Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everybody! Here are some pics from our fun holiday season.Laine loved her presents this year. She got a magician's kit, a journal, some books and toys and a book that she could be the author and illustrator of. She's absolutely loving it! We'll post pictures when she's done with it.Eve was delighted with every single present. My technique for never disappointing the kids on Christmas is simply not setting any expectations. I don't even ask them what they want. Then, if I only end up getting them like 3 books and 2 toys each, they're completely thrilled because that's 3 more books and 2 more toys than they get on a regular day. I think I may only be able to get away with this for another year or two before their friends start telling them about all the iPods and Barbie cars that they're getting for Christmas.Here's Eve with her Dada.James is a total puzzle champ. This is a little video of him doing this puzzle for the first time ever.
This December, I was super duper busy and stressed out, so I didn't get a single holiday card sent out and many presents are still en route, so sorry everyone. Yet again, I have failed at Christmas. Next year, I'm going to get my ducks in order before Halloween. I hope ya'll have a fun New Year's this week.

A Gingerbread House Making Party

Today Laine's kindergarten class had a gingerbread house making party. They started out the holiday celebration by enjoying latkes for snack time.Then they assembled their gingerbread houses.Laine was delighted by all the fun candy colors she could use on her house.Here, she proudly displays her finished product.And here she is as an adorable gingerbread girl.

Disney World

Last week, our family had the opportunity to go to Orlando on vacation. What an adventure we had. Both the flight there and back were fabulous. The kids were very well behaved, the flights were on time, and the flights were about half full so we had plenty of room to sprawl.When we got to Orlando, we were met by my aunt, uncle, mom and sister. Every night the kids played card games like Go Fish and Garbage with my sister. I was amazed at how quickly they caught onto these games which I thought were too complicated for a four and five year old.We spent a day at Magic Kingdom where the girls were mesmerized by the castle, the shows, the characters and the rides. Chris and my poor sister hauled the girls around on their shoulders a lot so they could see everything. I'm achy and sore from having James in a sling or holding him all week long. James surprised me by learning how to do puzzles while we were on the vacation. He also learned new words like "sling," "snuggle," "puzzle" and "mother." He may catch up to the girls one day in ability to speak and communicate.Laine was kind of a scaredy cat. Here she is on the Jungle Cruise. She was freaked out the whole time and kept asking if the animals were really fake. Eve was very brave though. After the craziness at Magic Kingdom, we decided James was really too young for the theme parks, so he stayed at the resort with me the remainder of the time while the girls went off on adventures. They apparently had a ball at Sea World. They got to pet a dolphin for like 10 minutes and went on nautical roller coasters. I wish I had pictures to post, but like I said, I stayed behind and it doesn't normally occur to Dads, bless their hearts, to capture these moments on film.Here's James chilling with my aunt munching on an apple. The elephant he's holding is one of two elephants that my sister brought him from Wales. He immediately fell in love with them and insisted on holding them both in his hands for almost the entire vacation. Oh! That was his other new word: "ehphant!"Despite all the theme parks and fun things there are to do in Orlando, Laine and Eve's favorite thing was to hang out at the pool. James loved it too. He loved being tossed high in the air between me and Chris in the pool. We called him rocket boy and he squealed with delight and laughed hysterically every time he was tossed in the air. Here's a very happy Eve enjoying some night swimming

Star of the Week

This week was super duper exciting for Laine. It was her turn to be the class Star of the Week. The big SoW is a prestigious status awarded only one week out of the school year so you can just imagine her excitement at being chosen. The SoW and the SoW's mother have many responsibilities that include things like making a poster.

In the above photo, Laine is holding a biography that her classmates wrote about her after they interviewed her about her life. They asked what color her cars were, what her favorite movies and games were, how many siblings, etc. The SoW also gets to have her parents come in and read to the class with them.Laine and her Daddy captivated the audience with the tale of Rumplestiltskin.And even though this post is about Lainey, I had to throw in this shot of Eve looking so sassy.Oh and here's a good picture of our Star of the Week where you can see her newly upper-toothless state. The tooth fairy has been a frequent visitor at our place lately.And Natalie, babe, this one's for you. A picture of me! This shows that I really love you a lot because I hate having my picture taken. Today was my last final of the semester so some girlfriends and I went out and celebrated. Us nurses sure party hard, let me tell ya.

