On Believing

We have various levels of "believing" in our household--in Santa, that is. I don't think Scott has ever really been fully convinced, since it doesn't really make sense to him. For the last three years, though, he has reconciled it all by saying he believes in Santa, but not in the flying reindeer. He can't let it all go yet. I won't rush him.
Sweet Emma has never questioned it at all--any itty bitty part of it. It is real, and it probably will be for a while still. She did say to me, though, at the beginning of the season when we had pulled out our Nativity sets, "Mom, Jesus is real, right?" Yes, yes, yes, Emma! It made me commit to reminding them every day that Jesus is the reason for Christmas. And I think we did that.

Gracie is a thinker. She asked me a couple times this year if Santa is real. My standard answer to that is, "What do you think?" She would say, "I think he's real. But is he?" After Christmas, she said, "Santa is real because he ate all his cookies." (So glad I remembered to take care of that!)

Caytie hates Santa. On Christmas morning, she was the last one in bed. Ben said, "Santa came! Do you want to go see what Santa brought?" She was not interested at all. When I told her Santa was gone, but there were presents, she decided she would come out. I think next year she'll have a better opinion of the jolly old elf.

I don't remember believing in Santa. I was the 5th of eight kids, and the secret was out fast. But it's fun to share the tradition with my family. I had some stocking holders made for our family this year. They are wooden blocks with the word "We" on one, and the letters of the word BELIEVE on the others. (Those ones have the nails in them to hang the stockings--seven letters for seven of us. How did we get so many so fast?) I like the sentiment of the statement, because we share in the Santa tradition, but I also have a nativity set on top of the blocks, to remind us of the more important belief in our Savior. We do believe. We are so grateful for his gift for us--the gift of his love and his life. It brings our family hope, and joy, and peace. Those are the things that I hope my family remembers as our tradition of Christmas.

On Sleep

*I love to sleep in. It is the thing I look forward to most when I know a vacation is coming. But it doesn't happen very often, when you have kids around. Their clocks go off at the same time, vacation or not. I was planning to sleep in for my birthday last week, but we had a "situation" with our fire alarm at 6:15 am. (Ben will tell the story if you ask...) So instead of sleeping, I ran out half dressed with my Tessa to see what was going on. (Ben apologized profusely for that one.) I did not get to sleep in that day. But the day after Christmas was lovely. Everyone woke up and went out to play the new Wii. I got to stay in bed, and after feeding Tess, we just chatted with each other for a relaxing half hour. It made up for the adrenaline rush of the birthday morning.

*Tessa is my best sleeper. I think it has to do with the fact that she is my first one to suck on her fingers. (Usually her first two, on either hand.) Whatever the reason, I am amazed that she can ever fall asleep, with all the noise that goes on around here.

*Caytie (now 2 1/2) is my worst sleeper. She has Ben and me trained. She has no problems falling asleep on her own for naps or when babysitters are here, but on normal nights, she won't fall asleep without one of us staying by her side. She says things like, "Stay wi' me for a little bit" or "I scared of my room." And about 50 percent of the time, she finds her way down to our bed during the middle of the night. While this is frustrating, I try to remember that it won't last forever--and there are worse things than her having the memory of me or Ben by her side while she is falling asleep.

*Gracie had a rough Christmas Eve. She has had a cold, and was coughing a LOT during the night. At about 12:30, and then again at about 2 am, she coughed so much that she threw up. Uggh! It made a long night for her, me, and Ben--with an early start, when the kids woke up at 5:30 the next morning.

*Every night after I turn off her light, Emma yells out of her room to me--"Mommy, is Abe with you?" Abe is our evil cat, who loves Scott and barely tolerates the rest of us. However, he likes to sleep under Emma's bed. She hates that. So she has to make sure he's gone, or she won't settle down. I can't really blame her, but it kind of makes me laugh each night that she remembers and is so concerned that the cat is not there.

*Scott said the cutest thing to Ben, if eight-year olds are still allowed to say "cute" things. It was the night of Christmas. Ben usually reads with him at night, and then turns out the light. Scott asked Ben, "Can you leave the light on for just a little bit longer? I don't want this day to end yet." That was the sign of one happy kid, who quickly fell asleep, despite the light.

Merry Christmas!

(An advantage of living in the heart of the Bible Belt is some great Christian music radio stations. I have really enjoyed this song this season. Hope you do too!)

How Many Kings, by Downhome

Follow the star to a place unexpected
Would you believe after all we’ve projected
A child in a manger

Lowly and small, the weakest of all
Unlikeliness hero, wrapped in his mothers shawl
Just a child
Is this who we’ve waited for?

Cause how many kings, stepped down from their thrones?
How many lords have abandoned their homes?
How many greats have become the least for me?
How many Gods have poured out their hearts
To romance a world that has torn all apart?
How many fathers gave up their sons for me?

