Chirstmas #4

The day after Christmas we got together at my Aunt and Uncle's house. At this gathering, the adults get stocking stuffers and everyone buys a little bit for the kids. There's a $5 limit to the stocking stuffers so it's fun every year to see what creative thing everyone's come up with! This year I decided to make homemade cinnamon rolls for everyone! I used Pioneer Woman's recipe. It makes so many that there were a couple of small tins left for our family, and let me just say, they're the best homemade cinnamon rolls I've ever made. And I'm not just saying that because they're the only ones I've ever made. They really were good! I hope everyone else enjoyed them too!

Here's a picture of my aunt reading Twas the Night Before Christmas to all of the kids. Well all if you don't count Ainslee who was acting a little bit shy that day and insisted on sitting in my lap. You can see Ava and Layton right in the middle of things! And look how nicely Tyler is sitting! If that's not kindergarten training, I don't know what is!

And here are Tyler and Layton with their footie pajamas! Layton was so embarrassed when he first opened these up, he wouldn't even take them out of the box. Once he saw that older, cooler Tyler got some too, he was all about showing them off! He has asked to wear those every single night since then! Even after he dripped breakfast on them and they didn't get washed that day. Of course, I do have my limits and had to say no, but I did wash them the very next day so that he could start all over the process of wearing them way too many nights in a row!

Christmas #3

OK so I'm almost done blogging about Christmas Extravaganza 2009! I can't quit without mentioning the fun time we had with Trey's parents on Christmas day. We spend Christmas lunch with them, and we have a traditional Christmas lunch and I make all the sides! Yeah you read that right! I make my Nanny's dressing, real mashed potatoes (we usually eat instant!), and some sort of vegetable. This year I made green bean bundles, and they turned out fabulous! Trey's aunt Barbara came with them this year! We had plenty of room around our brand new kitchen table that they got us for an early Christmas present!

For some reason I didn't take many pictures, but here are a couple of the girls opening their presents! If I had taken any pictures of Layton, you would see that he and Ava both stayed in their pajamas all day! Ainslee had to change into her new Hello Kitty shirt. Usually I try to stick to pajamas and underwear when it comes to character clothes (before I had kids I SWORE that they would never ever never wear any clothes with characters on them! Boy have I eaten those words time and again!), but when she said that she really hoped that Santa brought her a shirt with a cat on it, I thought it was clever to go with Hello Kitty instead of some awful feline like the one that was on WalMart's 4th of July shirts this past summer!

Here's Ainslee with her new jewelry box! She's so girly. She and Ava both got one from Trey's parents, but now, looking at this picture, I think they must have gotten swapped when we put them in their rooms. Oh well, they'll never know the difference...unless of course, years from now they look back at this picture and Ava wonders why Ainslee posed with her jewelry box!

3 Christmases down! 1 to go!

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning means one thing!! Waking up early to open presents! This year was so much fun! It took the kids forever to go to sleep the night before because the wind was howling outside and they were so excited about Santa coming! Layton came running in our room at about 1:30 in the morning to tell us that Santa had been there and that he had brought a castle! We finally let Layton and Ainslee get up at about 6:00, but they could only look at the presents that weren't wrapped and go through their stockings. Ava's a girl after my own heart! She loves her sleep, even on Christmas morning!

Here's Layton in his school bus tent! As soon as Santa saw this on ebay, he knew it would be perfect for this little guy! Layton loves to play school bus, and there's plenty of room in there for his sisters to ride along!

Once Ava finally woke up, she was pounced on by the other two to look at her kitchen! She now has her very own kitchen and doesn't have to share Ainslee's!

And here's Ainslee in front of her baby care station! It has a high chair, crib, sink, and swing. It also came with a baby that is dressed in Disney princess clothes. The baby is so cute! She even has a little twinkle in her eyes!

Santa also had a few wrapped presents for the kiddos. Layton got a scooter and Transformer's helmet. Ainslee got a Disney princess CD player and baby that is about as big as she is! Ava got a new little baby and high chair/swing set. They loved going through their stockings that Santa packed with new socks and underwear. He gave Layton a big thing of gum and the girls necklaces. He even managed to find those green panties that Ainslee wanted!

Christmas Recap #1

Christmas started for us on Christmas Eve at my mom's house. We had Christmas-y finger foods like sausage balls and little smokies!! Yum! Then it was time for the presents!!!!

