More miraculous pictures

Is there anything more magical than a magic tree placed on a window sill to protect it from it's most adoring owner?
Check me out. I'm opening presents with my shining eyes, maryjane socks and glistening runny nose.
I'm so glad that in the end G was just as thrilled with this cake as the much harder possible cakes. He loves the Grave Digger, but that is a hard paint job to copy, and a little creepy.

So I've continued to take pictures even though the lcd screen on my camera is defunct. I do plan to send it in and see if it can be fixed for less than $100. To me that would be nice.

Yet, I can still get reasonable pictures. So if it can't be fixed for what I am willing to pay, I will say "no thank you" as P encourages me to say as often as I can, and let them ship it back to me.

nurturing

What a great Christmas. G's birthday went smoothly. We ran out of punch but had enough pizza so that people were able to grab a slice when the party was over and we didn't have left overs. Not like pizza left overs are bad, but it's expensive to buy way more than you need. The kids ran back and forth and the good old parachute made an appearance. We also played limbo and that was hilarious.

Today we had a great musical program at church. It had a family number, a sister duet, a guitar vocal duet, the primary, the choir and then we finished it out with an American Idol style vocal showdown with the choir and then congregation chiming in at the end. And despite the worries we had at practices we had a good group and it was lovely.

The P family are so generous to us. They give us all so many wonderful and useful gifts. This year they had opened their gifts before to make room for all the gifts they were bringing us. I felt awkward having all the gifts, but it grateful. P is barely into giving gifts at all and it causes more harm to our relationship to push him there. So we just move along and hope the P family will still come back another year.

Grandma L gave me 6 strawberry plants. And this leads us to a discussion on nurturing. I'm not great with plants. OK, they die. P's family kept reminding me to not just forget them in the fire pit area. So as soon as they left I started to get them planted. I got 4 in the ground before it started to rain. 2 more I will get in the ground tonight. Now I need to make an effort to take care of them. It's a good thing I'm better at kids than plants. But plants don't tell me they are hungry. And I don't take my plants out in public to endure public censure. Maybe I should. Because if I could go to a plant play date and get some advice and feel that nurturer's sense of "can't let the other nurturer's think I'm a bad nurturer" peer pressure, maybe more of my plants would live.

toothach headache

Someone told me that kids can't go to the dentist until they are 3. So we waited until M was 3, but then we moved and had a baby and she was 4 with a lot of cavities by the time we had her checked out in August.

For the last 4 months I postponed getting them fixed because I was trying to get insurance lined up and then there was a waiting period.

Then yesterday she was on the verge of tears because it was hurting her. So I took her in today, and was grateful they got us in so quick. This morning I navigated the bureaucracy of our HSA account and found out that we totally have enough in there to pay for getting M's teeth fixed.

Having that stress removed I was able to really look at the numbers for 2012 and realize that they are just fine. I balanced the family budget! I'm sorry that M had to suffer, literally, the consequence of my procrastination.

Blessings.

Jib Jab

There is a funny website where you can take your pictures and splice them into a template.
I did on of our family. It's funny.

My brain must be broken. All I can think of is like...

Beef stew.

Party House

It's fun having tons of visitors over, and it's keeping me in a better habbit of keeping things tidy.
It also helps to have so much space that we can say "toys stay in that room" and we don't have to use that room for anything else, so if there are toys on the floor 6 out of 7 days, it's ok.

I could not imagine today being any more wonderful.

We got there just early enough to have never felt rushed. It was a gloriously clear and warm day.
The children were delighted and so well behaved. At one point we had decided to let them do an RC monster truck game even though it was $1. When G saw that it cost money he just assumes we wouldn't do it. I felt a little sad at how well they know we don't usually do things like that. But we had a wonderful time. It was the most family friendly experience we have probably ever, EVER had.

Legoland 2011

Friday trip

Tomorrow we're taking the kids to Legoland. It's so uncharacteristic for us to go on an extravagant trip. Actually it's just our usual level of cheap. Someone hooked us up with $5 tickets so we're all going and packing a lunch, and we haven't even told the kids because it is going to be so awesome to see their faces when they find out, and we are there.

Last year we went to the zoo and similarly didn't tell them until we got there. So fun.

The LCD on our camera went out 2 days ago. So hopefully there will be any pictures from this event, but if not, we will still have a BLAST!

And if someone freaks out and cries all day, or if 3 people freak out and take turns crying, we will have at least spent only $20 and gas.

Olivia

I love the name and would insist that we name one of the children Olivia were it not for the fact that I really dislike the cartoon. I find it ugly, both artistically and socially. She's so mean to her brother and so self important. She's actually so much like I was, only nicer to her brother.

When we had cable it was the only one on the NickJr channel that I wouldn't let the kids watch. It got to the point that they would change the channel in a panic lest I see it and turn off the TV.

Right now we watch less than 1 hour of TV because we have a house and a yard and there are other things to do. It's pretty nice for my self esteem as a parent. And they only get to play on the computer after dinner. And they've accepted these rules after 2 years of anytime access. We're lucky to have such compliant kids.

Right now we borrowed a Dora video from the library and there is a preview of Olivia in the previews. The kids are very cute making sure that I cover my eyes each time it goes by lest I be upset. They take good care of me.

November was so nice

We went up to Jax for lonch with dad and some of our favorite playgrounds.

I made tons of yummy food and got to hose many family and friends at our new house!
We climbed trees.
Played my sister's wii fit that thought everyone had lost 50% of their body weight because of the carpet.
And learned to ride a bike without training wheels. For real! Not just on the beach statue.

tired

P has been sick with the flu for 10 days. I think that's a record. Luckily it seems to be the strain that the rest of us were vaccinated for.

I made some amazing cheesy noodles tonight. The secret was using scraps from the ham Grandma L got us and also to let the cheese "carmelize" a bit because I was carrying around a crying bP. Seriously it was so good.

We have this lovely advent calendar that is the best thing I've ever made at a RS activity. Tonight the activity was to decorate the tree. Future events are making cookies, decorating the porch (we have a porch!), riding the trolley, caroling, and some of the fun things A L left for us, like a wooden Christmas carousel and a little Christmas village, and nativity. It's a good thing she left us this amazing nativity because the kids broke our little dollar store one that has lasted 10 years. So maybe we won't get out the nice nativity for a few years after all. We have a flannel board version. Yeah. I think we'll stick with the flannel board version.