Merry Christmas!

To spread the good cheer from the season here's Alex singing the songs from his school concert. I left the video camera at home that night, but it's easier to hear him anyway. As you'll see, distractions still occur, even without a crowd of people standing up in front of me to wave to their kids and grandkids as would typically happen at a school concert.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas, especially Mom and Dad in Mexico and the Flakes in Russia. We miss you all and hope you have a wonderful Christmas.

101

Amazingly I've made 101 posts to my blog. I felt it deserved something big to honor it, but I'm not creative enough. So sorry. The best I can do is give you a cute picture of Adam in the snow. We've had a lot so far this year.

But, Mom, I'm Hungry!

My office is one of the most frequently used rooms in our house. Why? Because this is where I earn my living so this is where I'm at for several hours a day.

My office also contains the guest bed. So when my kids are hanging around (which they frequently do) it's like the bed is a magnet. They simply can't stay off of it. It's not a new bed or even a somewhat old bed. It was a gift from my parents' house when they got a new bed and moved their old bed to a guestroom and gave us the old bed that was there. (I think they got tired of the air mattress that we had before that.)

Today I told Adam to stop jumping on the bed for what must have been the millionth time. (No, I don't know the exact number, but it's got to be way up there.) His response... "But, Mom, I'm hungry."

Clearly you can't expect a 3-year-old to stop jumping on the bed if he's hungry!!

Good thing he's adorable. So adorable in fact that I think the lady behind us at Walmart yesterday was about to buy him some cheap (yet expensive) toy that they stick by the checkout lanes...

Bethany

A few weeks ago the world lost a dear, sweet girl. I met Bethany several years ago at church. Bethany had many physical and mental disabilities, but she was always so happy and full of hugs that she couldn't help but make you feel good. About four years ago I was blessed to work with her in young women's and got to know her even better. I was expecting Adam at the time, and she was SUPER excited for him to arrive.

Doctors claimed she'd never make it to age 6, but she defied them all by living 19 wonderful years. She will be missed by all but by her family the most.

As I pondered her life at her funeral I couldn't help but be grateful for the knowledge I have of the resurrection. All the struggles and limitations she had here on earth won't be an issue for her. She'll be able to do all the things she wanted to do but couldn't. I love that!!

Inside the funeral program there was a beautiful poem that I'm going to share. It was decorated with princesses.

Heaven's Very Special Child by Edna Massimilla

A meeting was held quite far from Earth:
"It's time again for another birth."
Said the Angels to the Lord Above,
"This special child will need much love."
Her progress may seem very slow,
Accomplishments she may not show
And she'll require extra care
From folks she meets way down there.
She may not run or laugh or play
Her thoughts may seem quite far away:
In many ways she won't adapt
And she'll be known as handicapped.
So let's be careful where she's sent
We want her life to be content.
Please, Lord, find the parents who
Will do a special job for you.
They will not realize right away
The leading role they're asked to play
But with this child sent from above
Comes a stronger faith and richer love.
And soon they'll know the privilege given
In caring for the Gift from Heaven.
Their precious charge,
so meek and mild
Is Heaven's Very Special Child.

I'm sure Bethany's family had many struggles and life was not always easy, but they were always so patient and loving with her. They truly were amazing people blessed with an amazing girl.

The Big 9

Yep. I said NINE... My firstborn is one year away from double digits. Crazy, huh?

Yes, these days are long gone...

As are these... (The shirt, however, lives on. It's just Adam's now. Let's hope we can show our faces outdoors with said shirt on now that the Josh McDaniels era is over in Denver.)

Mary was somewhat lucky and got to celebrate her birthday twice really. Due to scheduling conflicts on her actual birthday (only one Saturday in months was available for me to run Super Saturday folks), we celebrated once with Grandma Beverly a few days early and again with her friend Katelyn a few days late. It's better when your birthday lasts more than one day, right??

Here are some pics from the first celebration. (The camera did not make it to the spray park for the second one. Good thing all those wasps showed up to cheer us up...)

For those of you with good memories, yes we did make these same cupcakes last year. This year we got fancy though and dyed cool whip green and used that for frosting. (I can't make good white frosting for some reason and it tastes beyond gross out of a can...)

