's like she's going into shock." To which she replied, "Yeah! I'm in shock! I've waited so long for this!" Six long years. And she has 3 other teeth that are loose, so this might be a theme for awhile.

How well do you know those baby faces!??

Who can correctly identify each Ram Fan? This sweatshirt has really gotten it's money's worth!!

Bring on the food

The last post must have inspired me to start feeding Charlie baby food. Or maybe it was the fact that I discovered it was an activity that could keep all 3 kids occupied while I did something else "constructive". Or maybe it's that we were nearing his 10 month mark and I was starting to feel guilty. Whatever the case, he is on day 3 of baby cereal and doing great! Based on the amount of cereal I am cleaning up after each feeding, I'm not sure how much he is getting, but the girls are loving it and he seems to be too.


Eagerly awaiting his first food:


Ashley makes sure EVERY bite gets in his mouth.

Most of Abby's bites fall off before the spoon gets to his mouth, but neither she or Charlie seem to mind.

Charlie may have been slightly done at this point.

They like to see how long he can keep the spoon in his mouth without spitting it out. For some reason this is highly entertaining and equally hilarious each time he spits it out.

Abby's first day

Abby's first day of school went exceptionally different than Ashley's, thank the Lord! She was up and ready early, pressing Ashley to hurry so she wouldn't be late for her first day! Abby was very excited to fill her bag full of random paperwork and a jacket "just in case she gets cold at recess." She told me on the way to school that she had changed her mind and she wanted to take the bus home. Thankfully they don't have a bus. She also said when we got there - "Oh! You forgot to pack my lunch!" Sorry again. Someone's got to come home and eat lunch with me!! Here is Abby ready for her first day!

And just for old time's sake, here was Ashley on her first day of preschool:

And don't be fooled by the next picture. NO, I did not go crazy and decide to start Charlie on real food. We just got bored and he wanted to try out the girls baby high chair. He seemed to like it. Besides, we were desperate! What else do you do when no big sisters are around. And a tip for those of you tempted to try this at home - the kid goes in easier than they come out. Enough said.