O Christmas Tree

Yesterday was our annual Christmas Tree Decorating Day. Emma reminded us earlier in the weekend that we "always get Chinese food when we decorate our tree." I had sort of forgotten that so I was thrilled that one of the children remembered a tradition! After the little ones afternoon naps we loaded up the gang and headed out. First stop was the park to get some more pictures of the kids - I had some Christmas attire and my outside pictures always (usually) turn out better than indoor ones. I enlisted Paul's help (?) to try to get a good couple of pictures. Paul lasted about 13 minutes and he was all done with being my photo assistant. I got maybe one picture and that's being generous - maybe another day this week will be nice and I can try again. On my own.

We went to a local farm to look at trees. We totally lucked out and got to visit with Santa there! They also had a hayride that we got to do which was basically a circle around some cows but the kids loved it! Paul was excited because they tied our tree to the top of the car.

We got home, unloaded the tree and I started the first batch of Christmas cookies - Paul's favorite - Snowballs while he got the tree in the stand and then got our dinner. Mom came over to watch the action after dinner and of course the kids didn't disappoint. Julia was more interested in playing the the ribbon. Lily put a ton of ornaments on the tree though she refused to move from one spot so we have about 100 ornaments in a cluster exactly where she was standing. Emma couldn't decide what was more fun - the ribbon or the ornaments so she was back and forth. And poor Jacob was just walking around inspecting things then throwing them when he was done looking at them. Entertainment (or birth control) for sure!

The tree got done and it really feels like Christmas around here. I got a good chunk of shopping done over the weekend, ordered the Christmas cards and wrote the annual letter. I love this time of year!!

One of These is Not Like the Other

I pulled out the Christmas dresses last night and had Julia wear one today. Everyone says these two look alike..what do you think?

The top picture is Julia from today..the bottom picture is Lily from 2 years ago when she wore the dress.

Elfie's Back!

Our Elf on the Shelf returned this morning! Elfie joined our family last year and the kids have been asking when he would return. If you are unfamiliar with the "Elf on the Shelf" check it out: http://www.elfontheshelf.com/. Super cute...Elfie left a note Friday morning and let us know he'd be arriving soon. The girls were so excited so they wrote him some notes back: Emma's is the first one. In case you can't read it is says: Dear ELFIE, We are so excited that you are comeing. We have been good but we are going eshr good. Today I am going to make my Chrimas list with my friend. We miss you. See you when you come. Love, Emma
The bottom on is Lily's. She gets to the point: ELFIE, I have Benn Good Love, Lily

Sure enough when we woke up this morning he had arrived!

He was sitting on the mantle waiting for us this morning. Let's hope he spurs on some good behavior especially since there is no school for the next 5 weeks!

PS: If you are wondering why there are no stockings on the mantle look carefully at the left side of Jacob's head. He has a (thankfully) very small dark bruise...Yep..As he came down from his nap he went right over and pulled the stockings down and got a head bang in the process. Sigh...Boys....

Abundant Blessings

Happy Thanksgiving!! We've had a great day over at the homestead. Family! Deep fried turkey from Bojangles! (Yea..they sell turkeys yall!) Mashed Potatoes! (which we'll be eating for about 10 days since I cooked 10lbs of potatoes..not kidding) Sweet Potatoes! (Paula Deen's recipe..mmmm) Stuffing, rolls! Homemade pumpkin pie! Bread pudding (my special recipe)! Good food..good times. We were so lucky to have my brother and his fiancee over this year. It was fun day though let me say that when you eat your big meal at 1pm the afternoon can get l-o-n-g. Thank goodness Nana and Papa John came by for a visit when they did.

My blessings are so abundant this year. I honestly am so overwhelmed by how blessed I am. My family, my home, my husband who works so, so hard to make sure our family is taken care of. My crazy wild kids, my friends, my health...the list is never ending. I am so privileged to live where I do..in this house, in this neighborhood, in this state..in this country. Just so, so grateful and thankful....Happy Thanksgiving!!

