Zach and Faith Being Cute

While most days these two are fighting or arguing, or just getting on each others nerves, some days are like this, when they play together, cooperate and make each other laugh so hard they get the hiccups!  These are the days I want to remember!  In this first picture, you may notice that Faith is "talking" on her cell phone, it was daddy, and I made her tell him bye, so I could take more pics!  Don't worry, she "called" him right back!

Christmas: Part 3 - Celebrating in Colorado

I hope to have more pics from my mom soon, since we tag-teamed taking photos on this morning, hopefully she got some of me, and since we swapped cameras a few times too, hopefully there is some of her on there too, and my sister, she's missing from my camera! 

My Dad and Simon

                                                                                   Bailey and Ethan

Stacey and Simon

                                                            Zachary

The "Ninjas!" Josiah, Nick and Rob

Eliza, Grace, me and Joy (with her head turned)

Eliza

Stacey, Simon, Faith and Rob

Papa and Zach playing Memory right after we opened presents!  He could hardly wait to play it!

Gettin Crafty At Christmas!

My sister had the BEST idea, she said we should bring our craft stuff and work on projects while we were in Colorado!  I LOVE CRAFTS!!! I was so excited to have time to work on some!  So here are the things that I worked on-





Felt flowers for the girl's hair, these are made from scrap fabric, felt and a button, all sewn and then glued to a barrette. 

The girls liked them so much that I got requests for colors and they wanted to learn to make them!  I'm thinking I need to have a craft night with my nieces to make these.  We ran out of time and I didn't get to make very many, or teach them how.

This wreath was definitely more time consuming than I thought that it would be!  It is a foam wreath wrapped in two layers of yarn, and then I made the poinsettia out of felt that I stitched veins on even using the sewing machine.  Then I sewed beads on for the center.  Hung by a ribbon.  The poinsettia is removable, so I'm going to make other flowers to pin onto it so I can use it more than one time a year!

These are my mini Christmas trees!  I really am happy with how these turned out, they are foam cones, wrapped in two layers of yarn, and glued.  The second layer of yarn gives it lots of texture that I really like, they remind me of a warm sweater!  I am considering a star of some sort on the tops, but so far I just really like their simplicity!

Faith's 3rd Birthday

We got up early on the morning of Faith's birthday, otherwise known as the day after Christmas, so we could get to my parent's home in Colorado as early as possible to relax and celebrate Faith's birthday with the whole family!  I would really like to say that that was the plan in the beginning, but....not so much!  Our baby girl, decided she didn't want to sleep in her bed and would not be persuaded to stay put, so, knowing that we wanted to get somewhat of an early start, after about an hour of trying, we gave in and she snuggled in with us. 

But sleep, she did not, and sleep, I did not, Rob?  Sawing logs like Darth Vader in his mask next to her!  I seriously hate that he can sleep through ANYTHING!  I was kicked and smacked by a thrashing little girl all night and finally, after 20 minute intervals of sleep from 11pm - 4am, I woke Rob, who had been sleeping pretty soundly since 10 and asked if we could just get up and leave, he was more than happy.  I knew he would be, he's always trying to get me to leave earlier. 

I thought I would sleep on the road there, again, not so much!  We did, however get there fairly quickly, even despite running out of gas near Oakley, Kansas!  Yes, we ran out of gas, correction, MY HUSBAND, ran out of gas!  I handed him the AAA card and didn't say a word.  Thank goodness the battery did not die while we sat there waiting, so the kids could still watch their movie.  Luckily it only took 15 minutes or so for AAA to get there, so no big deal, really, and we arrived at my parents house about 1pm! 

While everyone else was arriving, I finally got a nap!  Nick and Stacey had similar luck to ours, a somewhat sleepless night, followed by car troubles, except, the engine, not gas, and they had to be towed and picked up, so, I decided running out of gas was okay in comparison! 

Finally all of us were all together (minus Jada, who was "working" in Hawaii for the week) at my parent's house in Golden, and ready to celebrate Faith's 3rd birthday!  For obvious reasons, to everyone, it needed to be a Dora the Explorer party!  I am somewhat strangely pleased to say that I have seen well over 100 Dora and Diego episodes/movies, and the proud owner of many of them.  While Faith was recovering from having her tonsils and adenoids removed in August, we watched A LOT of Dora, and it has stuck!  So, bring on the Dora toys, pillow person, blanket, play set and stuffed animals, plus even new Dora and Diego books!  And a beautiful handmade scarf from Aunt Stacey with the love of Uncle Nick, I'm sure!

She did her very best to blow out all of her candles on her Dora cake, but I should have thought to put them all together!  Because instead of her spitting on a small portion of the cake, she sprayed THE WHOLE THING!  It was hilarious, and no one seemed to mind, it was all eaten by the end of the week!

You really would think that all of the kids would have been exhausted from all the travel, nope!  Everyone ran around and played till very late!  It was THE BEST sound EVER!  A house FULL of family to enjoy!  A great start to our week!

