Wigs

This is what we do on my side of the family. Put wigs on babies and laugh, and laugh, and laugh. There's an awesome picture somewhere out there, of Alex in a wig as a baby. She was crying, and looked like Martin Short. Haha.



Paige was so mad at us for doing that to him, as you can see in the second picture where she's trying to save him and yelling "no" and to "stop eet".

Happy Birthday Michael!

Yes, it's true, another birthday. My cousin Michael's is today. Michael is funny and creative. My brothers and sisters and I grew up very close to Michael and Christopher, and they made it a lot of fun. We played some awesome games, with Michael at the helm most of the time. One of our favorites was called Roller World, and involved Michael designing different roads, or tracks, on paper, and we'd all vote on which one was best. Once we picked one he'd draw it out very enlarged on Grama's driveway in chalk. Then we all got the chalk and did all kinds of crazy artwork on and around the road, often involving nintendo characters, like Yoshi:

and various beautiful sights, like rainbows, waterfalls, flowers, whatever we desired. Then we'd rollerblade all over it for hours. We were VERY cool.

Anyway, he is also very smart, and an extremely talented musician. He plays about 79 different instruments, and very well. Point is, he's a cool feller.

Happy Birthday Michael!

Happy Birthday Matt!

Today my little brother Matthew is 22. He was the youngest, with 4 older sisters, for a long time. Until Colton came along a decade later. We did a lot of dressing him up as a girl, and he was always so sweet and laid back. But I also remember him always being tough. Once some high school girls were picking on us at the bus stop, and said something mean to me when we were walking home. Matthew was like 5 years old, but he got so mad, and thought they were going to beat me up or something, so he wanted to defend me. He ran ahead and went in the house, and for some reason decided he should bring out a stock pot half full of my mom's stew, and threw it on one of the girls. He was my hero. Ha. I don't know why they DIDN'T beat us up after that, but they just went home. Anyway, Matt is smart, funny, and a great athlete. Happy birthday Matt, we love you!
How 'bout another beautiful picture of our boy today.

Now Alex and Faith (who Paige likes to call "Alkie" and "Face") are spending the night. We've already had a birthday party, played with toys, and even recorded a music video. Success.

"NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE!"

Paige danced last night away, with a porcelain doll Granny gave her.

Tonight she helped Jess start removing baseboards, so we can put down tile in the kitchen sometime in the next week hopefully. She worked pretty hard on it.

Lately she says "nice" in place of please sometimes. Somewhere along the way we accidentally led her to believe they have the same meaning. Tonight when I put her to bed, she pointed to her pillow and said "in der" which means "in there", as in she wants me to lay down next to her. I just gave her a kiss and told her we loved her and good night. She started saying "NO, stop it!", and the closer I got to the door, the more frantic she became, until she was SCREAMING "NIIIIIIIIIIICE! NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE!". Then she realized at the last second she should say it in a nice WAY. So she got quiet and then I heard her little voice say "Nice? Meese?" "Meese" is please by the way, if I haven't mentioned it. Sometimes it's "Meeseez".

Have a looksie at Cason today, looking like a miracle. He was laughing so much today, when I kissed his cheeks, and Paige did this weird nuzzling thing she does to his face. He loves her. Please take note of his slightly raised eyebrow. He does that a lot when he smiles. He's a chawma.

Jess played basketball this morning for the first time in a long time. He hurt his neck while playing, AND slid on a patch of ice on the way to the car, and landed on his back. I made him a rice pack to heat up in the microwave. Here he is sporting it. He really DOESN'T have Cason in a choke hold.

Cason loves to be held by him that way, he always falls asleep, and not even from a lack of oxygen.

Happy Birthday Caroline!

Jess and I met Chris and Caroline in January of 2005, through Schutzhund, which we had a short love affair with. We were taking our respective puppies,
Gia:

and Charlie:

and became friends immediately. We all hit it off because of our similar and fantastic (or just weird) senses of humor. Caroline and I are very much alike, and she was instantly one of my best friends! She's smart, funny, caring, and generous, among many other spectacular qualities. Happy birthday Caroline, we hope it was wonderful!

Haha, I just realized it sounds rather like I'm saying how great I am, when I say how alike we are and then immediately list her great qualities. REALLY didn't mean it that way.

We had a really nice Christmas this year, but pretty busy. We spent about 2 hours at each place, and moved on to the next gathering. Paige wasn't all that into it. We thought she was going to LOVE it, but she wouldn't open a single gift by herself, and didn't even act that excited about her gifts at first. Not even the tricycle we got her. She sat on it, but looked a little bored (and sleepy).

She got a LITTLE more into it later in the day though.


Then at the end of the night when we got home, she sat with all of her spoils, and showed love to all of them.

