Merry Christmas!

Down in a lowly manger
Our humble Christ was born
And God send us salvation,
That blessed Christmas morn:

Go, Tell It On The Mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere;
Go, Tell It On The Mountain
That Jesus Christ is born!


Thank you, God, for sending your Son, my Savior, to live and walk among us. Thank you for giving me the first gift of Christmas, the best gift of Christmas--Jesus Christ.


Merry Christmas!! May the Prince of Peace rule in your heart today and everyday.

Santa

Emilia and Audra were a little hesitant about sitting with Santa, but eventually went for it anyway.


Micah, telling Santa his wish.


Judging by the smile on Micah's face, Santa must have thought he could do that!




Josiah's turn...



I wish you could have seen Emilia's animated little hands flapping around explaining her list to Santa. It takes a lot to describe the greatness of a Cinderella doll!


Nobody knows what Audra was thinking. I think the other kids gave Santa some suggestions for her, though. :)


Just chatting with Santa--what fun memories with the kids!

My Girls

I had a great day with my girls today.

I didn't see a whole lot of the boys today because they spent their every free moment playing their new Wii game. (Don't worry, they don't usually play the Wii all day. I'm not a negligent parent. In fact, they usually only play for an hour once or twice a month. But yesterday they got a new game that they are VERY excited about. Besides, what good are rules if you don't get to break them every now and then?)

My girls.

Emilia is so funny. She'll tell her dad, "Da-ddy! I can't be YOUR girl--I'm already MOMMY'S GIRL!"

My whole day started off with Emilia making me laugh. I was lying in bed and heard her stomp down the hall to the bathroom and while she's using the facilities she's singing: "ACCIDENTS! I'll have no AC-CI-DENTS! Accidents, no accidents!"

I couldn't help myself but to laugh at her, mostly because she reminds me so much of my sister and this was just another thing to add to the list. (My sister sang all sorts of random songs when we were growing up.) How did I end up with a kid that is so much like my sister?? Genetics are weird.

Audra had a go with the make-up again today. She walked out to eat dinner and all I could do was shake my head at her. Of course Emilia follows behind saying, "She wanted to be an indian again. I helped her with her cheeks a little."

Oh no! What happened to my face??!?


Maybe I could pull off a pirate...what do you think?


Humph. Well fine. Be that way.


Emilia's make-up was a bit tamer...but only by comparison!


Thankfully, Audra seems to enjoy the make-up removal as much as she enjoys putting it on. After I had cleaned both of their faces with my make-up remover stuff, Audra asked for "More. Nother." and carried around a cotton ball continuing to clean her face for quite awhile. Emilia took one look in the mirror after her face was cleaned and said, "Mommy! Look! My face is GOLDEN!" (It does leave their faces kinda shiny). :)

This afternoon after Audra's nap, she and Josiah and I were snuggling together in the chair. Emilia came running up to us and said, "Hey! Can I join you guys? We'll be all family'd up!" She's such a sweet, silly girl!

Audra quietly disappeared for awhile this afternoon. Always a suspicious activity from a child. So I went looking and found her sitting on her bed with "My Little Word Book." I sat down with her and let her amaze me with her booming vocabulary. It makes me laugh to think that just 3 months ago at her well-check she wasn't saying anything--at least not consistently. I'd heard her say some words, but she wouldn't say them when I asked her to, she wouldn't repeat words she heard others say, and she mostly didn't talk at all other than babbling. Her pediatrician asked if I was concerned and I said no, because I knew she was capable of talking, she was just choosing not to talk. Within a week of that appointment Audra started talking. And her vocabulary has been exploding ever since. It was fun to look at the book with her and hear all of the words she knows that I didn't know she knew. Kids are so amazing.