I love these flowers though, well to look at anyway. I'm not such a fan of eating them, though the kids LOVE them. Basically you take a large marshmallow and cut it in five slices. Then you arrange them in a flower shape with a mini marshmallow in the center. We used white this year, but the pink strawberry marshmallows would also be cute I think. Then we just put sprinkles on them. Cute and easy.

I took advantage of a rainy night towards the end of July and actually baked all the cupcakes a few weeks in advance. Then I froze them in batches and just took out a few at a time for each party. The fringe benefits are not having to bake cupcakes twice and not eating so many cupcakes because of low levels of will power...

Meanwhile back to Mary... I am amazed how fast time flies. It's so fun to see her grow up. She's a beautiful young woman and I'm beyond grateful she's part of my life.

School Play/Concert

Alex participated in a play/concert at school in May. I'm not really sure what to call it. Kindergarten through 2nd grade classes each acted out one of Aesop's Fables and then sang a song related to it. Then the choir and band from the older grades performed also.

Mary sort of got the shaft. You have to be in 4th grade or above to be in band or choir so she couldn't be in those, but they stopped at 2nd grade with the fables so the poor 3rd grade got left out.

Alex's class as you can see did The Tortoise and the Hare. He was a hare obviously, and he was actually the fastest little hare they had. He probably could have won the race.

I didn't have a chance to take his picture at school and the makeup was driving him nuts so I took a picture on the way home before he rubbed it off.

I confess we were evil and snuck out after the kindergarten kids were done instead of sticking around for everyone else. In my defense though, I'd just flown back from Utah that morning and because of laptop issues hadn't been able to do any work on the flight home.

The music teacher was a rookie so I wasn't sure he could pull it off, but he did a really good job with the kids and they put on a pretty good show.

Adam's Birthday

Adam also had a birthday in March. It's really, really official. I no longer have a baby. (We sold all the baby stuff so this is it.) This is Adam enjoying the cold, hard cash from Grandma Beverly. He also got cash from Grandma and Grandpa Bagwell so we got to go shopping a few days later. I don't really remember what he bought. It's been over 3 months, but it may have involved some construction vehicles and Lightning McQueen.

Adam has some issues with opening presents. He wouldn't do it at Christmas, and he wouldn't do it on his birthday. Luckily he has a big brother who LOVES to open presents even if they are not his.

Imagine a whole backpack full of wooden blocks. I bought them right in front of him at the thrift store one day. Fortunately he was distracted by other things, huh? Don't think I'll ever pull that off again. He even took them to bed for ages. Now he builds race tracks out of them.

In honor of my monkey boy (well actually 2 monkey boys) we had some fun monkey cupcakes to celebrate.

Yes, some look a little alienish. (I had some help decorating.) I unfortunately tried a new frosting recipe that wasn't all that sticky, but they turned out pretty cute anyway.

Odyssey of the Mind

Last school year our school started participating in Odyssey of the Mind (similar to Destination Imagination I believe). Anyhoo... basically the kids get in a group and have some sort of project they take on. They have an adult supervisor, but the kids really have to come up with the ideas how to do the project.

We decided to let Mary and Alex give it a whirl... At first it was just an occasional meeting, no big deal.

Then it turned into meetings once a week, then twice a week, and at the end I think 3 times a week...

Alex wasn't exactly a great team player for a lot of the time. He'd daydream or wander around the classroom. His group met in the kindergarten classroom so Adam and I would wait there so Adam could play with the toys. Unfortunately, that made Alex also want to come play with the toys. His team had to do the "Money Maker" project. It was a skit about someone trying to come up with an invention. The first 3 would fail and then the last one would be great. They came up with things like an airplane that would shrink when you took off and get big when it landed, which failed. There was a candy and toy maker, but it got jammed. Then there was some sort of remote control, but I don't remember what it did. Alex and some other excited potential buyer got to break that by fighting over it. The last one was a robot that would do ANYTHING!! Some poor kid had to wear a cardboard box wrapped in foil. Despite all Alex's reluctance to participate, he learned his lines very well and had great stage presence. The judges commented on his enthusiasm, and you certainly didn't have trouble hearing him like some other kids, even middle school kids I saw perform.

Mary's group had to make up a tour. Theirs frankly got out of control because they were touring Disneyland, Bikini Bottom, and a few other places. Mary originally was supposed to be a gingerbread girl, then Cleopatra, and someone else. Fortunately, they did a bit of a rewrite towards the end and she only had to be a gingerbread girl. Costume changes were impossible so I was glad about that. She probably would have preferred to be Cleopatra or something though since being a gingerbread girl just means you get to wear a lot of brown... BORING! Unfortunately, Mary got a horrid case of stage fright and wouldn't say a word.

