School Christmas Tea

December 20th the lower El had their winter tea.  It was another fun time that never fails to disappoint.  I can't believe next year there will be no lower El Christmas tea for us.  As Evan is moving up to Upper El and Brendan will be in childrens house not there yet.  So this was special as it was Evan's last one.  My parents came up to watch and help out with the tiny team.



Evan performed on the piano this year.  He has really improved and was happy to play Jolly Old St. Nickolas.  My video taping skills are not perfect.  I could not get it to focus in this clip.



He also read haiku he wrote



And the whole lower el sang some songs for us.



I can't believe how little they look when they are all standing up there on stage.  Precious

Here they are with rock those jingle bells.



The best part was when the invited the families up to sing the holiday hop with the kids.  The tiny team was in heaven.



Brendan wants to be like his big brothers so much and for him to get up there with Evan made his day.  Plus it was fun to dance and sing.



Again this video is not the best I kinda cut off Minal and Evan's head.  They were in the view frame of the camera but then when I downloaded it...oops.



And after it was all over there was cookies.  Which Faith was more interested in then pictures.





Evan and his friends.

Christmas Day 2013

Glory to God!  Our savior is born what a reason to celebrate and what celebrating we did.  Without forgetting the reason for the day we enjoy it too.  The children have a book by Colton Burpee who meet Jesus and talks about how Jesus REALLY loves the children.  He explains it is such an inconceivable love you can't match it.  I believe that but I certainly think there are times we come close.  I think one of those times is celebrating Christmas through the eyes of a child.

So much pomp and circumstance leading up to the day.  This year it was less than normal because of the snow but it did not damper our spirits.  The kids have been over the moon not the best behaved but not worse than excited kids at Christmas.  Everything has been leading up to this day, and it was finally here.

Christmas morning!!



All through the night I heard Gregory checking on Santa every couple of hours.  Then as it towards the morning I would hear Smiley and Evan.  They would each let out squeals of delight I knew it would not be long before they were trying to wake us up.  I think they all might have lasted till 6 something?

Ugh my early risers, morning kids, only on this morning, Easter too.  Still dad and I were happy to take them downstairs and start the festivities.

The kids happily tore through the presents.







They were so happy with most of their gifts.  Gregory said to me mom there is a lot of flat ones.  I gave them books and quiz games, which they did not want.  I gave them some coloring books too they did not care to much about either and chalk which was useless since we do not have a paved driveway but hey it was on sale.



However nothing can compare to NEW IPODS!!!



Oh heavens the boys were so happy.  Gregory knew he was getting one but Evan was only hopeful.



And his dreams and wishes...came true!



His own ipod.  Oh he is still over the moon.  Gregory is just so happy to for him because now they can play together.  And that they have, constantly.  I keep trying to get these kids off these things but they are hooked.  And to complement their ipods they got way to much i stuff.  ihome, new cases, more itumes cards, they are ispoiled.  But it is awesome.  They ARE thankful and they ARE awesome kids who are good kids and sweet, helpful, intelligent and kind hearted boys. Nothing feels better than to give them their wishes.  Evan keeps saying this was the best Christmas ever, and I keep telling him you deserve it sweetie.  Such an awesome child.

I gave Jay some motorcycle gloves he wanted for Christmas.



Once he got them he no longer wanted them.  He took them out of the package laid them down and that is where they stay.  Oh well.  I hope he returns them and will get himself something he likes.

As for me I was in heaven with the kids.



They are my presents each and every day.  I love being a mom  There really is no greater gift.  But Jay did get me a few items for my camera because I have been known to take a picture or two.

Christmas Eve

Christmas eve at our house starts super early I think it was 7 ?  The kids are very well aware of what day it is and super duper excited because they know the next two days are going to be full of presents and candy and more presents and more candy and mom and dad playing with them doing things they want to do.  Unless Christmas falls on a Sunday and then we go to church and they hate that.  But not this year Christmas fell on a Wednesday.



kinda tasteless yes but it is still funny

The night before the kids had set out their presents from their grandma, Mrs. Ginny under the tree so they could open them up first thing and that they did.



They ran downstairs and ripped through the presents.
They all LOVED them thank you very much.

Evan got his guitar!