I also curled Emilia's hair this morning. First time. I've curled the ends before, but I've never really CURLED her hair. It was her request, she was still and well behaved the whole time and she LOVED the results. Sadly, her hair holds curl just about as well as mine, which is to say, not at all. By the time we got to my mom's house 30 minutes later, only the ends were curly. But this is how it looked straight out of the bathroom. She was THRILLED and all too happy to pose for pictures. :)



And today, Audra started fixing hair. I first noticed it when Emilia was watching TV and Audra climbed on the couch next to her and was gently separating out sections of her hair and smoothing them down with her hands. She did it for about 5 minutes and it was so sweet. Then, after lunch, she was sitting in my lap and did the same thing to my hair. I asked, "Are you fixing my hair?" She said, "Yeah." And after a few minutes of taking different sections of my hair and smoothing them down, she said, "A go." (Meaning: There you go). So sweet, I just love moments like that!

We had a fun day. I hope you all had a fun day, too!

How to Display Kid's Artwork

My kids love to color and paint and sticker and make all sorts of beautiful pictures. With 4 of them expressing their creative geniuses so often, there is constantly an endless stack of priceless masterpieces in my "I-need-to-do-something-with-this" pile. It's more than I could, would or ever will be able to keep.

Sometimes the kids get mad when I throw away their beautiful papers. (I usually try to sneak them out at night, but sometimes I get busted.)

Emilia tried out a new technique today. If you have a particular piece that you don't want to see in the trash, here's how you can hang it up to be saved for all time:

Don't even THINK about touching my picture.



YES!! I did it!





John calls it "the hideous monstrosity on the door."

I don't think this new technique is going to work out quite like she planned.

Make-Up

Yesterday the girls put on a little make-up.

Emilia says Audra was being an indian. I'm not sure that's what I'd call this look, but we'll go with it.

Santa's Reindeer

I've been trying to get these loaded onto Facebook, but it won't let me upload any pictures at the moment, so I'll just stick them on here for right now--they are too cute to keep to myself!

Letter to Santa

Last year while browsing around on the web, I saw several fill-in-the-blank Santa letters for the kids to complete. Unfortunately, everywhere I found them wanted to charge money for such a thing and I wasn't about to pay for it. So, I did what any creative momma would do...I made my own.



Do you have little kids? Do you want a fill-in-the-blank Santa letter for your kids that you don't have to pay for? I'll send it to you for FREEEEEEEEEEEEE! (because I like you) :)

I don't know how all of those online file sharing things work, so you'll have to leave me a comment (with your email) or send me an email if you want it and then I'll send you an old-fashioned email with an attachment. Isn't it funny--or not so funny--how quickly things become "old" these days?

Sharing the Joy of the Season

...with her baby dolls.

First thing this morning, Emilia lined (almost) all of her baby dolls up on the couch. I came out and asked if they were having a party and she said,

"No, mommy. I wanted them to be able to see the lights on the tree."

Decorating the Tree

Well, I may not be done with my Christmas shopping like some totally organized people I know, but we did manage to get the tree up and decorated last night. That's already a step ahead of last year when the tree never got more than 1/2 decorated. (Really, I mean that. If you had looked at the backside of our tree it didn't have any decorations...plus, I know it wasn't up this early!) So, yay for us!

Our little black-eyed princess tried on the Santa hat.


Hanging their first ornaments (of the year) on the tree.


Emilia was so excited, she gave herself a round of applause when she was done. :)






Getting more ornaments to hang up.


They've spent most of the morning today showing each other which ornaments they put on the tree. It's all so exciting!





Putting the hat on the tree. We couldn't remember who did it last year (that's so long ago!), so two kids got to do it this year.




And then we tried for a picture of all the kids, but Audra didn't want anything to do with that.



She was alright if Mommy was holding her, though. So, a picture of mommy and the kids it is!



Finally got a smile out of Audra! All it took was a little bit of peek-a-boo. :)



Now to get started on the Jesse Tree, on which I'm already 5 days behind...

The Belly

I love chubby babies.



Three of my kids have already outgrown that beautiful chubbiness of being little, but I still have one.



And she is so adorably cute in her chubbiness that I could just eat her up...but I won't. :)




I'll just take all sorts of pictures to remember these days and to embarrass her when she's older.




Embarrassing my children: Just another service I offer. :)