Cason of course didn't care, but he got lots of good stuff too.

Happy (belated) birthday Jesus!

And today, poor Cason had a doctor visit now that he's 4 months old, which included four pokes in the fatty thighs. He weighed 17 pounds 2 ounces. According to our scale he was 18, so who knows. The doctor said he has "a moon for a face". What a beautiful moon it is.

I said something about expecting him to weigh more, and the doctor told me I don't want him to be fat. He couldn't have been more wrong.

Christmas Eve/Happy Birthday Dad

Today we had a Dad's birthday ping pong doubles tournament/Christmas Eve dinner and gift opening. Skifter and I pretty much won. Except that we lost the championship game. But barely.

It was an intense tournament.

Jess got in my face once.

Cason looked cute and took a nap.


Paige did all kinds of things, including play some ping pong.


We had lots of fun.

Anyway, my dad is really one of the best people around. Paige looooooooooooooooves him. Ladies love him. We love him. Happy birthday pops!

Rhinosaurus

We made a quick trip down to Phoenix this weekend. Just about 24 hours, and we went straight to the zoo. She called the rhinos "dinos".

She thought the animals were okay, especially the monkeys. But she REALLY liked the playground best.

Speaking of monkeys, we saw a crazy dad at the zoo. He had a 79 inch lens on his camera, and was getting annoyed when his VERY small children called the baboons "monkeys". One said "MONKEY!" and the dad goes, "Baboooooooon." The kid smiled and said "MONKEY." and the dad went:

Aaaaaaaanyway, Cason liked watching Paige on the carousel.

Also, getting his cheeks munched.

We also found time to do some Christmas shopping and a couple meals out. We stayed with our friends Chris and Caroline.

Paige loves them because they made pillow tunnels for her, and supported said tunnels while she crawled through them. Then they let her headbutt them apart.


She also loves them for their dogs. Sissy, and Charlie: He who loves our babies. He would do anything for Paige and Cason. Haha. Seriously though.

Cason loves Chris and Caroline because they smile at him, talk to him, and tickle him.

Now we're home, and Jess is off for 2 weeks for Christmas! :) And Cason held a toy for the first time tonight. Clearly he could have sooner, if his thoughtless parents would have only offered him one.

GOTCHA!

Connie came over, thinking she was going to teach me to cook her delicious eggplant parmesan. Boy was she surprised when really she just cooked FOR us. I sure fooled her. Just kidding, that really was the plan, but Cason was wanting to be held. So Connie did 98.7 % of the work.

Then we ate, and it was a delight. Then they made fun of me for hoarding my beloved plates. THEN Paige threw up twice in about a minute(she didn't eat the eggplant parmesan, so it wasn't that). She had a bunch of prunes earlier, and they apparently weren't sitting well. She felt perfect as soon as she was done, and went back to watching Pocahontas, which, by the way, is the second Christmas gift she found early. Connie said she couldn't believe I didn't get a picture of Jess cleaning it up with his shirt up over his nose. I'm surprised too. I guess I'm not so quick with the camera when someone is actually hurt or sick. That's probably good though.

Cup Holder?

Our strange child uses a veggie steamer as a sippy cup holder. ?

Also, when I got home from a quick Christmas shopping trip, she found one of her smaller gifts within 3 minutes. So now she's playing with her My Little Pony, that should be waiting to be wrapped for Christmas morning.

It's a Wonderful Day/Life

Cason and I were all cozy in bed when Jess gave me a kiss goodbye, and told me it was snowing. I was only slightly conscious, but I remember smiling, and then going back to sleep thinking I misheard him. But then Paige came in to the room and got in bed with us at about 8:15, and I looked out the window at this:

I got us ready as quickly as I could in case it was going to stop, so that Paige and Cason could go out and see it. Cason's first snow:

He had to wear one of Paige's girl beanies, because his was in the car, along with everything else we own.

Paige's first REAL snow she could actually walk in.

She was nervous at first and wouldn't walk out the door, but then she realized I was happy out there, so she came out and loved it. But it didn't last long, because she wouldn't wear a hat OR gloves. She came over with sore red hands, and wanted to go back in and watch it through the window.

It snowed ALL day without stopping, and is supposed to keep going tonight.


Veronica added to the greatness of today by bringing by banana bread, and my mom did some more, by bringing us her chili for dinner.

Lily and Paige watched some Choo-Choo Soul while Veronica and I had hot tea, and Cason fell asleep sucking his fat little thumb.


Then Jess came home, and made our first fire in the new old house.

We are happy. Now we're going to watch It's a Wonderful Life, which I've NEVER SEEN.



P.S.
while I was typing, Paige somehow did THIS to herself. She said she was "stuckie", so I grabbed the camera and got this before I helped her out. It made her mad.