My New Moon Review

So I finally got to see New Moon today. I was hopeful to go on opening day like I did last year for Twilight but alas I ended up going today with a bunch of my neighbors. I'm a big, (ok HUGE) fan of the books. Read them twice. I liked the first movie, and though the acting was only OK I thought the casting was good. I was excited for New Moon to have a bigger budget and a new director. I must confess that this book was my least favorite of the Twilight Saga. Though I liked it I thought it was more a "bridge" to set up the next two books.

So, how did I feel about the movie? I liked it. Did I love it? Not sure about that. I did love Jacob. And I loved the action. The special effects were good. I liked the way they did the werewolves and their transformation. And let's not mention that word without observing the transformation of Jacob Black. I do realize I'm almost old enough to be his mother and the fact that he was only 16 when he filmed the movie (seriously..16..how can that be??) but Oh My. Let's just say he has a bright future. This year there was no shrieking when Edward first graced the screen but there were some very audible "ahh's" when Jacob took off his shirt for the first time. The director certainly knew what he was doing when he left Taylor Lautner shirtless for so much of his screen time. But enough about that. For now.

My biggest complaint about the movie was just how brooding Edward and Bella were. And yes, I know this follows the book but it got tiring to me. I'm ready to see Edward and Bella happier. The acting was better than Twilight, especially for the main characters. I thought they did a good job staying true to the book - I couldn't remember too many differences. Overall a good movie..excited for the next one!

Field Trip!

Thanks to my wonderful mother who graciously offered to babysit my little monsters I got to go on a field trip with Lily's class to Marbles kids museum this morning. I dropped the girls off at school, fueled up on some DD coffee to ensure I had enough wits about me to mind after 5 kids at a kids museum, then headed downtown. After a small parking issue (I waited in line to pay then paid for the wrong space #, had to wait in line again to pay for the right number. Seriously.) I made my way into the museum. Our bus hadn't made it there yet so I waited with the mass of other parental chaperones for the kids.

Just a PSA: Rethink your plans to go there on a Friday morning. There were at least 6 other Kindergarten classes at the museum at the same time we were. Chaos!

The bus finally arrived and we were assigned our charges. My sister in law came along too so we got 5 kids (yay us) Lily, her bff (for today) Alyna, Alissa and 2 boys that I couldn't begin to spell their names. They were actually all really good and very well behaved. They had a great time going through the museum. I did learn the Lily is very bossy both by watching her and by one the kids telling me.

I was very thankful that our class had on the awful tie dye shirts since there were 700 kids there. At least we knew what to look for. All in all a very fun morning - both for me and the kids. They loved it! I feel very grateful I got to go. Thanks Mom!

Love Note

I just happened to see this on the table this morning. Apparently Lily made it for her BFF (today) Alyna. I thought it was cute and wanted to share. I love how 5 year olds think!

Sunday Drive

Sunday was supposed to be a busy day. Church, birthday party, girl scouts, AWANA...However, my dad called on Saturday afternoon and needed some help. They recently bought a home in Asheville and were moving some stuff up there. Basically he needed me to drive his car up to Asheville to pick him up as he needed to be home Sunday night. So of course I offered to help and recruited Lily to ride with me. I somewhat deceptively said "Anyone want to go for a ride with me tomorrow" on Saturday. I failed to mention that said ride was 7+ hours (3 1/2 up then back). Lily volunteered right away. And it actually ended up being quite nice. I don't get to spend too much one on one time with Lily so to have her all to myself in the car (without a DVD player) for the ride up was a treat. Five year olds come up with very interesting things to talk about in the car. And just in case you need to know anything she and Paul apparently know everything. She knows everything because Daddy told her. She then proceeded to spend about 15 minutes telling me all the things she knows about in list format. She could not understand why my dad didn't have a Taylor Swift CD in the car and why I could not play "Party in the USA" on demand. Otherwise we had a nice time.

I went to college in the mountains but haven't been to the mountains in a long time. As we were approaching the area I was flooded with great memories of living in the mountains and astounded by the beauty of them. Even though the leaves were past their peak it was still very beautiful. I had honestly forgotten how much I love the mountains. And I love that in NC you can be at the mountains or the beach in a few hours time!