Each group also had to do some sort of spontaneous project too that the parents and adult leaders couldn't even go into. They were even sworn to secrecy. I thought I'd get the kids to fess up after we got home, but they didn't.

The kindergarten and first grade kids got medals and little rubber ducks. Older gets were not so lucky, although Mary also got a little pink pig for being a sibling of a kindergartener. Adam got something too but promptly lost it.

It was a very long day in a town an hour or so away from here, but it was fun. I'm not sure if the kids want to do it again, but it was a good experience for them.

Alex Turns 6

Alex turned 6 in March. (Yes, I know that was 4 months ago...)

For his birthday we requested a swimming pool cake. I've made them for Mary in the past and can probably make them for years to come since the cocktail umbrellas came in a package of 300. This year I went for a figure 8 instead of the standard rectangle.

He invited a friend from Primary over. We went to a little arcade place called Nickel-A-Play (with an entry fee we didn't know about). A lot of the games were free, but we did take along nickels for the skee-ball (is that spelled right?) and little basketball and stuff. We had a good time, though you'd have to practically live there to get enough tickets to really get a good prize, which seemed to be the strategy of several people there. By the time we divided the tickets between 4 kids we came home with a few cheapo army men that have all lost at least 1 limb and/or their guns, about 3 of the teeniest Tootsie Rolls you've ever seen, and a small Chinese fan that has subsequently been lost. Oh well. We had a blast, and I'm even somewhat good at skee-ball. (Not as good as Doug, but we won't dwell on that. I can beat him at air hockey.)

After that we got some pizza and came home for cake and possibly ice cream. I don't remember.

So my cheapo camera (ViviCam X016 so you can avoid this if at all possible) made Alex look drugged in most of the pictures... So just trust me when I say he enjoyed his presents, which included a Spiderman T-shirt, some more army men, a little monster truck, and money, which turned into Transformers and Bakugans (little robot thingies squished into spheres, cubes, etc.).

And as a side note. I'm now going to bed. I'll have to catch up another time, and hopefully Blogger will cooperate better when I'm trying to upload my photos. We also got a better camera today. Did you know if you buy the ugly green cameras on Amazon they're cheaper than the silver or red??? I'll take ugly green if it saves me money.

This is what happens

When you're feeling under the weather and Mom and Dad forget about you while they're visiting with the home teachers.

Keeping My Boy Busy

Alex did morning kindergarten last year. In the afternoon while Adam was napping and I was working Alex frequently just watched some TV... So I decided to put his love of tools of all kinds (even tools at the dentist's office) to good use one afternoon.

Our DVD player went kaput a little before Christmas last year. For a while we nursed it along by taking the case off so you could start the DVD spinning with your finger to get things moving. Once it got replaced at Christmas (Thanks Grandma, Grandpa, and Santa) I decided to see what Alex could do with it.

He only had one rule... No total destruction, just take it apart. Here's what we got.

I'm not sure what the tape measure is for, but isn't that face just the cutest??

 Doug got into the act too... I guess boys of all ages love taking things apart.

Adam also enjoyed the fun after his nap.

So in conclusion... If you want to be the "cool" mom, let your boys take things apart. As soon as the toaster stops working he's gonna get to take that apart too.

The Bright Side

In an attempt to make today's shopping trip with 3 kids (two are crazy boys) I'm going to look at the positive side of the shopping trip. I may or may not be sarcastic. You decide...

I'm grateful:

• for road construction. It's nice that someone is willing to work in 90+ degrees to make new roads. It's also nice that they decided to start the road construction right where I need to turn onto the  major street outside my neighborhood and that they stopped the line of cars beginning with the car in front of me instead of the car behind me.
• for whoever sings about wanting to kiss a girl. It was the first tolerable song I heard on the radio. We're talking multiple channels. Too bad it was on the way home from all the shopping so I spent the other parts of the trip channel surfing.
• that Walmart had another LARGE pile of 20 cent notebooks hidden at the back of the store. I thought I was going to have to take the 4 I found in the school supply section right inside the door, two black, one dirty yellow, and one yellow that needed the wire at the bottom bent back in. (We left the scrunched up green one for others.)
• for Sun Chips. When my children decided the samples in the deli and bakery wouldn't be enough lunch I didn't feel too horrible for buying them chips in the checkout lane because Sun Chips have 30% less fat... (Feel free to nominate me for Mom of the Year.)
• for Target's clearance shelf I ran into by mistake. This matched with my coupon got me very cheap Hershey's syrup that will pair nicely with the bucket of vanilla ice cream I already have.
• for Alex's healthy ankle that didn't break when I ran him over with the cart at Walmart.
• for UPS. It's always nice to find a package inside your screen door when you come home.
• that my garage door and the back door of the van separated nicely when Mary tried to close the garage door prematurely.

Let's hope for more school supply sales next week so we can repeat this all over again.

Summer!

(Yep, I'm the little blonde cutie in the back sucking on a squirt bottle.)

So just to prove we haven't died I thought I'd do another blog post.

Just to shake things up we thought we'd start summer off with a bang, well really more of cough with a headache, sore throat, and a fever...

Yep, we're all sick over here. Except Doug. He somehow escaped all that. Lucky him.

Mary got us off to a good start and was sick twice her last week of school.

Then it was me.

Then Alex was nice enough to get all croupy on me this morning. The doc gave us dexamethasone to use this afternoon so he'll sleep great, at least I hope that's how a steroid pans out for him...

Adam's just a beastly grouch. Good thing he's cute when he's angry, right?

So I hope the rest of you had a great Memorial Day! We celebrated with monkey bread for dinner and a quiet game of Dora Memory. Mary beat the pants off of all of us. (My head was foggy...)

Let's hope the rest of the summer goes much more smoothly and that the weeds with the little purple flowers don't take over our entire front lawn...

Dead Monkeys Smell Bad

If you're smelling dead monkeys at your house, here are a few possible explanations:

• You live in the jungle that is potentially toxic, at least to monkeys.
• You live in a zoo and you finally got the best of the monkey house...
• Or your kid is learning long division.

Long division made a visit to our home recently and will probably be here to stay for a while. I didn't think I had a problem with long division. I have no nightmares about learning long division. I was actually really good at it in school and don't remember horrendous problems with it. Now that I actually have to help explain it I don't like it. I can't pass my long division knowledge on by osmosis or something. And I'm not a good explainer. So for now we stick to the Dead Monkeys Smell Bad (or Divide, Multiply, Subtract, Bring down) method she was taught in school.

I think we're both improving... At least I hope so. Maybe it's just the exhaustion I'm feeling after the marathon week I've had and the mad hope that something is looking up.

Hopefully someday soon I'll get caught up on all kinds of fun things we've been doing around here, like Alex's birthday and other goings on.

Our Christmas Project

(Can you tell I've stayed home from church with a sick little girl?? I finally have time to update my blog...)

Santa required a little help pulling off one of Mary's presents this year. She's been wanting a bed for her dolls. We've considered stealing my sister's old one that is still at my parents' house, but then granddaughters couldn't play with it when they visit. We've seen a few in Target before, but either they look really cheap or they're like $40, which seems extremely outrageous for a doll bed.

So one day in like October or November I decided to go to a nearby thrift store. I certainly didn't have a doll bed in mind. I was looking for some good, cheap clothes for the kids and maybe a crockpot for me. (Mine is falling apart and is frankly on the big side for my family.) As I was wandering around with Adam I noticed this little toy cradle thing for $3.43. It was plain white with these huge primary colored balloons on each end. (Sorry, I didn't think about a before picture until about 2 seconds ago.)

So since I've never repainted anything I got advice from my friend Katie who's quite experienced and this sort of thing. So we knew we had to sand, prime, and then paint this thing to make it fancy enough for my girl.

It takes a bit of trickery really when your 5-year-old only has morning kindergarten. Obviously you can't let your 5-year-old see it and then not be confused or figure out the Santa secret if he sees you painting a bed that his sister gets from Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. So we'd take Alex to school in the morning and hurry and sand it or prime it or paint it with one coat or so at a time then let it dry and then bag it up before he was picked up. It took at least 2 weeks to get it done, but it turned out pretty good.

Then I found these stickers at Dollar Tree that are actually designed for decorating walls and such, but they work well on doll cradles too. So I bought a couple sets, and Santa let her make her own design.