He had been wanting one so bad he said it was at the top of his wish list.  He made noise with that thing all day.  He opened the windows in his room so the neighbors could hear him too.  I bet they appreciated that.  Actually I bet they were inside, it was so cold that day we had many times of snow squalls.  But nothing stuck as the few previous days were in the 50's and 60's.  But after all you are supposed to have snow on Christmas eve.

We sent the day playing and watching NORAD.
Brendan got a real bow and arrow!  He too had been wanting one so much.



He is far to young to play with it by himself so both me and dad have been helping him.  Helping his brothers too, they love and they all want a turn to shoot.  I think its great and it has been a lot of fun for all of us.



The girls got a Minnie Mouse kitchen.  There was a lot of Minnie Mouse this year and now.  I wonder if Minnie will replace Dora?  Could anything replace Dora?  Either way they loved it!  The timy team played with it all day, night and days later (I am slow at getting these posted) are still playing with it.  Plus they got pink kitchen dishes from mema that add to it perfectly.



It was a good day.  A hard day because like I said the excitement level was through the roof.  Not to mention they were on a bit of a sugar high.  We ate so many cookies.  At dinner time each of us made a pizza and did our toppings our self.



I ran out of mozzarella cheese because of all the baking for tomorrow.  I made caprese pizza dip, YUM! But it uses so much mozzarella I did not have enough left so we used cheddar.  It was not a very good substitute.



It did not matter in the end.  None of us ate the pizzas, not more than a few bites at least.  We were just to cookie full and excited.

There was no way I was getting these kids to bed.  I pulled out a mommy trick, I gave the boys melatonin.  Yes I did.



They wanted a sleepover I wanted them to sleep.  And it worked a little to well.  Smiley was out by 7:30 and I think Evan was out by 8.  Gregory followed shortly.  But woke up every two hours throughout the night to check and see if Santa had come.



Baby finished watching Polar Express and then I was able to put her down.  I tried to put her sister to sleep then to but that did not work.



She wanted to stay up and cook.  I let her.  After all she was whipping up some delicious ice cream milkshakes.

While she cooked I wrapped.  She is to young for the realization of Santa in our home yet and that is a good thing.



I put on the Nutcracker her multi times a day favorite, it is ridiculous, and I need to hurry up and buy that movie before it goes off on demand!  But I love having someone to watch it with maybe just not as frequently as we do.  However it is precious...when the party dancing scenes come on both girls want to dance like them and their brothers grab their hand and do so.  Be still my heart, I will try to make a video of it.



We finished just in time and with the end of the Nutcracker too, because not more than 10 minutes after we went to bed Gregory came in the room to check for Santa.  However he was to sleepy then to realize he did.  And thankfully my little helper along with her dad helped out with Santa's cookies and milk.

All the excitement building up for tomorrow!!  But a day fun in itself too.

My snowgirl

I took my little snow princess out for what was supposed to be a dentist appointment  the other day however that did not happen.  We arrived 20 minutes early for an appointment not their requested 30 (and by the way they have never seen me in at least 30 minutes AFTER the scheduled time let alone the demanded 30 min prior time!)  I hate that dentist but they are the only one in my county who accepts my pitiful dental insurance, not orthodontic which I have learned the hard way.  I was furious.  So next month I have to go back with the tiny team for her appointment, it will only be a disaster, I am not looking forward to it, it is on the 20th so extra prayers that day please.

I have so many dental stories lately but I am trying to take the hits as they come.  This moth has been dentally bad and the next 2 I have full of dental appointments as well as orthodontic surgeon appointments.  However in 3 out of the 5 kids no cavities! (other 2 are TBD) I will take the praises too.







This little guy will hold a $10k smile.  It was so crazy at the dentist office I did not get his photo there but at the drive through pizza joint after.  I expected his news of a need for braces.  But I did not expect the news of a tongue threshing problem as well as insurance will not cover either.



The tiny team was with us that day.  They made it worse.  Much worse.

But after they canceled on us grrr!!! we ran some errands and found some friends of hers.



It does not really look like it in this picture but she loved the blowup dolls.  She was hugging them and talking to them, very happy but I turned her around to take a picture and she kept turning back around to play with her friends.  There was a nice old man there trying to help and was saying thing to get her to look at me but it only creeped her out which is apparent in her terrified deer in the head light stare.

I tried to do a couple of special things for just her and me the rest of the day and none of them worked out.  The whole day was a flop.  A frustrating waste of gas and time flop.



