Christmas

It has been a couple of weeks since Christmas and I realize I am a little bit behind. However, after the chaos of Christmas I barely stopped twitching in order to even do this post! We had a full house, kids were sleeping in bathtubs, no but I did have a full house. Brianna and Josh will probably have permanent back problems from sleeping on recliners. We have air mattresses that they usually sleep on but I forgot that I put them in a trunk that our fish tank sits on. As much as I hate having them sleep on recliners and risk permanent injury, I wasn't about to try and lift our fish tank off the trunk. Maybe by summer. Here are some pictures from our Christmas.

Noah and his "ipod". Santa Claus was brilliant with this gift. He always wanted to listen to the same songs over and over in the car so I said that we needed to get him his own ipod to listen too. Both him and Jack got mp3 players and Noah's barely leaves his ears. Plus he turns it up really loud and pretends he can't hear me. Oh well. I haven't had to listen to Spaceman in the car for a couple of weeks now so I will take the I'll pretend I can't hear mom game a little longer.
Opening Gifts

I don't think Christmas was quite thrilling enough for him.

Brianna happy with her EZ Bake Oven and yes she is 13. You have to start small when you are learning to cook. Cooking by a light bulb is very smart as this age. Maybe in a couple of years she will have moved up to a toaster oven. Fingers crossed.

Jack so excited.

Noah

Kate

Jack with a disgusting science kit. So far he has made boogers. Yep, gross. you can say it.

Noah with SpongeBob Operation. He hates SpongeBob, can't you tell?

Look at Katy eyeing those presents. This was Christmas morning after I had to wake the kids up at 9am. You heard me, had to WAKE up my children. What is up with that? I remember from my childhood that my sister and I would stay up late and try to sneak out to see if Santa had been there. My mom had very good hearing though and we never made it. Then my brother would wake us up with some song about a chicken named Pierre. I started twitching again.

Christmas Eve. Katy looks a little bit frightened. Not sure why?

One more of Christmas Eve. Katy now looks like she is praying for help.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

Why I love Noah

We were walking home from a party at our church house and Noah asked me if Jesus was at the hospital. I asked him why would he be at the hospital and his answer, "so he could get alive again."
One night he found an old cell phone and was making phone calls. He asked me what Grandma Chris's number was. I told him I wasn't sure. He told me it was some random number. He then started to talk to Grandma Chris. He asked me if I wanted to talk to her and I did. He got back on the phone and then was saying bye and said, grandma says she loves you. Then he decided he needed to call Grandpa Bill as well. I love the fact that he is sure that he can call Grandma Chris and Grandpa Bill in Heaven.
For all the craziness that it is Noah he is the sweetest little boy.

Noah's Birthday

Noah's birthday was last Tuesday. I am just a little bit behind things. Noah is now 5 years old. Has a very interesting personality that keeps me on my toes! He is so full of joy and what mother can't resist when her child says, "but I love you so much" when I tell him he can't go with me. I love you Noah!

One of his presents was some tools. Luckily these are plastic because he finds real tools and takes things like electrical outlet coverings off.
So Happy!

Him with a Sponge Bob Squarepants movie which we have now watched at least one hundred times. In fact he is watching it right now in my bedroom.

With his presents

Of course a SpongeBob cake.

Noah and his brothers. Kate just wanted cake, this is why she is not in the photo.

Noah's big present. A big bike. His other bike kept getting flat tires and we decided just to get him one. I asked him what he wanted for Christmas and he said another bike so if this one gets a flat tire, he has another one. Hard to argue with that logic.

Happy Birthday Noah!

Jack's Birthday

My baby turned 8 yesterday. I guess he isn't my baby anymore. I can't believe that he is 8 already. I remember when he was a big nosed baby (he seriously had this big nose and looked like an old man when he was born). He is now my handsome little boy with no teeth (with the no teeth maybe he still is like an old man!). Happy Birthday Jack!

Opening presents
Big present was the bike.

Presents

Birthday cake

Happy Birthday, Jack!

Who picked out the outfit?

Can you tell from the photo if Katy or Mommy picked out the outfit? It is really hard to tell.

She has pink tights on underneath, her skin is not usually that color. She is healthy and pink, just not bubblegum pink. This is one nice outfit, right?

She loves to pick out her own clothes. She wants to change her clothes numerous times in the day. Thank goodness for washers and dryers. It usually isn't a problem unless she wants to go outside into the world. She will throw the biggest fits if I try and change her clothes after she has picked out an outfit. I think she is just developing her creative side and one day she will learn the concept of coordinating.

End of the Canning Season

I am done with canning for this year. Beginning of November, not bad. Still have some dehrydrating to do but I am pretty much done. I have food storage everywhere in my house. I had to clean out a linen closet in order to fit jars in there. There were a lot of new items I canned this year including beans and carrots. I also made apricot and peach raspberry jam. Never made jam before hopefully it turned out. I also burned my hands chopping jalapeno peppers for salsa. Chopped peppers before never had a problem. Wear gloves otherwise you will be looking up cures for the stinging hands on the Internet and sitting with your hands in yogurt. Good times. I am done though and my total canning number is...203 jars of items. Yes, 203 total jars of vegetables, salsa, pickles, jam. I am exhausted but it is worth it! I have to brag a little bit and show my hard work.

my linen closet turned food storage closet
beautiful!

Halloween

I think that I mentioned last year how much I dislike Halloween. It sometimes seems like a lot of effort for an hour and half jaunt for $5 worth of candy. Dan was going to go to the U game but there was no way I was going to take three kids trick or treating. I think that I would hit one house and then be done. Coming up with ideas for costumes is hard enough and then figuring out how to make them is another thing. I refuse to pay a lot of money for a costume that is worn one night. We tried to talk Jack and Noah (mainly Noah) into being Tinkerbell, Peter Pan and Captain Hook or if they didn't want to be Peter Pan than they could be a crocodile with a clock around there neck. Noah was not going for that at all. He then decided (me and Dan told him) that he was going to be a vampire. Jack wanted to be a mummy and Kate was a cat. Here are some pictures from our night.

Getting Ready to go

Kate looking thrilled to to


This was before we had started and she has already wiped off one side of her whiskers

Let's get going already

Noah as a vampire, not Dracula. Anyone that said "it's dracula", Noah would say I am not Dracula, I am a vampire. He also kept asking why he was a fancy vampire and that he didn't want to drink any blood.

Seriously looks like he has had some blood to drink.

Noah the Happy Vampire

Jack as the Mummy. this costume took forever. We started out with the scary fabric and I had it sewn on the front and then realized we didn't have enough to finish. Midnight run to Wal-mart to get a sheet. Dan then stayed up using Velcro, pins and some sewing to get it put together. Fell apart a little bit at a party so then I sewed it on there better. Halloween night we added the scary fabric and bloody fabric. Looked pretty good but slowly started to unravel.

They all had fun. Kate was done by about 8:30 so Dan brought me and Kate home and took the boys just around our little neighborhood. When they dropped me off they had about half a bag of candy and when they came home their bags were overflowing. I guess the people in my town homes didn't get a lot of trick or treaters and gave my kids handfuls. We will see how long it lasts! My bet is by Friday it will all be gone.

Hope everyone had a happy Halloween!