Here's what we have now...

She put stickers all over that bed, but she still had a bunch left that she used to decorate her room.

We also hung some little lights from her ceiling.

So instead of getting doing one project for Mary for Christmas, we actually got two done. She really wanted something more than plain white walls, but I've got no time to paint (and very little desire frankly) so now she's happy with her new room. She's even moved the butterflies around a few times. Plus Dollar Tree has several more styles of stickers so if she gets bored with this I'll just take her there and spend a few bucks and give her a whole new room again. Talk about decorating made easy, huh??? That's right up my alley. Too bad I can't get a cute living room out of it...

Christmas

Yes, that's the best picture I took of our tree... I apparently shouldn't be allowed around a camera...

We had a great time this year for Christmas.

The day before Christmas vacation started Alex got to decorate gingerbread cookies at school. He had a great time, though he didn't want to actually use any of the red hots we donated to the decoration project. I'm not shocked I confess. The only reason we sent red hots is because that's the only item on the list I found at Dollar Tree.

I do believe the little one's head has already been eaten...

Mary's class had a Roman Festival the day before vacation. They'd been studying about Rome for a while. The kids got to dress up with togas if they wanted. They each got to pick three activities to do. Doug went to  help out and helped kids (mostly boys) make shields. Mary made jewelry and pottery and a mosaic. Here's the only picture Doug had time to take of her.

We tried to do some fun crafty type things here at home too. Some turned out better than others...

First, we decided to try to make candy cane cookies instead of sugar cookies. I think we'll go back to sugar cookies next year. They taste better... These were fun though.

Doug's is the great looking one in the top right corner... I don't think any of mine made it into the picture, but they probably don't look much better than the kids. I'm hopeless...

We also tried making candy cane reindeer ornaments. It was something I threw together at the last minute when I came across some pipe cleaners, fuzzy balls, and googly eyes. My pictures turned out horrible, but maybe you can figure it out. (In my defense, my 10 megapixel camera somehow reset itself to take 3 megapixel pictures. Like who'd want 3 when they could have 10. Seriously, Vivitar? You could totally take that function out. Oh and while we're at it, make it easy to figure out how to set the date.)

Doug and the kids found other interesting things to do with the googly eyes...

Christmas Eve involved a little bit of trauma in our house. That afternoon Mary and Alex were out playing with the neighbors. Mary came in crying about 4:00 or so, but I was busy making rolls and then fudge and she's a bit of a drama queen at times so I didn't really think she was hurt or anything.

90 minutes or so later while Doug was monitoring dinner prep I was reading to her on the couch and I noticed her collarbone seemed to be bulging out a bit. So I did a little internet research and realized she'd probably broken it. Dinner was ready so we decided to just go ahead and eat. (Mary was on board with that decision, don't worry.) Then we skipped the nativity acting out portion of the evening and let the kids open a present per our tradition. Mary even tried her gift on first.

Then Mary and I headed out the door to Children's Hospital. Doug sent along his laptop so we could watch some movies during what we figured would be a long, long wait. Fortunately, Children's was fairly empty when we got there (unlike this summer when I took Adam in about his hernia). We still spent a couple hours there by the time the nurse checked her in, the doctor came to talk to us, we went to get x-rays, the doctor came back with the x-rays (definite break), and then a different nurse came back with a sling and to talk Mary into actually taking medication... Mary has major issues with actually swallowing medicine. She'd rather have a shot. The nurse was pretty good though and brought her a popsicle to eat after. I did come home and made a bunch of ice cube tray popsicles and she did pretty good taking medicine once she realized how much it helps the pain.

Anyway, we survived the trauma and had a great time the next morning.

Alex loved his Dollar Tree FBI set from Mary. I'm pretty sure it's mostly broken or lost now.

Everyone got curly straws from Santa.

That's Toy Story 3 in that fuzzy 3 megapixel picture... It was actually Adam's present, but he refused to open any of his presents so Alex happily volunteered to help.

Adam's sporting the dart gun and I'm sporting one of the Palisade Bulldogs shirt Aunt Dani sent us.

Dad's great for helping with new video games. Mom, not so much.

I was even brave enough to put out my nativity set on the mantle this year. It's too high for Adam to reach. It was a great reminder this year of what Christmas is all about.

Hope you all had a great Christmas too!