Decorating Day

We decorated for Christmas the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  We didn't see any lots set up to sell Christmas trees, but we didn't want to wait so we settled for Home Depot.  When we got there we were surprised to find that it was the workshop day, so the kids got to build a piggy bank.  "Santa" walked up and said hello, and our kids were not that excited.  They just said "hi" and went back to their work.  Ha!  Cason said he wasn't even the real Santa, his beard was fake.  :)

 

 Reed was getting bored watching...

 ...so eventually I took him with me to check out the Christmas decorations.  We had fun on the way there.

 While we were looking, an employee was stocking shelves and glanced up at Reed.  She said "Well hi there, cutie.  How are you?"  Reed looked at her for a few seconds, and then grinned and blew her the hugest, most dramatic, showy kiss of all time.  She loved it.  Then he proceeded to blow kisses to every shopper we passed.  Most didn't even see it.  He's a good boy.  He kisses, cuddles, and blows kisses constantly lately.  

However, I've even had him blow me angry kisses when he's mad at me.  It's pretty funny.

Anyway, soon we picked a tree and headed home to decorate.  As usual, we watched Rudolph while decorating.  It inspired Neely to draw some reindeer.

 

 Neely  was very pleased to be the one to put the star on the tree this year.

I mostly hung out watching, and unwrapping/handing out ornaments.

 

I came across this gem from the childhood of Jess-and he'd wrapped him EXTRA carefully in his own really big box with a bunch of bubble wrap stuff.  Apparently he's waited a year to see me laugh when I opened the huge box to find a tiny bear.  

He also says it's not Christmas until bear has taken his place at the top of the tree.  I'm sorry, "his RIGHTFUL place."

 Anyway, aside from a BIT of anger when a certain girl wasn't allowed to tear into the box of ornaments and was forced to wait for me to hand them out, we had fun.

 (side note-Paige has lost both top teeth recently)

The kids mostly decorated the tree themselves this year, except the lights, a few special breakable ornaments I put up top, and of course Bear.

We finished our night with the traditional eggnog and viewing of It's a Wonderful Life.  I'm always kind of surprised at how well our kids pay attention to a black and white movie that you wouldn't think kids would find that interesting.

Most of the kids paid attention, anyway.

 

A Boy and His Dog

I've said many times that Gia is the best dog ever.  She really truly is though.  I've known a lot of good dogs, but this one takes the cake.  She is so good with all the kids, but she and Cason have developed an extra cute relationship.  I hadn't noticed, but Jess mentioned a few weeks ago how she always finds him at night and sleeps near him.  I realized it was true.  Not many nights later, we had our movie night and when I was ready for bed I checked on the kids first.  Gia had cuddled up close to Cason and was pretty much spooning him.  Haha!

It's mutual too.  They're quiet about their love, but it's the little things.  Ha.  Like this morning I noticed Gia's collar was off.  Cason came home from school and casually mentioned "I took Gia's collar off to give her a break from it."  :)

Neely's First Book

I mentioned in my last post that Neely had written her first story.  It was not long before Halloween.  I wrote down the words for her as she dictated them to me, and after that I reread each page for her as she illustrated.  (I tried to keep up and write it word for word, occasionally spelling certain words to account for her cute pronunciation-like "Ghostez" for example)  

I sewed the pages together when she finished, and took a picture of each page to post here.

It's called"Ghostez and Bats Going on a Picnic With Neely and Mama"(FYI-I spelled "Ghosts" normally for a lot of the book because I was hurrying to keep up, but keep in mind, it is always definitely "ghostez")

 Page 1-"one day, there was some ghostez and bats.  And there were some girls and one boy.  There was a boy named Cason, and the big girl was mama, and the girl who was 7 was Paige, and the little girl was Neely and she was 3."

 Page 2-Then the ghosts asked 'Hey!  Do you want to go to a picnic?'  

Us:  "Sure." (She had a change of mind here) "Sorry, we can't, my mama has to clean.  But we sure could come to the park."

Ghost:  "That's where our picnic is!  At the park!"

 Page 3-"The bat got to the picnic as fast as he could and then said 'I got to the picnic as fast as I could.'  Cason said 'Me and mama and Neely got to here as fast as we could, too.'"

 

Page 4-"So the back of the bells were very far away..." (no idea what she was talking about here to be honest) "...and we said 'we have to go home now.  Bye.'"

 

Page 5-"Then Cason and Neely said 'Yay, we're home now' and Reed said that too.  Then the ghosts came too and the bat named 'Charlie Cha Cha' said 'You wanna have a sleepover?' and the ghosts said 'of COURSE we want to have a sleepover!'"

THE END

 

Gettin' Behind Again

So here's a catchup post, full of random, unrelated things.

A while ago we had an open house at the school for both the big kids.  It was fun-cute to see them in that environment, and they're all proud, showing us around.  We also got to bring home some things they'd made.

First we had to try and guess which one of these owls our child had made, using the clues they wrote on it.  I was pretty proud of myself because I picked Paige's out on my first try, just by how she'd decorated her owl, the colors she chose and the bow and eyelashes.  As soon as I read the clues I knew it was her. 

I loved this one about her pet-In the drawing Gia is standing up to steal food from the table.  Ha!

Cason and I had a robot building date several weeks ago.  I've mostly given up on food related dates with him, because when he's eating, I may as well not even be there.  :)  Anyway, the robot building was a lot of fun.  He made two-the ones on the outsides in this pic, with NO help from me at all, other than baking them when he finished.

Neely has been very into drawing lately, and even wrote her first story-which I'll post about soon.  

