Reality...

...Is setting back in after coming home with the new baby and post-holiday hoopla. I was actually home by myself one morning with all 4 kiddos while Hubby was at the doctor and running errands! It wasn't SO bad. :) Though Snuggle-Bug spit up ALL over herself, and all down her back somehow. She was overdue for a bath anyway, so it was okay. Here she is at 10 days old.
Feels like she's always been around! :) Other people have told me that once you have the 4th kid, it's just one more, not that big of an adjustment. So far, I'd agree with that. Snuggle-Bug has been a very content little girl so far, for which I am VERY thankful!

Back to the reality--everybody, even the baby has had a cold, Honey has had the stomach flu (AGAIN!), Hubby felt poorly and spent a day or so sleeping, never-ending meals, because once we're done eating and the kids wiped off, the real clean-up begins: clearing the table, wiping it down, sweeping the floor, doing the dishes...then starting over for the next meal! The laundry, the everybody needing something at once, reading stories to 3 climbing all over me while 1 nurses...anyway, if you're a mom, you know what I mean! The 'break' has been great, but time to get used to reality again--Hubby goes back to school on Monday!!

Evolution of a Family Picture

It's hard to know where to start after this blogging hiatus! I saw a funny post on another blog that detailed the trial of taking a large family pic. So I thought I'd copy. :) Here's a glimpse of taking a picture on Christmas of my hubby's 36-member family. Did I mention that 21 of those peeps are 7th grade and younger??

A couple people heard the call to come get lined up:
A few more trickling in: each sibling's family has their own color. (We're green.)
The blues, reds, blacks & whites are in position:
After a brief clean-up of 2 spitting babies, Umm...Uncle T. you're not in the picture!
Speedy, where did you go? We can't see you behind Papa.
So...now I'm leaning over to pull Speedy up to where he can be seen.
Uncle T, open your eyes!
Not too bad! :) Mission accomplished. This picture shouldn't be outdated for 9 months, at least! (since no one is expecting right now!)
Let's celebrate--we're done!

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone has a great time celebrating the Savior's birth with friends and family. Here's a merry pic of the fam, and one of the newest member. She arrived early Saturday morning (the 20th) at 8 lbs, 3 oz and 21 & 1/2 inches long. That will have to tide you over until I have time for more details! :)

Christmas Sweets

Some holiday craft projects:
Shape Nativity from thrifty craft mama. Princess's is on the top, Speedy's on the bottom. I drew the shapes, then the kiddos colored and cut them out. I helped place them on the paper, then they glued. Honestly, I placed Speedy's in about the same place as Princess's! (And he also chose to exercise his own color judgement, see the star.) :)
Cellophane peppermints: this idea is one I saw on the community tree of our old town. I drew stripes on paper plates; let the kiddos paint them red, then we tied red cellophane around to look like the wrapper. Sorry for the dark picture, you can kind of see the stripes on the middle candy!
Some new books to go with it:
Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett and
Can You See What I See? Christmas by Walter Wick.
Lastly, some gingerbread kids cut from grocery bags. (Pattern here). I helped Honey pick her items, put the glue on, and helped her place them.
The other two had free reign. (I was even out of the room for awhile, you can tell by the amount of glue on Princess's tummy.) Speedy's has the orange eyeballs. :)

Ho, Ho, Ho!

We try to keep Santa pretty low-key around here, but still let the kids enjoy it. They know he's somebody in a costume; yet they still ask, "Is there a REAL Santa?" Anyway, PAT had Santa visiting yesterday, so we went. These pics are actually reverse order:

Princess helping an unsure Honey stand next to Santa.
Princess with Santa--got my candy cane and my gift, gotta jet! Before it was our turn, she whispered, "Why does Santa have claws?" I said, "Not that kind of claws, it's his last name." "Oh."
Speedy was clutching my leg until it was our turn and then he almost ran up to his lap. When asked what he wanted for Christmas, Speedy replied: "a present." Pretty easy to please, I guess. :)
And it snowed again. And is absolutely freezing cold. The kids went out to play with dad after school and help clear the driveway of the powdery snow. Honey's hands got cold again. She is inconsolable after that.
Really, Speedy, is this good scooter weather??

