A few pictures from Christmas

I didn't take very many pictures this year of our Christmas festivities. Why? I don't know. I think I was too busy enjoying the joy on my kids' faces or maybe I was too excited to bring Baxter out and surprise them. Whatever the reason, there's only a few pictures, but I wanted to share them:

The Baxter Reveal

My favorite part is when Tyler says "I've been waiting for this moment!"

Merry Christmas to us!

Yes, we realize we have likely gone insane...

... but we are super excited about getting a puppy for Christmas!!! Yes, I know I just finished potty training my last child. Yes, I realize I just got brand new carpet. Yes, I realize that puppies are a ton of work. But if you spent even a few minutes with this sweet little thing, you'd want to do it too.

His name is Baxter -- and yes, we got that name from the movie Anchorman -- and it suits him. See, he already has some bling!

He is so dang cute, I can't even handle it. I just want to hold him and play with him all day! We picked him up today in Stayton, Oregon from Julie (the breeder). She did an amazing job training him and getting his shots and paperwork all done for us. We still have a few more rounds of shots to go, but she got us started. We drove back to Portland where Baxter will spend the rest of the day in Ben's office. Unfortunately, Baxter got car sick.

Hopefully Ben didn't want the rest of his orange juice. But once I figured out that first he gets wiggly then starts to retch before tossing his puppy cookies, we were able to avoid any more messes.

He liked to snuggle up close to me and seemed happiest when my hands were near his face. I think we had a bonding moment in the car. :-)

After work, Ben will take him to the vet to get checked out and then take him to my parents house. They'll keep him hidden for a day and a half until we pick him up on Christmas Eve after the kids are asleep. I just hope that they don't fall in love with him too much and want to keep him for themselves!

The kids are going to absolutely FREAK OUT when they see him. I can't wait for Christmas!!!!!

On the 1st day of Christmas Grandma Debbi gave to me...

...really, really big pens. (kinda hard to tell that they're pens because they insist on using them as guns)

Shhh... don't tell the kids

We are getting this sweet little guy for the kids for Christmas!!! His name is Baxter and he's a Havanese puppy. I'm so excited!!!!!!!!

My Family

I just got this picture from Ben's dad. I love my family.

Being Bored is Dangerous for my Hair

I get bored with my hair... a lot. I found this picture a couple weeks ago:

I thought, "huh, I could do bangs again." I have been growing them out for a year and a half, but hey, why not. I'm trying to grow the rest of my hair out a little longer so I have mostly been limited to color changes when I get bored. A few weeks ago my awesome friend, Arwen, put some sweet red highlights in my hair. But, it's starting to fade and turn orange-ish so I'm going to have to cover it soon. So, I went for bangs again.
Here's a picture of me this morning:

And here's me now!

If you don't like it, keep your opinions to yourself. It's awfully difficult to put hair back on. If you DO like it, feel free to give me some love. :-)

Kitty Cats

My girls love to pretend they are kitty cats. It makes me a little crazy. I don't like cats and the constant high pitched "meowing" that goes on all day makes me want to pull my hair out. But, they are so cute when they do it so I manage to hold it all together. Today, Nicole wanted to look like a kitty too. This is what we came up with:

Upgrades are AWESOME

I have been married almost 10 years. Ten years!? That's a really long time! I swear, I'm not old enough to have been married this long. My anniversary isn't until May, but Ben gave me my present early.

The wrap is the same (2 sapphires and 2 diamonds) but the solitaire is new. I LOVE IT!! It's twice as big as my original diamond. I can't stop looking at it. It's so clean and sparkly! Being married is rad. Thanks, Ben.

**random side note: my kids' birthdays are in September and April. Their birthstones are sapphires and diamonds. My wedding ring doubles as a mother's ring!

