Winter Spirit

You can't even imagine how hard this shot was to get!

Construction Work

Today we did a little black Friday shopping. We took some family pictures and decorated gingerbread houses this afternoon (Sammy was a riot. He wouldn't let anyone put his candy on the house because he wanted to eat it all. If we managed to get some of his candy on the house, then he would take it back off and put it into his bowl.) Then John and I escaped tonight and did a little more black Friday shopping by ourselves. We have a jam packed day planned for tomorrow so everyone went to sleep early tonight!

Happy Thanksgiving 2008

We have a lot to be thankful for again this year!

Almost Turkey Day!

We spent the morning checking out the Christmas flower at the conservatory. We all had a great time and were dead tired by the end of the day!

Best Friends

You might think that these three look like best friends, but then you didn't see the newest bite mark on Jonah's back!

Brrrrrrrr!

It's chilly here! Well, it is actually the warmest that it has been lately, but Wyatt turned off the furnace switch on the side of the furnace and John and I froze all night before we figured out what happened! We did watch tv snuggled under the same blanket which was nice though....

Getting Ready for the Holidays

I finally found the time to take down all of our Halloween decorations today (which consisted of three handmade ghosts)! Obviously we had to replace them with something, so the boys made some candy canes to hang up instead. The rest of the day was spent destroying everything in sight (which is why the three candy canes will be the full extent of our Christmas decorations this year)! The path of destruction ended with Wyatt lathering Vicks Vapor Rub all over himself after he escaped from his bedroom tonight. What is the smallest size that they make for straight jackets?

Snowy Saturday

We got some more snow today. The kids still have a bunch of toys on the deck and I was waiting until the snow melted to get everything, but I have a feeling that I may be waiting a while!

All Smiles

I took this picture today and it quickly became my new favorite picture of Jonah!

Thanksgiving Pageant

Tonight Wyatt was "in" a Thanksgiving pageant. I am using the word "in" loosely at this point. Remember the movie Parenthood with Steve Martin and the scene with the auditorium performance at school where the youngest kid destroys the entire set and gets all of the older kids fighting? Wyatt's performance went slightly better than that. I had to go on stage with him....in front of seriously 140 people....while pregnant...while my other two kids screamed and cried "Mommy" over and over again. After the performance John sat by the exit door holding a coffee can for donations for us to get a nanny. We made $400. Can you imagine how much we are going to make off of the Christmas pageant?

Shopaholics

The boys and I spent the morning at the mall and visited the new LL Bean store. We also saw Santa Clause and enjoyed a train ride. The kids were EXTREMELY well behaved (I was shocked too!) and we all had the best time. We didn't get home until after 1pm! Jonah threw a fit (a little Allison in her glory days) of epic proportions and threw his shoes and socks on the floor as we were leaving the mall. No amount of bribery or punishment was going to work to get him to keep the shoes and socks on, so I took him out to the van in his bare feet. We have snow on the ground! You can imagine the looks that I got! I even overheard some girl say onto her cell phone that someone was taking their kid out into the parking lot in their bare feet OMG! I didn't bother to set the record straight! I just assumed that she doesn't have kids yet and will figure it out someday! I promise not to say I told you so either.

My Homework

I spent about 30 minutes tonight doing Wyatt's homework for preschool. Of course I am totally opposed to doing my child's homework in theory, but it becomes necessary under certain circumstances. Like tonight, for example, when I went to pack Wyatt's bag for preschool at 9pm after the boys were all in bed and asleep and found his homework assignment in his preschool bag. It is due tomorrow and I should have had him work on it sometime after it came home last Thursday...clearly Mom's fault! He was supposed to tape, glue, or draw things that he is thankful for on a paper to hang in his classroom. Wyatt is in a Thanksgiving pagent on Thursday evening at his school so all of the parents will get a chance to visit the classrooms and I would have been embarrased if he didn't have his "I am thankful for....." poster hanging in his room. I am sure that we will already be slightly embarrased on Thursday as it is, so I don't need to add insult to injury. I didn't even know about the pagent until last week when one of my friends (who has a kid in the Mon, Wed 3 year old class) said that she thought that the songs that the kids were going to sing for the pagent were really cute. I said What songs? What pagent? Did you get a cd of their songs or something? She said that her daughter has been singing the songs all week and knew all of the words by heart! When I asked Wyatt about the songs, he told me that it was dark in the room where they were singing and he was scared. I have a feeling that his participation on Thursday may be limited! To sum things up....Yes I do my child's homework for him. No I will not be doing homework for all four of my boys in a few years. John will have to help with at least half of it!
Doesn't this look like something that Wyatt could have done?

LL Bean

We got up bright and early this morning and got everybody fed and dressed and drove to the local mall (which is 30 minutes away) to go check out the new LL Bean store. There was a big write-up about the new store in the paper on Friday and sounded like we would have fun looking around. It has everything from clothes to kayaks and tons of demos! The kids were pretty pumped too! Imagine our surprise when we got there and the manager of the store told us that they had a complete computer system failure and the store was closed until they figured it out! Super fun! The LL Bean store was supposed to open at 10am, but the rest of the mall didn't open until 11am, so we were in trouble. Sears was the only other store that opened at 10am, so we killed an hour in there letting the kids ride the lawn mowers and re-arrange all of their Christmas displays, but LL Bean never got their act together before we had to leave to go feed the troops. What's that they say about the best laid plans?!?!?!