But at least I got to spend it with her.  I never realized how rare I take just her out.  She did not know it was a bad day and I am glad.  She just spent time with mom.  And no time with her is bad.  She can have her moments too but oh my what a wonderfully awesome little snowgirl I have here.  I love her.



We all do!

Another visit with Santa

To say the children have been excited is an understatement.  To say they are on top of the good list is an understatement too.  But that relates back to the first statement.  They are  out of control because they are so very excited.  It has been difficult.  Sunday after church we went to the mall.  It is know that at Christmas times Santa hangs out at the mall all day, all season, like a lonely teenage, he is always there.  Since he was there we went there too.  It was so much cheaper in gas than tickets to the north pole.



We went to talk to Santa about the behaviors that have been displayed these last few weeks.  Since we saw him last in November.   Some littles were not that happy about it.



And these three should have been more worried than they acted, maybe they have good poker faces.  Hum?  A skill I might be able to use later, after all I have seen MY math grades....



On a side note the semester is over thank GOD.  I studied hard and only did fair.  Still fine but not my best.  There were fun highlights though.





The hard sciences, well they have that name for a reason.  And I do believe I could at least make it to double jeopardy at this point.  Is that show still on??



Back to our mall Santa visit.

They actually did not do that bad. Faith would still not get near him with out a complete breakdown so I had to stand with her.  It was the first time I can remember having my picture took with Santa in years????  And he did not really put the FEAR into them of being good that I was hoping for.  Nor have there stupid Elves worked well with that this year.  Even though they, yes we got a new Elf this year WELCOME Peppermint, brought back warning letters from Santa about their behavior.



The kids do love them.  It makes us all so very happy actually.  But Dad and me are kinda tired of moving them around.  Luckily our elf's do not do any of the crazy antics most elves do.  I just don't have time for that my kids are enough to clean up after let alone these extra two.  The kids do think next year we will have  a baby elf though.  After all you have a boy and a girl next comes baby.

Today they were not as bad, they just are SO very excited.  How do you contain that?  Do you really want  to?  (Yes but only for my sake)  After all they are only young kids for such a short time they should be able to enjoy the magic and excitement of Christmas.  We just will pass again this year on the Christmas Eve candle light service, trust me this is our present to the church.

Oh our Christmas forset

We have 4 trees this year.  Yup four and honestly I am surprised it is not more.  Four very different tress.  Let me introduce you to them.

Family Tree

This is our live tree, the beautiful concolor fir we cut and put up.



This is a beautiful tree that does not smell as much as I expected but I could not imagine not having a live tree in our home.  It has red, white and green warm LED lights on it.    Strung with red beads and adorned with red bows.  Simple, sweet and beautiful.

For years we have basically done this.  Get a tree and decorate it in a color theme with ornaments that we move up the tree, the closer it gets to Christmas.  But they are always so beautiful.  We do it this way for many reasons.

Snowman Tree
I saw this idea on pinterest because I am in no way that creative and I just love it!



I think he turned out great!  He might make a yearly appearance.  Although I have so many other ideas that I want to do with that white tree.  I had always wanted one and now I have one but I went with adorably fantastic snowman this year because of my young family.  It was the perfect choice they love it too.

Family Ornament Tree
Since I was born my mom and aunt have collected yearly ornaments for me and my kids too.  She always decorated our family tree with them growing up.  Each year one by one we would put our special memories on the tree, like a hallmark movie.  She gave me most of them a few years back and I almost never take them out.  Sometimes I might have used a few in decorating but for the most part they stayed in the box.  This year we got another tree.  I put it up and thought okay lets put out all those family ornaments on this rather spacey and bare tree.  We decorated it in colored LED lights, the disco lights from years past.  And the kids started decorating it.



They put up years of memories.  Of mine and and they looked for the ornaments with their names too.



Some of the ornaments are old and not replaceable, which is why I never put them out.  I know my crew to well.



And they did not disappoint me.



Within hours ornaments started being pulled off and played with and broke.  Some I can fix some are gone forever.  Only to be followed in the next few days...



Oh yeah they pulled the whole thing down.  Luckily it fell on a carpet and a just a few broke that time.

For a few minutes it looked like this..





UGH.  I don't know if I will try this again next year or wait till they are older.  Much older.

It is fun having a forest in the house we need no night lights because it glows so much.



And the 4th tree is in my sons room but I never got a picture of that.