Unveiling

Along with wearing his costumes everyday, Cason also will ask Jess to ask ME: "Hey. Do you want to know what Captain America looks like?" Of course I say "YEAH! What in the world does he look like?" and then Cason slowly emerges around a corner, showing off one part of the costume at a time. Usually he'll stick out a toe, or just his shield, and then shove out a whole leg or arm, and eventually he hops out and does an awesome pose.
No pose at the end this time, he was being a little shy since I had the camera out.

Sneaky Hugs

The kids all three got a cold a few days ago. Cason and Neely were over it pretty quickly, and never even really got a cough. Paige though, as always, got a decent cough going. She seems to be taking after aunt Mollie, and Teetee, and a few others in the family who have bronchitis issues.

It was nice out yesterday, so I cleaned out the car, while the healthier kids played in the grass out front.

Cason was of course wearing his Captain America costume. Every single day, if we're at home for more than an hour or so, he WILL be wearing either that or his Buzz Lightyear costume. Without fail. Complete with the mask and shield, or if he's being Buzz, the gloves and helmet part. So yesterday while playing outside, he was the Captain. I was bringing something in from the car, and I leaned inside the front door of the house to put it inside. I turned around to find him like this:
Just waiting for me to discover him. Jess says that today there's still a big (probably Cason-shaped) depression in the bush.

The sickly one cuddled up on the couch to watch cartoons.
She's actually not feeling bad, just has the cough. She was just in the mood to be cozy and have us wait on her hand and foot, I think.

Today we're cleaning up the house. Paige was playing with legos on the living room floor, while I folded laundry on the couch. Neely thinks she's hilarious if she steals legos and tries to put them in her mouth. She doesn't actually have any interest in eating them, she just thinks it's funny how we react any time she puts anything in her mouth. So she does it, or tries to anyway, gives us her naughty smile, giggles and tries to run for it. Naughty one.
But she's also a sweet one. She loves to sneak up behind me and throw her little arms around me. She does it a lot lately, and I always go "AWWWWWWWWWWW!" So now when she does it SHE automatically goes "aawwwwwwwwwwww!" while hugging me. I had Jess get a couple pictures when she did it this morning.

Princess with Bedhead

Cheesy Robot

Neely's developing quite the sense of humor lately. She seems really grown up all of a sudden, the way she plays with her older brother and sister, and totally feels like one of the big kids. She also fights with them like one of the big kids. If she doesn't like something they do, she lets them KNOW it. Quite feisty. Same goes for Jess and me, too. Ha.


I don't know how, but we've struck gold yet again with her. She's so sweet and smart and hilarious. She's copying lots of stuff we say the last couple of weeks. Tonight she learned a couple new words. "Cheese", which she says while giving an appropriate smile, like this one:
The toy basket she has on her head is one of two we own, and Cason and Paige wear them around on their heads like this, pretending to be robots. They march around, saying "ROBOT, ROBOT, ROBOT" over and over, in a robotic voice, of course. Tonight Neely joined in, and wore her basket, marching in circles. Which brings us to the 2nd word she learned today, which is "robot". She marched with them, saying "Botbotbotbot" and sometimes "Wo-bot, wo-bot". Sometimes she'd trip and fall and her basket would go flying off of her head. Paige would pick it up and Neely would walk over and quietly hold still, waiting for Paige to put her robot head back on for her. The second Paige put it on she'd start chanting "botbotbotbot" again, and marching around the room.

I managed to get a (pitch black) video of her saying her new words.

Winter Wonderland

Saturday we went up to the Winter Wonderland with Dan and Veronica and their girls. It had snowed too, perfect timing.
It was WAY colder than I expected, and before long I was in the car with Cason and Neely, letting them warm up. Soon after that Veronica and her girls joined us. Dan, Jess, and Paige went sledding, and we watched from the car mostly. Paige was pretty tough, she lasted quite a while, even in her insufficient winter clothes.
Then we got in line to meet Santa. Lily and Aivree were first.
Then us. Cason was really excited in line, and took off his coat and vest, so he could show Santa his robot shirt from Aunt Mollie and Uncle Tim. But when the time came he was too shy, and hid behind Jess, refusing to approach Santa. Neely seemed excited up until about the moment she was on his lap, and changed her mind.
Paige was shy, but she did it anyway.
Then she noticed some kids who had their faces painted. We asked them where they were doing it, but by the time we got over there they were closing up. Paige wasn't very happy with me about it.

So we headed home with a couple of slightly cranky kids, who didn't appreciate my camera flash.
They fell asleep within a few minutes.

Roomies

Got some good people living in my house with me.

This great dad comes home and spends lunchbreaks like this:
Reading Neely a book and blowing up balloons for Cason.
Today I asked her about some of the animals she likes to read about in her favorite book-the farm one. We didn't have the book with us, but I asked "What does a kitty say?" and "What does a duck say?" and so on. She got meow and quack, well...kwaaa really. Ha. She just gave me a look when I tried to get her to do some more.

The other day I asked Paige to do something, can't remember what. She told us "That's one chore I won't do." We didn't see that one coming, and thankfully she was just trying to be funny, because there was no way I'd have kept a straight face while setting her straight.

Cason is a quick learning fellow. We arrived a wee bit early to pick Jess up from work on Friday. I guess we were a little excited to steal him back and start our weekend.

So we sat in the car chatting, while we waited. The mail had come JUST before we left the house, and I brought it in the car. Cason wanted to "read" the little ads catalogue thing. I heard him say to Paige, "I wish mama's hair was like that." I almost laughed, and then asked to see what it was. It was a picture of a lady getting a massage, an ad for a spa or something, and her hair was slicked back into a tight bun. I don't know what he meant, or what he liked about her hair exactly.

I teased him and said "OH! You don't like my hair, huh? I see!" I thought it was obvious that I was teasing him, but he quickly said "No! I wike your hair! Wike this!" and then he played with a piece of my hair while he said it.

THEN he added "Wif(if) someone made your hair wook wike this," and he pointed at the picture of the lady again, "I would be SO MAD at dum!"

Haha! I love that little gent.

Christmas Time and a Math Nerd

Today was extremely good. It FELT like Christmas time. It was rainy out, but also really chilly. This is my favorite time of year, still technically fall, especially here, where the trees just barely started changing colors. But also time to start celebrating Christmas. I love Halloween and Thanksgiving, but they obviously can't compete with Christmas time.

After taking Jess to work after lunch, the kids and I went to Big Lots so I could search for these star lights I want. Neely had fallen asleep when we got there, so we played in the car a while to let her sleep.
After a little while we heard Neely cooing in the back, so we knew she was done napping. We went in, and the kids were so cute holding hands, under their umbrella. It made me smile.

We had fun on our random, kind of pointless shopping trip, and bought nothing. They were all really good, checking out all the Christmas decorations, and the toys, and put them back without any arguing or even begging, when it was time to go. Plus, look at Neely in her cardigan and hat.

Then we went by my Grama's, and over to visit Veronica, Lily, and Aivree.
Like she does at home, Neely stole a chair from the dollhouse, and played with it for a while. She likes to take one of the dolls, or any small object, in this case a ball, and just put it in the chair, take it out, put it in, take it out.....

So cute, she is.

Unrelated, but worth mentioning, Paige loves learning anything and everything, but lately especially math. She keeps begging Jess to give her harder and harder problems. Here's what they've been doing:
She may end up a bigger math nerd than I am.