Tyler, Layton, Ainslee, and Ava in front of the tree before we passed out presents! Don't they look so cute in their pajamas???

Ava was so funny! She had no concept of waiting her turn! She wanted to rip into all of her presents at once! Here she's excited about something, but I couldn't tell you what! She loved all of her presents!

Here's Ainslee opening her laptop that my mom got her! She loves playing with that thing! Ava had gotten one for her birthday in November, and Layton also got on for Christmas.

Here's Layton opening a yo-yo that my sister got him! He loves to pretend like he's Mr. Lusk doing tricks with it!

Learn from each other

Raising kids that are only a year and a few months apart sometimes feels like I'm raising triplets! Sure there are some pluses.... like they're all on the same schedule! They go to bed at the same time, they eat at the same time, nap at the same time (BIG plus!), snack at the same time. They're interested in the same things so it's easy to buy toys that they'll all like! Sharing clothes is almost a reality! They like the same movies and enjoy the same restaurants!

There are a few draw backs though. For example, you'd think that by the time you got to toddlerhood with your third child, it would be old hat, but since the first two are still in it too, it's like we're still rookies! Plus we still have lingering questions, like when will they be able to completely go to the bathroom by themselves??? I mean ALL by themselves, clean up and all!?! When will they learn to pick up their toys without making us sound like a broken record that's stuck on "Get in there and clean up"..."Get in there and clean up"...."Get in there and clean up"... When will they realize that sleep is a good thing and not something to be dreaded???

One good thing is that they can learn from each other! They learn how to dress themselves by watching each other, they learn how to feed themselves, they learn how to work the DVD player...oh wait that's not a good thing because now all of our DVDs have fingerprints! The following conversation is an example of Ainslee trying to teach Ava the proper pronunciation to a word:

Ava: ook dere's yeh-yo. (Look there's yellow)
Ainslee: UGH
Ava: yeh-yo, yeh-yo, yeh-yo
Ainslee: UGH! Ava! It is not YEH-YO!!! It is LELL-O!!!!!

Okay so they can't learn EVERYTHING from each other! But sometimes it's fun listening to them try!!

Oops...I did it again..

Okay...bad title I know! But look at me! I've gone forever between posts again! My plan with the subtitle was to go back and update on each kid, and I started with Layton because he was the easiest, starting Pre-K and all, but it just didn't happen! The only thing I for sure want to add is that Ava did turn 2 in this midst of my blog neglect! She's such a sweet little rascal...by far the most outgoing of my group and oh so friendly! She's also very mischievous and loves to aggravate her older siblings! We love you sweet Ava!!!

Christmas is now over, and let me just say that this has definitely been my favorite one so far! I say that every year though! The older the kids get, the more they remember from the year before so they more they're excited!! Our kids believe in Santa, and Christmas Eve as I was sitting in the living room waiting for them to fall asleep, I was reminded of how sweet it is when you believe in magic! They really believe, without question, in a man that knows everything about them, down to the color of panties they're hoping for in their stocking! (Green for Ainslee!~who knows why!?!) Well there may be no real Santa, but there is someone who knows everything about them, right down to the number of hairs on their heads...and they believe in Him too! Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us to become like a child. I've heard countless sermons on this topic over the years, and I wasn't even planning on going there with this post tonight, but don't you think if we all had faith like children, we'd worry about far fewer things?!? It's something to think about I guess. I was listening to one of my old Acapella CDs this morning in the car, and these lyrics kind of brought the same thought: When you're up against a struggle that shatters all your dreams, and your hopes have been cruelly crushed by Satan's manifesting schemes, and you feel the urge within yourself to submit to earthly fears, don't let the faith you're standing in seem to disappear, Praise the Lord....

I always like to turn the radio up really loud with that one and pretend like I can sing! ;-)

Okay...favorite presents for the kids: For Layton it would have to be one of his many buses! He got a bus tent, a large play bus, and several small buses, and he loves them all! For Ainslee it was definitely her baby doll center that has a crib, swing, high chair, and sink all hooked together, and for Ava I think it was either one of her babies or her Barney that Trey's parents gave her! That girl loves her some Barney!