Kids Are Gross

Kids are gross. At least, mine are. Last night I gave Tori some chips and hummus to snack on. (She loves the stuff) But instead of dipping, eating, then turning the chip around -- so as to not double dip -- she did the opposite. She dipped the chip in the hummus, sucked the hummus off the chip, then dunked it right back in. She only ate the chip when it got too flimsy to dip it any more.

Then, this morning, I couldn't figure out what she wanted for breakfast. Pancakes? Eggs? Cereal? Hummus? No. She wants grape juice and a pickle. So gross.

The Self-Esteem of a 6-year-old

This is a conversation I heard today while we were driving to the doctor's office (Tori has 2 ear infections):

Nicole: Tyler, did I tell you that there is a boy in my class at preschool named Tyler?

Tyler: (exasperated sigh) Yes, Nicole, you told me a thousand times!

Nicole: But he doesn't look like you at all. And he's younger than you.

Tyler: Yeah, well, not all kids can look this good.

Nicole: Yeah, you're probably right. You're pretty hot.

Tyler: I know.

My kids are awesome.

Confession

I have a confession to make:

I like to make lists. That's not the confession, if you know me at all, you know that I love lists. But sometimes, my list looks a little overwhelming, so I put things on it that I've already done that day just so I can already see some progress. 

Am I the only one who does this?

Gingerbread Houses and Gateway Discovery

Today was a fun filled day in Utah. We woke up to the smell of gingerbread baking. Grandma Debbi makes her own gingerbread for gingerbread houses. We always used graham crackers. I must admit that I didn't know what gingerbread was until I saw her make it for the kids a few years ago.

Instead of doing 4 houses (one for each grandchild) we did one big house and everyone helped. I think they were excited.

Tori mostly just wanted to eat the candy. One piece on the house, one piece in my mouth...

After that excitement, we went up to Salt Lake and went to Gateway Discovery (the childrens museum) and the kids had a blast. Nicole isn't feeling very well, so she took things a little slower. She contented herself with picking flowers and playing house (or just snuggling with me on a bench).

Tyler found some friends in the construction area and they built some kind of building together. He loved it!

Tori, well, she was Tori. She loves to run around and climb on everything. Luckily, they plan for that kind of thing at the childrens museum. She liked the climbing wall. When she got down she said, "No Mommy, we don't climb." See, it's funny because I constantly tell her that we aren't supposed to climb on stuff.

We only have a few days left of our vacation in Utah and the depression is starting to settle in on everyone. Whenever we have to say goodbye, everyone pouts for a few days and then we eventually get back to being ourselves. But first there's the pre-goodbye depression. You know the one, it's the depression you get at anticipating the goodbye. Whatever. Let's just enjoy our time together and then we'll pout about it later.

Turkey Cookies

When I heard "turkey cookies" I immediately thought about cookies made out of turkey. That does not sound appetizing. I should have known better.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

First snowman of the year

We are in Utah right now and on Sunday morning, we woke up to snow! It was such a fun surprise for the kids. Tyler was dressed and out in the snow before anyone else was even awake. Nicole at least waited until after church.

Cutting down the cherry tree

I meant to do this post like 3 weeks ago, but hey, it's better late than never.
I have a huge cherry tree in my back yard. Actually, that's not entirely true. My neighbor has a huge cherry tree in her back yard and it's right on the fence line. It's seriously messing up the fence, it drops leaves onto my roof, gutter, and yard. It drops cherries all summer which attract bees and stain my kids' feet red. Then in the spring I have 10,000 miniature cherry trees growing and I have to pull every single one of them out. But in May, this tree is amazing. It's covered in white blossoms and with just a tiny breeze, they come floating down around you. It's amazing. I endure all of the other inconveniences just for those 2 weeks in May. But, as I said before, the tree is in my neighbor's yard, not my own. So when she wanted to cut it down, I couldn't do much about it. Truthfully, it'll be nice to not rake 8 bags of leaves, pull 10,000 mini-trees, or scrub my kids feet raw. But I will seriously miss the shade it gave us and, of course, the month of May.