My dad's house is just beautiful. I can't wait to go back when it's all done (they are doing quite a bit of remodeling). So my Asheville friends I'll be calling you when we get back up there! Can't wait to see some of you!!

Birth"date"

My birthday ended as well as it began. My mom graciously watched the little ones while I took the older girls to dance. Keeping up with Jacob at the dance studio is pretty close to torture so it was a nice break. I also had to measure them and pay for their recital costumes. Which, by the way, cost more than I've spent on clothes for myself this year. And yes, I realize how pathetic that is on a couple levels.

Mom stayed so that Paul could take me out to dinner. We went to the Melting Pot. Yay! It also happened to be a New Moon theme night - how exciting is that?? We did a New Moon trivia quiz that I rocked and they had New Moon inspired drinks like Vampire Kiss and some werewolf thing. Very fun! We had a wonderful dinner and it was so nice to be at a place that doesn't have a kids menu.

The birthday celebrating continues to today(cake for lunch)! I get to go to Scrapmania tonight and stock on my scrapbook supplies! Fun times!!

It's MY Birthday!

It's my birthday and I'm celebrating! Actually the celebrating started last night when Paul brought this gem home with him: It's my most favorite cake in the whole wide world courtesy of Whole Foods. Yay Paul!

This morning I woke up to my most favorite coffee in the whole wide world: Starbucks Gingerbread Latte. Another Yay Paul! Then I got this card from the kids: In case you can't read it well it says: Dear Mommy Have a woderful birthday. Make your drem come choow. We Love you. Love Emma Lily Julia Jacod. Apparently Emma was in charge of it since Lily got to be in charge of wrapping (i.e. selecting a bag) & hiding (in her closet) my gift. She was very proud and apparently wasn't sure I knew who Daddy was..glad she cleared that up.

The "kids" gave me the Glee soundtrack..which is very cool though I just downloaded 4 songs from itunes..oops. Lesson learned - don't buy things for yourself the week of your birthday..you never know what you're going to get.

Then at Bible Study my wonderful leader made me cupcakes! Isn't that sweet!

Gagi coming over to babysit this afternoon so I can take the girls to dance solo (great gift Mom..really) then she's keeping all the kids this evening so Paul can take me out! Great day so far!

Tie Dye Holiday

The girls are out of school today for Veterans Day. One of the rare days they have off of school in the middle of a track. It's pouring down rain and cold outside. A fun afternoon is in store I'm sure. But I digress..Lily's class is going on a field trip next week. Apparently they all need to have tie-dyed t-shirts for the occasion so her teacher sent out a flyer last week asking for parent volunteers to do the project. I agreed to help but only wanted to coordinate the project if no one else would. And of course..no one else did. Yay me. I've never tie-dyed, in fact, I don't really care for that look...But, I'm happy to help the teacher so I emailed parents and recruited some help. Three other parents who also know nothing about tie-dye responded to my plea.

We decide today would be a could day for the endeavor since the kids are out of school. They all came to our house and we got to work trying to figure out what the heck we are doing. We had 27 shirts to do. Yes..27. We started one way and then we figured out an easier way. Yall..I am a little scared about how these things are going to turn out. I'm hoping that as the dye sets it will look better. If not, these are going to be the ugliest shirts you have ever seen. Apparently they need to set for 24 hours so we won't know until tomorrow what they look like. Again..scared. I decided that tie dye is pretty messy and really not that much fun..don't think I'll volunteer again for this. I'll keep you posted on the outcome..I'm sure you really want to know..ha!ha!

The Tale of the Deadly Kazoo

Yesterday probably ranks up there with one of the yuckiest days we've had. Ever. It started with a holiday photo session that didn't involve a lot of cooperation from 3 out of my 4 kids. Sigh. And ended with a 6 hour visit to the peds ER at Duke. Let me fill you in.