Bringing our gifts for the newborn savior
All that we have whether costly or meek
Because we believe
Gold for his honor and frankincense for his pleasure
And myrrh for the cross he’ll suffer
Do you believe, is this who we’ve waited for?
It’s who we’ve waited for

How many kings, stepped down from their thrones?
How many lords have abandoned their homes?
How many greats have become the least for me?
How many Gods have poured out their hearts
To romance a world that has torn all apart?
How many fathers gave up their sons for me?
Only one did that for me

All for me
All for you
All for me
All for you

Watch it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iSivQmzJ_w

Any ideas?

In an effort to stay sane, we're going to have "Christmas School" for the next few days around here. I have some craft, treat, and service ideas that we're going to try, but I was wondering if anyone out there has some fun activites or foods that they do to that they'd like to share.

Thanks...and Merry Christmas!

We are Southern now

It happened.

I shouldn't be surprised. We've lived in Texas for four and a half years now, and over half of my children have been born here. But still, I was not expecting it when Gracie said...y'all.

I asked her a question. Her answer was, "Y'all can do it." And then she repeated her sentence, almost testing it out, to make sure it was right. And it was.

In a related story, Scott was telling me about something he was going to do, and then changed his mind about. He said, "I was fixin' to do it, but then I didn't." I laughed, and said, "Scott, you're sounding like you're from Texas." He asked me what I meant. I said, "Daddy and I aren't from Texas, so we don't say 'fixin' to.'" He thought about it, and said, "Well, it's hard to say the 'g' for 'fixing to.'" I still chuckle about that.

We gather together

We got to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving! Someone told Ben that eight hours is a long way to go for a turkey, but it was worth it. (Even with that last hour of the trip home when Tessa could not be calmed...)

We went to their little town square and took a tour of the fire station for Scott's Cub Scout requirement (but our pictures were fuzzy). We also saw their big trains. All the kids were impressed.
We also got to go to the zoo with the cousins. They have an incredible polar bear display, and this guy was happily swimming around and around. We could have watched him for hours.

Of course, we made the apple turkeys with gumdrops. No Thanksgiving would be complete for my kids now without them.

Tessa played with her cousin Jeremiah, who is only a couple weeks older than she is. They kept touching each others' ears. Very cute. (And PS--remind me to stop blinking, because somehow, she is growing up way too fast.)

The meal on Thursday was fabulous, filling, and lacking nothing. I was so thankful that we could be together with so much family, because usually it's just us. After a few hours shopping the next day and lots more visiting (plus reading one of those books which was not highly recommended by the person who gave it to me, and I didn't really like, but had to keep reading to see how it would all end...) our trip was over too soon. Thanks again, Mom and Dad, for being our ever-gracious hosts!

Halloweeners

Halloween was great--in Gracie's words, it was "the best day ever!" We had a few parties to get us through. Our church playgroup had one for our ballerina, bunny, and Supergirl. (Caytie was really not into putting on a costume. She wore something different at every event. She was a princess for the actual trick-or-treating.)

The school had a carnival on the day of Halloween, as well. Batman was there, with his evil zombie and a really cute mean kitty.

Here are our little pumpkins. (Ben did find some larger ones at a store in the town next to us...)

Scott decided that this year, he had to be something scary, instead of his customary superhero. Wouldn't you know it--he won first place for his costume at the school contest! (That is definitely due to his dad's Halloween genes. I don't have any.) He limped himself onto the stage, and the judges really liked the "bullet hole" in the back of his neck.

We also had trunk-or-treating at the church, and a nice warm night for trick-or-treating. Yay for free candy (and kids who don't keep track of what they have)!

Ever wonder...

Have you ever wondered what a beige carpet looks like with grape juice thrown up on it?

It looks very noticeable.

Thanks to Gracie for providing the very vivid demonstration in two places today.

Thanks also to my Bissel SpotLifter, which was up for the challenge. The spots are much less noticeable--hopefully to the point that only I can see them.

Lesson Learned

Yesterday I went pumpkin shopping. I had to be quick for various reasons, so we (Scott, Emma, Caytie and I) went to the closest store. They only had pie pumpkins. We got one for Gracie, who likes little pumpkins, and went on to the next closest grocerey store.

No pumpkins!

I called Ben at home to make sure we had time for one more trip the opposite direction to Walmart, where I knew there were pumpkins. We got there and headed directly to the spot where the pumpkins were.

No pumpkins!!! The huge box wasn't even there anymore. And there were none outside, either.

I couldn't believe it! I had seen pumpkins there for weeks before, but didn't get any because I would have to explain why we weren't carving them yet over and over. I thought that two days before Halloween would be perfect timing.