And that's been our lives lately. Now that I'm out of school for a month, I'll update the blog more frequently. Ooh! And I'm planning some major organizing projects for the house. I really know how to live it up when I'm not in school.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! This year we had a great little feast at our house. Dain and Maryann, Chris's cousin, came over with their family to celebrate with us. We all had a great time and ate way too much food. Here are a few things that the girls are thankful for.

And here are some recent ADORABLE pictures of James, my little love.
And here are my boys getting a Daddy and me haircut yesterday.

I Love You Tooth Fart

Laine came home very excited from school yesterday. Her friend, Camilla, had suggested that Laine simply pinch her tooth and pull it out. So, she did. And it worked. When she told us this story, Chris and I had the exact same response. We've been telling you to do that for a week! Laine said, "Yeah, but you didn't tell me about the pinching part." She got to go to the school clinic and get a treasure box for her tooth.

Eve was very excited for Laine. Last night, the girls didn't fall asleep until like 11:00. They were in their rooms having the most fun anyone has ever had. I had ordered some fairy prints to hang on their walls and the girls were really excited about that. Then they were busy alternating between playing fairies and superheros for about an hour and a half. Then they fought and tattled and whined for another good hour before finally falling asleep. There was a LOT of noise coming from the pink room. When it was finally safe for the tooth fairy to work her magic, she has a cute surprise waiting for her.

She also enclosed a letter with the tooth describing what had happened. Dear tooth FAiry I puLD Mi tooth ote in P.E. Love Laine!
Also, I finally caught James doing his "Wake Up!" trick on film.

A Weekly Update on the Kids

I can't even begin to tell you how much I adore baby James. I love all the kids so very very much, but I think James might love me back the most. He's always willing to snuggle and give me smooches and say sweet things to me. This is him settling down for a nap in his little bed. When he doesn't have his mama to snuggle, he snuggles his woof-woof. His latest cute trick is he'll squint his eyes shut, cover them with his hands, then he'll uncover his eyes and say, "Wake up!" I tried to catch it on film, but he wouldn't cooperate. He also gets a big kick out of pat-a-cake.

Our Eve is ever the lovely princess. Her preschool teacher just loves her and was telling us how proud she was of Eve for finally opening up and talking in class. She used to be so shy and quiet and never said a word. She's still up to her usual pretending games. This morning during girls' reading time, we had to stop and act out each book we read. She has the loveliest sleeping face so I had to post this picture.

Our Lainey girl still has that upper tooth hanging by a thread. She's so scared to let us yank it. This picture's from today. The tooth really needs to go. It looks kinda gross always dangling off at a funny angle, but she insists that it needs to come out on it's own. It's a busy week in school for her with all sorts of fun Thanksgiving activities coming up.

Slumber Party

So we've found a family here in Virginia that we quite like. They live a few doors down from us and happen to have three children very close in ages to our own. Their girls and ours have regular playdates several times a week, sometimes all over at one house or the other and sometimes swapping Eve for Laine's friend or Laine for Eve's friend. On Friday we had their oldest over with Eve visiting their house, and when I got home from work I was greeted with an alarmingly cute chorus of "Can we have a sleep-over? Can we have a sleep-over? Can we have a sleep-over?" from Laine and her buddy. Christine gave her OK, and we swung by their house to pick up Eve and see if their parents were up for it. They gave permission so we headed back home with an extra buddy in tow for a night of festivities.

We made some soup and sandwiches for dinner, then popped some popcorn and had a pajama popcorn movie party in the basement. Afterwards the girls had the most fun brushing teeth that anyone has ever had in the pursuit of dental hygiene. Eve went upstairs and slept in the pink room while Laine and her buddy took the queen bed in the downstairs bedroom. The giggling didn't stop for at least three hours. In the morning I made hash browns and eggs and the girls played some more. I officially declare Laine's first sleep-over a success.