Christmas: Part 2 - The Big Day

I don't know if this was really the BIG day or not, but we had a great time, just the six of us on Christmas Day!  This year I tried something a little bit different, I chose to give each of the kids just three gifts, usually we have just gone nuts, and this year, I wanted to simplify.  They have so much! 

So I did something to read, something to wear and something to play with, and then they had their stocking like normal.  I had heard about this at a MOPS meeting, I was already thinking about simplifying when someone mentioned this, perfect, I thought!  Three gifts, like Jesus got from the wise men, right in keeping with what I was wanting to get across with the Advent Calendar and the stories we were going to be reading every night. 

I didn't get the impression anyone missed the huge piles of presents either.  
Another way we scaled back on gifts was we drew names for each other too, instead of each child shopping for everyone, we each had one person to shop for, with a little bigger budget, this was SO much better than dollar store trinkets in bulk for everyone!

Of all the things that Faith received that day, she enjoyed her baby bottle with fake milk in it the best, she insisted that her brothers feed her baby while she opened other presents! 

They were both such good sports about it, maybe even enjoyed it??  A little? Maybe?  Don't tell though!!!

Ethan, obviously, really was excited about his craft kit!  He asked about doing it everyday after, until we finally did make some!

Faith was so fun to watch, she was excited for everyone else too!  She oooed and awed over everything that was opened!


Notice how I, in my pj's, did not make it into any pictures, yeah, that WAS on purpose!  As with every year, I found the greatest pleasure in watching them have a great time, enjoying their gifts!  That's such a "Mom-Thing" to say!  But I did get some super-cute headbands that Grace picked out for me, I was pretty excited about that!

Christmas: Part 1 - Playtime With Faith and Zach

 

 I didn't get to spend time with Grace and Ethan for the first several days before Christmas, they were spending time with their dad from Wednesday till Sunday, but I did, however, get some fun time with Faith and Zach, and Rob was even off to work on the house, but he decided to just chill with us a bit!  

 

We played and read and made chocolate covered...well, if it was not moving, we dipped it in chocolate!!!  And, I took pictures!!!!!

 

Strike a pose!

  

Zach too!

 

Pretty girl!

 

So handsome!!!

Your standard, cheesers here!  Oh, and the peace sign from Faith (Thank you, big brother, Ethan!)

By the way, you may have noticed the lovely grooming of these two children!  They have JUST come from baths and had their hair fixed as requested and I, their mother, have chosen their clothing (all things I rarely get to do!).  You KNOW this only lasted a VERY brief time before they were messes again!  But it was a fun photo opp, while it lasted!

My Thirty-Something Birthday

Growing up, your birthday is somewhat of a big event in life, and when you grow up it gets less and less that way.  For some, that is how they like it, for me? I have to admit that I miss the days when people made a big deal about me!  I kind of go from day to day, with no one noticing me (at least, it seems), so I kinda miss the days when I was a big deal, at least for one day. The thing that I miss the most about my birthday's as a child is that I shared them with my Grandma Kemper, she and I had the same birthday, and we celebrated every year (that I can remember), together! Since she passed over 20 years ago now, it's definitely different. 

So there are some things that you should know about December birthday babies;
1) NEVER wrap their birthday gift in Christmas paper, or anything that looks "Christmassy", unless you would like your birthday present in July wrapped the same!  Nope, not even then!  Just don't go there!
2) NEVER think you can get away with getting one gift for Christmas and birthday!  Combo presents are a NO-NO!

I'm not gonna lie, having your birthday in December, STINKS!  I very haphazardly gave birth to my last baby on the day after Christmas, right there we know God has a sense of humor! But, never fear, I am an expert at this, and I'm thinking 1/2 birthday party, you know, in June!  Because you know, no one is coming over the day after Christmas for a birthday party! 

As for me, turning thirty-something, all I wanted was a hot cup of coffee and to sleep in, not too much to ask...you'd think.  Well, it didn't happen, I have a non-coffee drinking husband that doesn't know how to work my coffee pot and the kids woke me up very early. 

My family is so important to me, and honestly, I hate that everyone is so busy!  I want all cell phones and computers to GO AWAY so I can just get some face time in with all of them!  On my birthday I got to spend two hours at lunch with  my sister on my birthday and I think we could have taken another!  We never get to spend that much un-interupted time together!  As my first friend ever, I love her company to this day!

Every year I think, "This year is going to be a great birthday!"  But most years, not so much, and it passes, I think as an adult maybe I need to look at the year more as a whole, ask myself, "What am I going to do this year that makes a difference?", or in retrospect, "What did I do this past year that made a difference?".  I'm not talking about doing something so people will notice me, but I recently heard that people do not fear death, they fear that the world will go on and no one will notice their absence from it.  I believe this to be very true.

In the evening Rob took me to see the newest Twilight movie, and to dinner, our date was cut short by a vomiting baby and half the kids were up to greet us at home, so not much of the evening went as planned.  It is definitely the era that we live in now that I was so excited to see over 100 birthday wishes from Facebook friends that night before bed and that I only received one card via "Snail Mail", but is it also interesting that they one that meant the most was the physical card?  I think so, apparently I'm am old...fashioned!!!!