It's hard to pick my favorite part about Christmas this year. Up real close to the top though, was Ainslee's face when we were passing out presents at my mom's house on Christmas Eve. We tried to get it on camera, but we really needed a video camera! Her eyes were big and wide and she kept moving her tongue from side to side like she was getting ready to really dive into all those presents! It was the funniest thing!!

Well I guess that's it for tonight! After watching Julie and Julia tonight I feel like I have the motivation to do this a little more often! Now let's just see if I can find the time! Good night!

Going WAYYY back...all the way to Pre-K

Subtitled: Catch-up part 1

Well looking at my blog, it's been about 3 months since I last posted anything. I think that indicates one of two things: either that I've fallen off the face of the earth, or that I'm a teacher and in between school starting and coming home in the afternoons and feeding, bathing, playing with, reading to, and rocking the kids, there's just not much time to self-reflect or whatever this is that I do! Plus there are lots and lots of new TV shows on right now, most of which I fall asleep while watching, which is why I am totally in LOVE with our new DVR. I still can't remember to fast forward through the commercials, but I really, really love getting to watch the second half of Castle on Tuesdays instead of just having to wonder whodunnit!


Anyway, so I logged on this morning because I've taken a comp day that I earned from my CPR training this summer, only to find that someone has been leaving totally weird, anonymous comments on one of my posts! They're long and crazy and not even in English. It might be in wing-ding font, but I really think it's in another language. I dont' know how they get a font for another language, but whoever it is, stop it!

OK so what's been going on with us?? Layton started Pre-K back in August. He actually had to start a couple of weeks late so it was really September. He is in Ms. Blackstone's class and totally LOVES school. Being at school has really heightened his love of buses! I thought it was kind of cute last year, but this year it's a full-blown obsession. Every bus we see he wants to know which bus it is. I try to outsmart him and just tell him just some bus name, but it doesn't work. The other day I told him the bus was the parrot bus (our buses are named after animals..aren't everybody's??), but he very quickly and emphatically told me I was wrong with a "NUH-UHHH...the Parrot bus has a different front!!!" Buses have different fronts?? Who knew?? And apparently the Little Dragon bus doesn't make the chhhh sound like the Turtle bus does so I couldn't fool him there either! He gets to ride the bus over to the Middle School in the afternoons, which was nerve-racking for me, but awesome for him! I thought he would be scared, but he wasn't at all! Of course, the middle school is nothing if not the dog-capital of the world so getting him OFF the bus proved to be tricky in the beginning. I'm very happy to announce that, with the help of a very understanding mother who walked her dog to the school each afternoon to pick up her children, Layton can now get OFF the bus and walk all the way down the sidewalk to my room without me! If you're wondering how that sweet mom helped me, at first when I met him at the bus stop, she would just stand back and let me get Layton before she got her kids. Now that I don't meet him, I trust that she's still standing back and letting him go before walking herself.

One thing I've noticed since he started school is that I never, ever get the full story! Now I'm really worried about what my students went home and told their moms about ME! Lucky for me, my sister is a pre-k teacher too so I can call her up and get the rest of the story! Like when he was whining because he didn't get to go to recess "like AA's and Mrs. Pullen's class did." Here's how the conversation went:
Me: Well, why didn't you get to go outside?
Layton: I don't know
Me: Where did you go instead?
Layton: I just had to go in a another little room.
Me: Where was your teacher:
Layton: I don't know..I looked for her but she wasn't there so that girl just took us to the other room but Ms. Blackstone was not there!
Me: So did you go outside then?
Layton: No, we just had to watch a movie while the other classes played
So when I talked to my sister later I asked her to please explain because I knew there was some sort of logical explanation here, and of course there was! During PE, Layton's class had hearing/vision screening so the other classes played outside while they did that. They watched a movie while they waited for their turn!

I could go on and on, like when he got time-out at recess just for going down the slide the right way (He wasn't supposed to go down the slide at all! HELLO big mud puddle!) and how now anytime he mentions the nurse's office, he equates it with a fire drill just because when he went for his flu shot, that just happened to be the same time that they had a fire drill. Poor kid thinks it will always happen that way!

Well I believe I've rambled on and on enough. How does that happen when you start talking about your kids!?! Just wait! I'll give a catch-up post on Ainslee and Ava shortly! Feel free to skim right over unless you're their grandparent and then you're supposed to be truly fascinated at the wonders that are your grandchildren!