And for the record John weighed the boys today:
Wyatt 35 lbs
Sammy 27 lbs
Jonah 23 lbs
I think that Wyatt weighed 23 lbs at 5 months!

The New Favorites

Wyatt's new favorite phrase is "hit the road Jack"! He laughs like crazy if we say that to him! Who knew?!?!?

Hair Cut Expert

I have become very proficient at cutting my boys' hair! They are getting a lot better about sitting still and not making a big deal when I decide that they need haircuts too! Now I'm trying to convince John to let me take a stab at his hair but he isn't biting yet!

My Little Vampire

Sammy is back to biting again! He spent his ENTIRE day harassing Jonah. He laid on top of him so that he couldn't move, bit him, took his toys away, and hit him! I may have to enroll him in an anti-bullying seminar before he even turns two years old! I think that he has finally figured out that he is bigger than Jonah! I have a feeling that Sammy is going to give us a lot of gray hair in the future!

This picture is a self portrait!

New Year's Resolutions

One of my New Year's Resolutions from 2008 was to organize all of my picture files on my computer. I started today and got Aug 08 through Nov 08 done so far. It is going to take a while, but I am determined to finish it before 09! In doing so, I came across one of my all time favorite pictures of Sammy and had to post it! Isn't he such a cutie?

How To Create A Monster 101

1. Give your kids their baths every night
2. One night, when it is very cold outside, offer to throw your oldest child's pajamas into the dryer to warm them up (sounds nice and sweet doesn't it?)
3. After the bath dress your child in the warm pajamas
4. The End

(Warning: Do not EVER expect to get your child to get dressed without placing all of their clothes in the dryer including underwear and socks. This affects all male siblings as well!)

Listamania

My kids are great shoppers. They really like going to do errands with me and John. Maybe they are extremely bored in the house, but they are forever bringing me their shoes and socks or coats and tying to get me to put them on so that we can go "in the van somewhere". Lately when I tell Wyatt that we are going grocery shopping, he makes a list. He gets out some paper and a pen and asks me about different things that should be on his list...
Wyatt: "Mommy do we need bananas?"
Me: "Yes"
Wyatt: Scribbles little tiny circles and dots on his paper. "Ok, I wrote it."
Wyatt: "Mommy, do we need cheese?" etc. etc. etc.
This can go on for 15 minutes or so. When we get to the store, he waits until we get stuff from his "list" and then crosses out his little tiny dots and circles. It is really funny to watch. It almost seems like he really has words written down on his paper! The funny thing is that sometimes Wyatt remembers to write stuff down on his "list" that I forgot we need like batteries or lightbulbs (you know the technical gadgety things). It's nice having an extra set of eyes on things when you are grocery shopping...I can use all the help that I can get!

Project #985 Update

The basement is almost finished!!!! One more day of work and then painting and putting up the doors for the back room and we will be ready to roll. I am really looking forward to being able to use it and let the kids play down there as well. I will take some pictures of the finished project later this week! Since I didn't take any new pictures of the boys today, I am posting some left over pictures of Sammy from Halloween.

Diaper Houdini

This is how Jonah woke up from his nap today! I may have to start using duct tape on these boys!

Happy Birthday Jacqueline!!!

We got Wyatt's preschool picture proofs back today. They did school pictures with the kids on Wyatt's very first day of preschool where he cried almost the whole day! Could he look more pathetic???

Warm Up

It has been unseasonably warm here lately and we are loving it! The kids have been able to spend time every day playing cars on the deck while I clean up the kitchen. I am not ready for it to end!

Obama 08

I took the kids to the polls today and voted. Wyatt helped me push the buttons and loved it. We had touch screen voting....it was very user friendly! I am so proud to be part of history in the making and am especially excited to see the percentage of people that voted this year! It is so nice to see how many people were passionate about their vote this time and excited about the outcome! I can't wait to hear Obama's acceptance speech (we are taping it since I can't stay up any longer)! John is flying to Chicago tomorrow for the day... he will probably have a lot of great stories to tell when he gets back. Maybe he will get to see Obama...who knows? Exciting times people!
The pictures are of John reading "Clap Your Hands" to the boys. It has a lot of action..."Clap your hands, reach for the sky, roll over, close your eyes, etc." The kids love it!

Play Doh

The time change is kicking our butts! Everyone is off schedule and it's killing me. Can we opt out? Wyatt had a hard time falling asleep for his nap (he was probably overtired) and sneaked out of his room, peed on his little potty, and then CARRIED the potty into the closet in our bedroom. He dripped pee all the way down the hallway into our room. When I found him he was sitting on top of his dresser in his room apparently resting after emptying all of his drawers onto the floor! Isn't this time change supposed to make my life easier and give me an extra hour of sleep? Yeah, I'm waiting!!!!!

The Budding Photographer

John mowed the lawn today and Wyatt ran inside to get his camera so that he could take some pictures of Daddy mowing. The first picture is with my camera and the rest are pictures that Wyatt took with his camera.

Cool Cat

Check this out!