Today

After returning from the strenuous ordeal of getting the 3 kiddos out the door for a 'quick' trip to the post office, I announced that it was time to vacuum and scrub the floors. By the time I had the vacuum out and the hallway done, I had two little helpers with their squirt bottles of vinegar-water and rags, on their hands and knees cleaning the floor. :) It's nice when they are such willing helpers. (doesn't always happen!) I finished the rest of the house, and didn't hear them, so assumed they were spraying things they shouldn't in the living room. Not so, they were both under the dining table cleaning! (I wasn't quick enough with the camera!)

Princess said she'd get under there so I didn't have to. :) They went through about 4 rags apiece (they can't resist spraying too much.) But they were out of trouble, and taking care of some of my work at the same time!

This isn't great photo quality, but if you look closely, you can see that our Honey fell asleep with a baby doll under each arm. Aww. Usually it's a bunny under one arm and a 'yow' (kitty-meow) under the other.

Christmasy Activities

We haven't been doing much school-wise since Thanksgiving. Partly because I lack motivation to do it; partly because I've been on a mission to get gifts and such all done; partly because the kiddos have been having a pretty good time playing and pretending together, and I hate to interrupt that! We have a stash of Christmas and winter books that we have broken out, so of course we read some of those everyday. 2 different days, Speedy has picked 2 versions of 'The Mitten' for his 2 stories. We have the one by Jan Brett, and an older one with some different animals. Another fun one has been a compilation of Little House on the Prairie chapters about their Christmases. I found it on a garage sale, and Princess has been enjoying it.


Here's a couple activities:


Christmas Bow sorting and Wrapping Paper Patterning from No Time For Flashcards.
And these suncatchers, inspired by some of Hubby's old school artwork. His are on the left (the more faded tree and the green bell.)
I drew a shape on construction paper; had Princess cut it out (through 2 sheets of construction paper). Then used some of my scrapbooking tools (see, justified!) to cut circles or the wavy shapes out. We fit pieces of tissue paper over the holes, glued them on, then glued the 2 construction paper shapes together.

Speedy didn't make his till today, and I didn't get a pic; but he wanted to add a star to his tree. He had colored a yellow block on some white paper, and I used my star punch to make his tree topper. (and one for Princess, because of course she wanted one, too.)

First Snow!

I managed to get all the kids out to play in the first snow of the season at our house, with only a reasonable amount of fussing and time to get outside. While we were out, the dogs came running up from who knows where (the gate had blown open.) Hubby had also stopped on his way to school that morning and put them back in when he saw them running around the neighborhood.

Honey didn't mind being bundled up too much, and she had a pair of snow boots that open up in front that makes them so nice to get on! Her complaint was cold hands. Here you can see her eating snow off one glove, and the other glove on the ground. And my little path I shoveled in the snow. Wishful thinking that shoveling snow would kickstart labor for me. ;)

I don't know what these two are up to...but they sure had fun in the snowdrifts. And making snow angels. And eating 'ice pops' i.e. icicles. And snow. And ice.

We played in the melting snow the following day, too. And Speedy got me right in the nose with a snow/iceball. He was pretty proud, but I told him not to throw them at my face anymore.

Again???

Yes, everybody was up early again today. Princess ate some breakfast with Daddy around 5 am, then came in bed with me and wiggled. Honey had been wiggling and coughing since about 3:30 it felt like. Those 2 girls finally just got up and watched PBS. They're going to crash pretty soon...

Winter

It was 56 degrees outside when I went to bed last night. 33 degrees at 4:30 am. And currently 24 degrees with blowing snow. :) The kids are raring to get outside for snowballs, snow angels, and catching snowflakes on their tongues.


But I digress. Yes, 4:30 am. Everyone in the house was up and some were eating breakfast. Honey and I are the only ones with an excuse--she's coming down with something and was awake a lot during the night; I thought labor was picking up, so was up moving around and doing some last minute packing. (It eventually fizzled out, of course. I've been having lots of contractions for several weeks, more yesterday, but nothing regular.)


