cold

It is 29 degrees at this moment. Granted, that is the outside temperature and evidently my girls don't have a clue.

They are wearing swimsuits.

pink turtle

OK. I finally decided to try it for awhile. Please visit my other blog: the-pink-turtle.blogspot.com and let me know what you think.

Warning: the layout is still under construction. Since my time is limited, I prefer to submit entries rather than play with the layout. One of these days I'll get to the rest....

Sleep update

The sleep issue has gotten better at our house. The girls are adjusting to the new beds very well. Daisy rarely wakes during the night. Before, I had been spending several hours a night trying to get Rosie settled. Now, if she wakes during the night, she is back asleep within 15 minutes.

I had forgotten what the world looks like with regular sleep....

Different names

Today the girls have decided that we will have different names. Mine is Isabelle (Daisy keeps calling me 'Little Belle.' Daisy's name for the day is Ashley (she pronounces it 'Ash-a-ley') and Rosie's name is Mommy.

Yeah, kind of confusing for me.

Six cars

Today Tate spent the day with me. I couldn't decide if he was well enough to go to school so I let him hang out with me. We ran some errands and on the way home he asked me what I would buy if I had lots of money. When I turned the question to him he replied, "I would buy you and Daddy and Lake and Rosie and Daisy and myself each a corvette." I'm not a big fan of the corvette, the mustang is more my thing so I'm not sure why he felt that we all needed these cars.

OK. For those of you that have visited our house, don't laugh at the next question that I had to ask him, "Uhm, where would we put all of those cars?"

"Oh, I would buy a bigger house that also had a six car garage."

Whew. I'm glad I asked!

Another artist in the family

This is a drawing by Rosie of her and her sister and one of the dogs. I'm guessing that the dog is Annie but it may just as well be Gracie. You may have to click on it to enlarge to notice that the dog is smiling. The girl on the right is Daisy and Rosie is on the left.
I'm really pleased that her drawings of people have expanded from the stick people she was drawing over the summer.

Why walk?

Especially when your big sister will carry you everywhere!
They have been doing this for a couple of days. I don't know how they quite figured out how Daisy should hold on to Rosie so that she wasn't choking her. I think it's pretty smart of Daisy to hang on around Rosie's chest - after all, she can't carry her if she can't breathe!

Lunch with Tate

Since I have been with Lake's class a few days working on the birthday stuff I felt the need to eat lunch and spend some time with Tate and his class. I thought my heart would burst when Tate hugged me for the third time during our thirty minute lunch!

After lunch I asked the teacher if there was anything I could do to help her out. I ended up spending an hour working with some of the children and their sight word lists. Tate had already passed all five lists before Thanksgiving so he was allowed to go to the library and also play a math game with some other children that had finished the lists.

On a cute note: Lake saw me having lunch with Tate and gave me a quizzical look (if you know him, you know the look!) I quickly reminded him about lunch yesterday and that it was Tate's turn today!

Teacher birthday

Today is Lake's teacher's birthday. He and I decided to take her lunch today. He wanted me to cook spaghetti pizza for her. It's sort of like lasagna but has angel hair pasta as a crust and then the rest of the stuff is layered on top of that.
He also wanted me to bake chocolate chip cookies instead of cupcakes for them to have for a 'special birthday snack.'

Last week I spent some time with the class making birthday cards for her. She seemed to really enjoy reading the notes they wrote to her.

Weekend update

Wow! What a busy weekend for our family!

Saturday we went to my nephew's birthday party. Since the weather was beautiful, the party was outside at the park. Afterwards we had dinner and then went to a toy store and the book store. While at the bookstore, John Henry took the kids to the children section and told me to go look around by myself. Have I mentioned that I have the greatest husband?

On Sunday we went to church and then had lunch with Genius. We even let him sit at the 'kids table'. All of the kids love him and before we went into the cafe for lunch Rosie shouted, "I get to sit by (Mr. Genius)!" Yes, he is loved by all.

John Henry took the boys for an afternoon bike ride while the girls went grocery shopping. Grandma came to spend the night and also went to evening church service with us.

Monday morning John Henry took his mom to have her (minor) hand surgery. After she was released from the surgery center we met for lunch and then drove her home. It was nearly 9:00pm when we got home last night. One of the last things I said to John Henry last night was, "Wonder what I'll do tomorrow while ALL of the kids are at school...."

And then this morning I ate those words as I made an appointment to take Lake to the doctor. He has an infection that he can't seem to shake. Now, he's on twenty days worth of antibiotics.

Live and learn. Yep, that's me.

On coloring books

I thought I'd share something that I've noticed over the last several weeks and picked up on again today. When Rosie picks up a coloring or activity book, she starts on page one and works through the activities or colors the pages in a methodical order. She usually spends the afternoon with the same book and takes it everywhere she goes until she finishes every page.

Curious as to what book she's working in right now?

Sesame Street's Winter Walk coloring and activity book

Fish, round two

Yesterday morning John Henry noticed that Lake's fish (Fred) was dead. It was right before the boys were to leave for school. Rather than mention it we decided to wait until after school and tell him. John Henry did get him out of the tank and put him in a freezer bag and placed him in the freezer. I don't know why we do this - it just seems harsh to flush the fish down the toilet. After a while, we throw them out. Evidently things were hectic around our house yesterday afternoon and evening and we both forgot to tell Lake about his fish.