I Don't Feel Like It: The biography of a fairy princess

Oftentimes, during church, our family passes notes to one another. This serves two major purposes: 1) It improves the girls' reading comprehension and writing skills and 2) It takes an immense amount of energy and concentration for the girls to be able to write legibly, which means energy not spent fussing. Last week, this was the note that went back and forth between me and Eve while Eve was supposed to be up front singing with the rest of the kids.When she sent it back to me, it dawned on me that her response was pretty much the story of her life summed up in one sentence. In case you can't read it, it says:

Me: Eve, will you please sit with the other sunbeams?

Eve: I don't feel like it.

Me: It would make me very happy if you obeyed your mother.

Eve: *scribble* (Apparently, she didn't even want to dignify that with a written response.)


"I don't feel like it" really has pretty much been Eve's mantra since birth. It all started with the breech thing where she didn't feel like turning and it's been that way ever since. With Eve, everything has to be done according to her timeline. You have to wait until she feels like it. Why else would a three year old who could read better than 1/4 of my graduating high school class be unable to potty train?To her credit, Eve did start to cooperate eventually. Here are some notes written 20 minutes after the first one. It seems that James is following in Eve's footsteps with the whole "I don't feel like it" thing. Here's a picture of him awake at like 1:00 in the morning yesterday because he didn't feel like sleeping in his own bed. He's been getting up at all hours and it's sooooooo hard for me to put on my angry mom eyes and send him back to bed when he's so freaking adorable! Look at him! Would you be able to be the bad cop and send this baby to bed? Or would you want to snuggle him?Oh, here are some pictures I took of James when we went to the polls on Election Day. He and I got up early and got to the polls at 6:00 when they opened. We waited in a really really really long line. Here he is afterward sporting his "I Voted" stickers. I've gotta save these pictures to show his grandkids how he came with his mama to vote for Obama.

Oh and I wanted to post a picture of Laine before she loses a very wiggly top tooth. I'm really not at all happy about this loose tooth stage happening so early. I really thought it wasn't until like the age of 6 that the cute baby teeth start to go. Today, Chris went to volunteer at Laine's classroom during art time. She was super excited about that. And that pretty much sums it up for updates on our family. It's been a fairly quiet week. We're all kinda under the weather, but other than that, life is good.

They Just Might Be Smart

Brace yourself, it's coming, you know we have to do it now and then, so just let us get it out of our system. Here it is: a brag post. Please feel free to skip this one and come back next week when we're less busy talking about how smarty-pants we think our kids are.

We went to Laine's first Kindergarten parent teacher conference today. Mrs. Moulder, her teacher, told us she was doing quite well, and that they had decided to postpone her expulsion by at least another week or two. She did quite well on her reading assessment, scoring up with the kids about to finish the first grade. First graders must have improved since I was there. Laine scored 191 out of 193 on the standardized test. She did miss one question so they'll probably make her repeat Kindergarten until she can tell a capital I from a lower-case l. I should probably get sent back there with her, since I've missed that before too.


We'll start the picture section of this post with some of Laine's school notebook drawings. Note that almost all the letters are pointed in the right direction. You can probably almost tell what everything in the pictures are, which is better than you'd do with any drawing I've ever done.


Here's the family going to cherch.


Here are the girls plaeing on the swing.

This is Laine when she wint to the bookfar.

Here she is playing sokr.

Here are the girls saying "Hy" to each other.

Eve likes to write notes to Mom, and slip them into her binder so she finds them at school. The first time this happened the notes were written on the backs of some photos that we couldn't find anywhere. Now she uses paper, which we appreciate.

"Mommy. I Love you. and. your. cute. I. AM. Are. you. GOOD. To: MOM. From EVE."

I am retarded and can't get the pictures going the right direction. At least the kids are smart.



Here is one from Laine (also delivered by binder-slipping to Mom):

Eve likes to draw good staff for Mom.

Laine did some great ghosts for Halloween. Pac-man is trembling in his boots right now.

One of the important parts about leaving a note for somebody is making sure that they read it. It helps to put a little line at the end of the note telling people to read it. Surveys show that adding this line can increase readership by up to 37%.

Finally, Christine is deeply, madly, and passionately in love with.... the fall.

Bet you thought it would be me. Nope. It's the fall.

This is the view from the kids' bedroom windows into the forest in the back yard. Note that there are trees. I think that's what Christine likes about the fall, maybe I should try growing leaves.