After naps we decided to go the playground in our neighborhood. The girls all rode their bikes and I pushed Jacob in the stroller. In the stroller we found a kazoo leftover from the neighborhood Halloween party. I gave it to Jacob to hold and play with while we walked. At the playground the girls took off playing and Jacob swung for a while. Then he was done and wanted to walk around. I let him, not really paying attention to the fact that he had the kazoo in his hand. Since he's a relatively new walker he falls. A lot. So he's walking and falls but this time the cry is different..I immediately pick him up and I notice the kazoo in his left hand and that his eyes are clinched shut. Then I notice the blood. Then I put 2 and 2 together....Uh-Oh! So I start walking back to the stroller blotting the blood with my shirt because I am unprepared and not that mom that always has her diaper bag. And I start to panic a little because it's his eye. And it's bleeding. A lot. So I start screaming for the girls to get on their bikes that we have got to go. Now! I call Paul, who wasn't home, as we are walking home and casually inquire as to his whereabouts. I tell him Jacob hit his eye and I think I need to take him to the Pediatric Urgent Care..which just so happens to be about 5 min. away. He is, thankfully, very close to home. In fact he beats us home from the park. The 2 year old on the big wheel slowed me down.

Paul has the van ready for me. And I whisk Jacob away to the Pediatric Express (who, by the way, could not have been nicer...they are great). As I'm driving I'm thinking all kinds of terrible things like he's going to be blind because he fell on a freaking plastic kazoo. But then I think..no..it's just a surface wound..I'm just being overly cautious because it's his eye. When we get to the dr they see me right away. The dr. looks at the eye for about 2 secs and immediately says we should go to the ER. She thinks it may have lacerated the eye muscle and possibly the tear duct so it might need some repair that she's not equipped to do. She recommends Duke since they'll have an eye doc and plastic surgeons on call. Now I really start freaking out. It was just a plastic kazoo!!

So I call Paul and he arranges for childcare so he can go with me to the ER. Thank God for great neighbors (Belinda!!) and for my mother in law. I had no idea what to expect at the ER..I had visions we'd walk in and there'd be a 100 people there in masks with the Swine Flu. Thankfully when we got there it didn't appear to be too busy and I only saw 1 person in a mask. We got a room pretty quickly but had to wait a long time to see the eye doctors. To make this long story a little shorter I'll summarize a bit: waited to see eye doc #1..saw him..he couldn't decide how bad it was..waited more..saw eye doc #2...she thought it potentially hit the tear duct and might need stitches but she wasn't sure..waited some more...saw eye doc #3..he thought the same thing as #2. Basically they had to sedate Jacob to really examine the eye. So finally after 4 hours of waiting they come in do the procedure. Which was really scary. Really, really scary..I was a nervous wreck during the whole thing. There are few harder things than watching your child, especially when they are little, go through medical producers. The outcome was good..very good. The tear ducts were not damaged and no stitches were needed. Phew. Praise God! It took Jacob a little bit to come out of the sedation but overall he did fabulous. He was such a trooper.

It was a long, long night. We were at the ER for over 6 hours. They could not have been nicer though. And I was impressed that the eye doc called us today to check on Jacob. His eye is a little red and swollen but near as bad as it could be. In fact the situation could have been much different. I am so, so thankful for the outcome we had. Thanks dear friends for your prayers and support! A long scary night but at least it turned out good.

Throwback!

The first graders at Emma's school had a "Through the Years Museum" in the media center (library if you haven't been in an elementary school lately) today. They asked parents to bring in different items and antiques to depict how technology has changed through the years. They've been talking about this for awhile so Emma was very excited this morning to get to actually see the different items. I was lucky enough to get to volunteer for the event and go to see really cool things. They had old-timey kitchen utensils, typewriters, a word processor ('member those!), record player and records and all kinds of "old" toys. Meaning old to the kids but many I remember so I would not classify them as old..older maybe..definitely not old.

The best part was looking at the toys. There was an honest to God Atari with a whole bunch of games. Pacman anyone? Space Invaders? Vintage Strawberry Shortcake dolls - we couldn't touch them so I didn't get to find out if they still smelled or not. And the best....a pair of white roller skates with red pom-poms!