Sometime in the midst of all this, Speedy and Princess ended up in our bed WIDE AWAKE. Hubby is blaming the change in the weather. So he fed them some cereal, and eventually we all went back to sleep for awhile. We were supposed to go to MOPs today, but between the snow, the lack of sleep, and Honey's cold, it didn't happen.


Our advent candles for lighting during Sunday devotions:
We kept decorating pretty simple--I think I'm done. Here are the kiddos helping hang ornaments on our tree.

I amazingly have everything ordered, made, and wrapped except for one or two gifts. Christmas cards are made and ready, but finishing and sending will come after the baby does. So...I guess that leaves my time for Christmas baking and crafts with the kiddos! (and any other random nesting tendencies that come with opening a messy cupboard...like organizing Princess' closet at 9 pm last night!)

Somebody says, "Bah, Humbug!" :)

It's Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas...

We have a tree up! Here's the crew out at the farm looking for a good cedar tree. I can't believe how good we look here, because seriously, right before this, 2 or all of the kids was crying! Honey was cold; Princess was deathly afraid of the cows (that were yards away, out of sight, BEHIND a fence). I think Speedy was having a hard time walking through the sticks and tall grass.

So the tree is up, a Christmas sign on the front door, hopefully more red & green will make it's way out tomorrow.

Hubby is imagining a toasty front room after purchasing this used fireplace insert last night. He's only been dreaming about one since we moved in a year and a half ago!
And, lastly, check out Princess's art! I was pretty impressed with her penguin and snowman. If you look closely, the penguin even has yellow hair on top, like a macaroni penguin!

I've been craving homemade bread lately...I don't know if it's the eating it or the making it that sounds appealing, but hopefully in the next couple days I can put that new mixer to work again with some dough! :)

Gingerbread House Fun

Graham cracker houses we made at PAT. Yes, Honey was in the act of eating about every candy in sight. Including gum drops (Speedy calls them cough drops); but apparently Honey doesn't like them, she kept chewing them up and I found them on the floor, her shirt, her pants. Yuck.

Princess with her creation:
Cheese! Says Honey with her house, not to be left out.

Speedy can't wait to eat his!

All day, I think of things to blog--but I just don't get to it. When will they invent a computer hooked to your brain, so you can do things like write blog posts just using your mind?

We have some company coming and we mentioned the kids sleeping on the hide-a-bed. Speedy pipes in, "Maybe I can sleep in my suitcase!" No, we don't abuse our kids, he's talking about his sleeping bag.

No Excuse...

...for my lack of posting. :) Just recovering from the Thanksgiving weekend, and looking ahead to all I'd like to get done before this baby arrives! 37 weeks! (photo by one of my lovely 5 and under assistants).

The kiddos all happened to be dressed in blue for church, so I thought, "why not see if I could get a good photo for a Christmas card?"

Why not, indeed:
Yes, that's a nose-pick. I guess I didn't pick a good word for them to say. Honey just wants to get away.

One out of three with a good smile isn't bad...right??

Happy Thanksgiving!

Looking back, may you be thankful;
Looking ahead, may you be hopeful;
Looking upward, may you find strength;
Looking inward, may you find peace.

(a little quote from a freezer cooking newsletter)

Turkey Time!

We haven't done a lot this week, but we read the historical Thanksgiving account:
From here:

It sparked some good conversation, and a look at the map to see how far the Pilgrims sailed and where we live in relation to where they landed.

Here are some other Thanksgiving themed books we read:

And our Turkey T's! Made from a paper grocery sack, construction paper scraps, and tissue paper for the feathers.

We also have some turkey puppets from years past, to sing some songs with, like:

"There's a turkey on your nose, on your nose.

There's a turkey on your nose, on your nose.

Oh will that turkey stay, or will he wander away?

There's a turkey on your nose, on your nose."

(Substitute other body parts.)

We're also working on our annual thankful chain--strips of paper we use to write down things we're thankful for; then we'll make these strips into our countdown chain for Christmas!

I'd like to get to these cute bubble-wrap ears of corn from no time for flashcards; and these leaf turkeys from dltk.

We'll see. I also need to pack for heading north for some family celebrating with my side.

Have a great Thanksgiving, giving thanks to God for all he has done for you!