Today when the boys came in from school, Lake went to check on the fish.

"Mom, did my fish die?"

"Yeah, buddy - I'm sorry."

"When?"

"I think sometime yesterday, but I'm not quite sure."

"Where is he?"

"Uhm, Dad put him in the freezer."

After finding the bag with Fred, he looked at him for a few minutes and then said, "Since he's dead and frozen, I think we should just throw him away. Is that OK? I mean, it's just kinda gross to keep him."

So true!

Exhausted

And this time I'm not talking about myself. When I brought the girls home from school today, they both asked for a snack. After two attempts of offering Daisy something to eat, she decided to fall on the floor and start to cry. She didn't really want a snack. She didn't really want anything (according to her.) I decided to leave a few minutes early to get the boys from school with hopes that she would calm down. Thankfully, she fell asleep shortly after we left the house.

Now where is she?

See for yourself:

Daisy and her new bed

Daisy wanted both pictures posted of her in her new bed.

The cutest picture is one that I can't take....when she's sleeping she looks like a little burrito wrapped in the white blanket.
She loves sleeping in the bigger bed!

Pretending

Today I met Daisy's pretend Papaw.

She was 23 months old when her Papaw died. She doesn't like to visit people in the hospital and it took her a long time to trust the pediatrician again.

Silly me was afraid that she would not remember him because of her young age.

She told me that she was with her 'pretend Papaw' because her real Papaw "got dead." The pretend one is just like the real one, only with her right now.

Her 'pretend' Papaw likes her shirt - he even has one just like it. He also likes her skirt, which does not match the shirt. He especially likes her flip-flops.

Oh, I have felt his presence here today.

Would you call this a milestone?

The crib is officially out of the house. It is now in storage until either Trixie needs it or one of my children has a baby. I took it down yesterday. While I was placing it in the storage closet, Daisy asked me why I was putting it in there. I explained that we didn't need it in the house anymore but that one day she could use it for her baby. Rosie spoke up and said that she wasn't going to have any babies. Ever. She's always going to live with me. After Daisy thought about this, she decided that she wanted to live with me forever, also.

Oh, and Tate is still not getting married until he is as old as Yoda or starts to turn green.

Back to normal

Well, sort of. All four kids went back to school today and I've been doing laundry. Lots of laundry.

The fifteen days that the kids had out of school went by too fast. It seems like yesterday that I was taking them to school and we were all excitedly talking about it being the last day before the Christmas break.

Wow.

This is so often the case with them.

They are growing up so fast and time won't slow down.

A closer look

A dog named Bunny

On Saturday we went to the Build-A-Bear Workshop. Grandma spent the day of shopping with us. I have wanted to take the kids to do this for a few years (we don't have a store within an hour of us.) So, when we were trying to make plans for the weekend, it just seemed like a good thing to do. Also, I wanted to take the boys before they thought they were too old for teddy bears.
We didn't prompt them with the names. They came up with these names by themselves.

Rosie picked a rabbit and named her Happy. Note the cheerleader uniform. My mom was very happy with the colors.

Tate picked this black bear and named him Aubie. My mom was not so happy about the football colors.

Lake picked a brown bear and named him Buddy. Ditto on the uniform.

Daisy chose this cute puppy. And named her Bunny. Since she is all about the color pink right now, it made sense that she chose the pink cheerleader outfit. Everyone liked the colors.

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you should know by now that I love to have a group picture!

Bike Ride

I took the kids to a trail today so that they could ride their bikes out in the open. Our street is too busy for my liking so when we are at home, they can only ride in the driveway. The boys were very excited and ready to go after they ate breakfast this morning.
Oh - yes, I know that they aren't wearing helmets. That is my fault - I forgot to pack them although I had made a mental note last night. See, that's the thing about having children (atleast for me)...If I don't write it down, it's as good as gone.

One exciting thing about today is that Daisy finally figured out how to pedal her bike. I also noticed that she is 'left footed.' She's right handed. I am 'right footed' and right handed. As for the boys, Lake is right footed and left handed while Tate is left footed and left handed. Probably more than you wanted to know!

That's a golf course to the left. The river is on the right.

About a quarter of the way into their ride and my walk we found this bench by the river. After all the hard peddling, Daisy decided she was too hot for her jacket. She put it back on once we started back to the van.

Tate wanted a picture of the river for John Henry. He thought the water looked very smooth and his Daddy would like to see it.
Overall, it was a good trip. It's approximately 4 miles round trip and Daisy got tired towards the end. Rosie got tired, too but was a real trouper and made it all the way back to the van without my help.

New Years Nap

I don't have anything profound to post on this first day of the new year. This was the first year that the boys stayed up until midnight. And woke at 6:00 this morning. The girls stayed up until around 11:00 last night.

Daisy was the first to fall asleep this afternoon. And then it was Tate followed by myself and Rosie.

As far as I know, Lake and John Henry stayed awake this afternoon.

What about you - Did you stay up until midnight last night? If you did, were you able to nap today?