I was wrong.

We got a few more pie pumpkins from the small bin, and Scott was not pleased, but at least we had some to carve. And I will post some pictures of them, because from my unbiased opinion, they turned out great. Just much smaller than planned.

Safe

My little girls were playing tag. I was "safe." At first I was annoyed. I was, after all, trying to nurse my baby, and having loud little girls running to me to put their hands on me to be safe was very distracting.

But then I changed my mind.

I like to be the "safe" spot for my girls. I hope to be for a long, long time.

Sweet Cakes

On Saturday between (almost) sessions of General Conference, I went here:


http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/10/day-tour-stood-still.html


I have been reading the Cake Wrecks blog for several months, and it is always SO FUNNY! So when I heard that it was coming to my area, I thought it would be fun to go. I brought Tessa with me, to have some company (and actually ran into another family from my ward there), and we had a lovely afternoon seeing the cupcake entries, eating an incredibly rich piece of chocolate cake, and browsing through the bookstore (always a joy for me).


Tess was a good baby, as usual. She slept the whole time in the carrier I wore, and woke up when I was about 40 people away from the front of the signing line. She thought she'd like some vicarious chocolate cake at that moment, and I thought I wasn't going to get my copy of the book signed, after all. But a store employee took pity on me, and asked the people at the very front of the line if they'd mind if the lady with the crying baby could cut in front of them. They were very kind about it all, and let us go to the front, where the lovely Jen Yates (who is as funny in person as she is on her blog) signed my book, and we rushed outside and got in the car for the 35 minute drive home, during which Tess fell asleep again. She has immaculate timing.


If you read the blog entry for the link I put on, you'll see that the tour was cancelled after that stop because Jen's husband got pneumonia and a staph infection, and she was sick as well. You'll all be happy to know that they're all healed, and the tour is back on.


I like the Cake Wrecks book, but I had to do some editing (removing a section--it is hardly noticeable) in order to make it more family friendly. I know my kids wouldn't get the inadvertently suggestive things now, but some day soon enough they will...



And, just for the fun of it, here are a few photos of some kids I really, really like! (Of course I really like Emma and Scott, too--just no current pictures...)

The end of Dog Patch Express B-24

This past weekend (9/18/09) my B-24 DogPatch Express died rather a quick death. The pilots could not be found, I hope they jumped ship (they were actually made of ceramic and probably exploded from the force of the crash). I'm really short of words right now so I'll let the pictures tell the story.

Is it Fall already?

It must be. I'm missing some kids during the day now. Here are some pictures of them on their first days of school.

Gracie started preschool! We (especially Caytie) miss her two mornings a week. She was SO ready to go--and loves every minute she's there.

Scott is in 3rd grade, and Emma started 1st. Scott has always liked going, and Emma came home yesterday and sighed, "I love school." So things seem to be going well for them, too.These are my two at home. Caytie is such a helper...
Life can still be chaos, but at least we have a schedule again! And I really am trying to do less. That reminds me--I forgot to give the kids baths tonight.


Why do I have such trouble adding text where I want it when I have pictures in the post?

Pictures from June, thanks to Grandpa

Beware--there will be LOTS of pictures in the next three posts! We got some great pictures from Grandpa and Grandma, and I had to share some of what we did during their vacation with us.

We were able to go see Emma's Kindergarten graduation program!

With her great teacher

Of course, the airplane had to be displayed

Think Devan's ready to fly it?

Sophie, Caytie, and Gracie going for a walk in the "limo"

At the lake in our neighborhood

Gina and Gracie at a petting zoo at the library Summer Reading Kickoff

Scott chillin' with the bunnies

Emma takes care of the goat

Everyone in the bounce house!

Sprinklers in the back yard!

Scott's final baseball game

(And Ben's final time pitching, to his relief!)

3rd place--go Tigers!

Scott's Baptism

Daddy's buttermilk pancakes to start the day!

Gracie and Caytie approve.

So do Emma and Scott

Eating lunch at the Flying Fish before the baptism

We are a happy family!

Ben and Scott

Us, before the baptism

It is a strange thing to watch your first child get baptized. On one hand, you are so pleased that he has chosen to follow the example of Jesus and experience a cleansing rebirth. On the other hand, you want to pull him back to childhood, to keep him innocent and close. And then there is the fact that you have to process it all while scrambling to make sure everyone is ready and on time while eight months pregnant with a house full of ten extra people (though very glad they could all come!).

Scott is a wonderful son, and I am thrilled that I get to be with him each day on his journey through childhood and choices. Ben and I are so happy with the example he's setting for his sisters.

Eating dinner at the lake that evening. Watch out for chiggers!

At the "beach," as Gracie called it

Can't keep the kids (large and small varieties) out of the water!