The utility guys come over once a year to trim the branches away from the power lines. It's a little lopsided to begin with:

But then the real chopping began.

And now it's gone. All the way gone. Am I sad about it? Yes, now I have to look at that ugly cell tower instead of a pretty tree. But, let's look on the bright side: my neighbor is going to plant some giant palms in it's place. So now it'll look like I'm somewhere tropical when I look outside! Oh wait, it'll probably just look like someone accidentally planted some palm trees and it'll look really weird. Sigh. Oh well.

School Pictures

I LOVE when school pictures turn out cute! It's always a little scary. Now I need to order a bunch of prints for Tyler to give to his friends (Kayley). He's getting so big! Wait, let's rephrase that, he's getting so old! He's tiny. He only weighs 45 lbs and he's 6 1/2 years old!

(Don't worry, I bought the copyright release for this picture so I'm not doing anything illegal)

Baby Goth

I made the mistake of not locking my bedroom door while I was taking a shower. I got out and came to check on the girls and found Tori like this:

When I asked her what she was doing, she looked at me like this:

It looked like she was hiding from the paparazzi! She's my little goth drama queen.

Ear Tubes and Adenoidectomy

Tyler hasn't been able to hear properly since May. It's November. He's done being deaf and I'm done hearing "what?" after everything I say. The doctor recommended the adenoidectomy as well (as long as he's in there, might as well). I was more nervous than Tyler. We told him that he gets to stay home from school, eat jell-o, popsicles, pudding, and ice cream instead of real food, play video games, stay in his pajamas all day, and watch movies in his bed. What could be better than that?! We also explained that he wouldn't feel anything. They would give him some medicine that would make him fall asleep and when he woke up, it would be all done. That's the easy version. We decided not to tell him that he would feel like crap when he woke up. Here's our little guy waiting for his turn:

Thank goodness for video games. He was scheduled to go into surgery at 11:15. It was almost 12:30 before he went in. He hadn't eaten since 8:00 the night before. I'm glad we had something to keep him distracted. They finally took him back and I went off to find Ben and I a sandwich. I had barely finished half my turkey and swiss before the doctor came back and said it all went well and we could go back to the recovery room in a few minutes. It was a huge relief to me.
When the nurse came to take us to him, it was all I could do to walk calmly behind her. She said that our faces would be the first thing he saw when he woke up. Not true. I heard him coughing and crying while we were still walking down the hall. I wanted to push her aside and run to my little boy! But when we got there, he was still pretty out of it and disoriented. He had a sore throat from the breathing tube, but mostly just wanted to go home. The promise of popsicles and spiderman tattoos helped.

He needed a little oxygen, but that's okay. We told him it was like a Darth Vader mask. That made it a little more tolerable. (The blue wrap is covering his IV)

Daddy even took a couple hits of the oxygen. Crazy Daddy will do anything to make his little boy laugh. I think he's secretly been working on his Darth Vader imitation, it's getting pretty good. He kept asking when we could go home. After a little while they took out his IV, we put on his spiderman tattoos and put his pajamas back on. The nurse wheeled him out in a wheelchair. On the way home he asked if we could stop at Burgerville for a milkshake. That's my boy.
We dropped off his prescriptions and came home. He went in the house and I got his backpack out of the car. When I walked in the house I saw him dribbling his soccer ball all over the house. I think he's going to recover quite quickly.

We've been home for about an hour and he's already had a milkshake, a cup of jell-o, 2 popsicles, and a pudding cup. I'm glad to see he's feeling better and has his appetite back.

Thank you all for your prayers and well wishes. It's much appreciated.

Blazers vs. Lakers

I'm from Oregon/Washington. I like the Blazers. The Lakers are the worst. I hate them. So, needless to say, I was really excited to see these taped to my house today:

 Did it help? No, not even a little. We got creamed. Oh well. We'll get 'em next time.