Reed is his usual sweet self-showing his wonderful personality to other people outside of his immediate family more lately. 

He is so playful and fun, and affectionate.  This particular day he was nursing, and took a break to blow me a kiss.  Oh maaaan....

He also made his first friend, at the park one day.  :)

He's a handsome little man.

He actually takes fairly regular naps in his crib, which makes him the first of our children to do so.

He still gets so excited to greet the big kids at the bus stop each day, blowing them kisses from about 100 yards away as he spots them getting off the bus.  :)  He's a lover.

8th and 4th Birthday Party for the Girls

The girls' shared birthday party was this last Sunday.  After quite a bit of back and forth, they(mostly Paige, since Neely didn't seem too concerned about the theme) settled on a space party.  

As usual I had tons of plans, and only got to about half of it.  It ended up being more of a moon and stars party, as we never got to the planets at all.  Fine with me, and apparently them.  It was kind of between lunch and dinner, so we just had snacks and of course dessert. 

I barely even finished the dessert I did do, and there were more I wanted to have and never got to.  :(  The cupcakes we did have were supposed to be frosted with the moon phases, but I was running out of time, and got my mom and Cassie to do crescent moons for me while I finished up getting other stuff ready.

 I stayed up really late the night before, trying to finish the moon pinata, and painting some moon shirts for the kids to wear.

  Late that night before, I finally finished the pinata, and went to lift it and the rope immediately tore right out of it.  I had made Cason's Toothless pinata way too hard to break, so I mostly made this one out of posterboard, in an attempt to make it a little easier for the kids.  Apparently it wasn't strong enough to hang.  Ha!  So until it was time for the kids to break it, it just sat on the table as a decoration.

Half of our family woke up with stuffy noses, and my throat was a little sore too.  I immediately texted people, especially the ones with kids, to let them know that we were still going to have the party since we felt okay, but we would understand if they didn't want to join in.  Apparently people have figured me out, and realize our kids are not, in fact, sickly children, because most of them braved our germs and came anyway.  Haha!  I just warn people at the slightest sign of the sniffles, because I do not want to get people sick and have to feel guilty later, so I'm always playing it safe.  WAY safe.  Ha!

Half the party was in the living room watching How to Train Your Dragon 2.  Ha!  Cason played a part in getting that going, I'm sure.

 It was a pretty low-key party this time.  The girls each get to have a separate sleepover in addition to the party, with their closest friends, so we got away with not doing a bounce house or anything like that.  It was simple but fun.  I threw together some little constellation favors, and the kids seemed to enjoy the pinata, which Jess did manage to make a sort of harness for, so it could still hang.  Even though it tore so easily when I lifted it, the kids STILL each got a couple turns to hit it before it broke.  I may never master pinata building.

 Paige and Neely were showered with gifts from their loved ones, lucky girls.

They both loved everything they got, but Neely was especially fun to watch.  She was more expressive this year, as she opened them.

Then we sang and had cake and ice cream, and on to the pinata.

The girls loved their party and having their family here to celebrate with them.

Paige's 8th Birthday

Paige turned 8 last Thursday.  That is crazy to me.  I have so many vivid memories from her birth, and our stay in the hospital, that it could have been a few months ago.   I can remember lying in the hospital bed, watching Jess in his pink recliner/bed recording this video of a sleepy newborn Paige in his lap.

She challenges us for sure, she is strong willed and so smart.  She could be an attorney one day.  Ha.  But she says she is set on astronomy or marine biology.  If you ask, marine biology is always included, but she seems to be more interested in astronomy by far.  She's always reading about it and checking out library books on space.  

She and Cason were saving up for this moonscope we saw on amazon, that was made for children.  Cason would have liked it I'm sure, but I think he was mostly contributing because he's a sweet boy and knew it would make Paige happy.  They hadn't managed to get it yet as Paige's birthday approached, so we got her a telescope for her birthday.  We decided to buy her a better one, though it's still for beginners and children.  

We gave it to her during her birthday breakfast, before school.  She was really happy to get it, and the moon map it came with. 

 

 

 She had a good day of school, including getting taken out for a birthday lunch date with Grampa and Grama Trudi, at the restaurant of her choosing.  So Denny's.  :) 

We had pizza, Paige's favorite for dinner, and since Grannybob is in town, she got a couple more gifts.  One was a CSI fingerprinting kit from Grannybob, and a beginners astronomy book from us.  

She loved both, and got to work lifting our prints all over the place.

Lucky for her, the moon was full on her birthday, and the sky was really clear, so it was a perfect night to try out the telescope.  We all took a turn and it is really cool! 

Jess made us all a birthday butterbeer to end the day of celebrating our girl.

The full moon had me thinking about the night she was born, because there was a full moon then too.  My labor with her started intense, no buildup at all.  We left for the hospital and I can remember the drive so clearly.  The moon was big and full and bright, and we both commented on it.  I watched it for a good while on the drive, probably to distract myself.  Ha.  We were both caught off guard by how it felt to meet our baby.  Even more amazing than you expect.

 I was so happy and so relieved at how naturally it all came to us.

She was our only baby under 8 lbs, but she gained a pound her first week and got right to work filling out.  She was so happy and joyful, and such an easy baby.

She was a little beauty too, and we could tell she was a smart one early on too.

She has grown and changed so much, and even when she frustrates us she makes me proud of how strong she is.  

She won't be pushed around, that's for sure.  Ha!  

She's still our sweet, smart, beautiful, silly, joyful girl, and will always be our first baby, the one who changed our lives (and us) in the best way, and made us parents. 

Happy birthday Paige, we love you SO much.