Those skates totally brought back a wave of memories for me. Saturdays at The Rink (you know before the ice storm caved in the roof). I had a pair of white skates (of course) and I remember going to the Skate Shop to look at all the accessories to pimp out my skates. I remember saving up money to get some blue pom-poms and blue sparkly laces for my skates. I think I had blue wheels too. Totally awesome. You'd round up your friends on Saturday morning and figure out who's mom would drop you off and who would pick you up. Grab your own skates 'cause rentals - yuck and not cool and hit the skating rink. Fun times..fun memories!

Potty Training Triumph???

So Sunday morning in a sugar induced fog Julia actually wanted to wear panties. Paul was up with her as I was still trying to figure out what time it was and told her if she was going to wear panties she had to go potty. She agreed!?! She cried when I told her she had to wear a pull up to church that morning so I let her wear panties and took along extra clothes. She didn't need them. She went to the potty a few times...Yay! And kept her pull up dry at nap!! We did offer her Halloween candy if she went in the potty and apparently that was enough motivation for her to keep going. So Monday morning she wanted to wear panties again. And again..no accidents! She did tell me about 5000 times that she had to go potty and didn't actually do anything but it's progress people. Progress. So..we're on day 4 of this..no accidents so far. A lot of false attempts but MUCH success. Are we done with diapers with her? I have no idea. I'm hopeful though..very, very hopeful!

So what have I learned? All of my children have trained differently. Sadly no magic thing worked for any of them. (Drat!) And they all learned at different ages. The ones that learned the quickest and had the most success were the ones who decided to do it when they wanted to and on their terms. Maybe...just maybe I'll remember this when Jacob is older.

The Main Event: Halloween

Let me just start this by saying that time change Sunday and the day after Halloween should never again meet. Longest Day Ever plus Sugar Highs just shouldn't happen. Ever. Now that thats out of the way...Halloween was tons o' fun!! We started the dreary, rainy day at the Cary Band Day Parade where Emma was marching with her Daisy Troop. Very cute and I scored some mom points by waiting in the rain to see her smiling face. I took Julia and Lily with me and we had a Girls Day Out. We went to Toys R Us to start scouting out items for the Christmas lists then we went out to lunch. To a restaurant. A real one where you didn't order off a wall. Treat!!

After naps we went to the neighborhood party. The kids got to participate in a little costume parade and eat tons of junk in preparation for Trick or Treating (this detail will be important in a bit). The girls had fun and our neighborhood social committee did a great job putting the event together. After the party we came back home to "rest" a little before Trick or Treating. My cousin's fiancee, Ron, came over to hang out with us so that was fun. We had a little Chinese and a costume change for Emma and they were ready. Paul had plans to meet up with a couple other dads and go out in a big group Trick or Treating. We've learned to take extra bags with us as the kids can only carry so much candy. Honestly, we got so much that we ought to be done when they can't carry their own candy bag but whatever. So they went out for almost 2 hours before finally calling it a night. Needless to say the kids were exhausted but super excited to look at their loot.

Immediately they asked to eat some candy and I said sure..have a few pieces. Lily sorted all her candy by kind and took her coveted bubble gum and put it in a "special place". Emma enjoyed her fav, Laffy Taffy (I know..yuck) and Julia kept eating anything she could open. Finally we made them go to bed. As I tucked Lily in she mentioned that her tummy hurt. I assured her she was ok just tired and probably ate too much candy.

Turns out she did eat too much candy. Or too much junk. Or too much of something since she came into my room about 10pm saying her bed was wet. Turned out she got sick in the bed. Bless her heart..it was so gross and I felt so bad for her. She said "I don't like this night at all." There are few things worse than seeing your child get sick and knowing you can't really do anything to help them. Thankfully she's fine now but it was not a good night. We were up a lot. And then of course, Jacob was up at 6am. Grrr...hate time change. Love Halloween though..again, lets hope it's a long time before these 2 events meet again.