Happy New Year 2010!!

My parents came over on New Year's Eve to bring in the new year with us. All of the kids managed to stay up until midnight and we all had a lot of fun playing games!

Trying out M&M's new game, MouseTrap:
Playing Jenga:
Waiting for the ball to drop on T.V.:

Puzzling things out

Baby K received 2 very cute wooden puzzles for Christmas - one from Santa and one from one of my sisters. They kept her very occupied on Christmas morning and it was really cute watching her figure them out. The puzzle from my sister is one where if you put in a battery it will make the animal sounds when you put the puzzle piece in. So the day after Christmas I opened the battery compartment on the back of the puzzle with a screwdriver and put a battery in. Baby K was amazed that all of a sudden the puzzle was making noises. A few minutes after this I went outside to throw something in the trash cans at the side of the house and when I came back in I found Baby K with the screwdriver in her hands. At first I didn't understand what she was trying to do, but then I realized that she had the other puzzle (the one that doesn't make noises) turned upside-down and was trying to figure out how to use the screwdriver to make the puzzle make sounds like the other one. It was such a cute thing to see her trying to figure things out!!

Baby K photo shoot

Baby K's Christmas picture deserves its own blog entry. She was NOT in the mood for pictures when we were doing them and I ended up getting quite a funny succession of pictures!

Picture #1 - Baby K throwing her Elmo dolls
Picture #2 - BIG YAWN
Picture #3 - Eyes closed
Picture #4 - Reading a book

Christmas 2009!

Alright, it's about time I post some entries from Christmas and New Years! We had Christmas Eve dinner at my house again this year followed by singing Christmas song and reading the Nativity story. Then the kids opened their gift of new pajamas and amazingly enough everyone's fit this year! My parents and my sister and her husband came and spent the evening with us.

The next morning the kids were dying to open gifts and Kitty was still sleeping! She finally woke up and then the kids started opening gifts shortly before my parents arrived. Some of the big gifts this year were a Princess Castle for the girls and a Nintendo Wii and a few games for the family. Baby K got a ton of Sesame Street stuff and has loved it all! The kids were super excited about the Wii and have had a ton of fun playing it these last few weeks that they have been off-track from school (they go back next Tuesday). We ate brunch at our house after opening the Santa gifts and then opened the rest of the gifts afterwards. Later in the day we went to my parents' house for Christmas dinner.

We tried something new this year which turned out to be a lot of fun. Usually I just buy a couple of extra gifts and have the kids pick from them to give to their siblings. This year I decided to have the kids each pick the names of 2 siblings and then I took them each to the store to pick out gifts for each sibling with a $5 spending limit. The kids had a BLAST picking out things for their siblings and seeing how much they could get for the $5. They also loved wrapping the gifts and watching them open them on Christmas day. I think we will definitely do it again next year!

Yummy cookie!

Here is Baby K enjoying a peanut blossom cookie - she just ate/licked all the chocolate off the top and then was done with it!

A New Perspective

Before:
After toying with the idea for a while and talking to many people who have done it themselves, and then finally going in to see if he would make a good candidate, DH is officially glasses free right now! He went in to see an eye surgeon last October for an initial exam and then made an appointment to have Lasik surgery done just after the new year. I drove him in for his appointment on Thursday morning and about 2 hours later he was through. The procedure was pain free and I was able to watch every step of the way (they even recorded it onto DVD for us to take home with us). Because of a pretty severe astigmatism in his left eye there is a chance that he might have to go back in to have that eye worked on again, but as of his follow-up appointment Friday morning he had 20/20 vision in his right eye and 20/30 vision in his left eye. His vision will still continue to fluctuate over the next several weeks as they heal, but as of right now he can see much better than he has been able to in years!

After:
There are 3 types of eye drops that we have to religiously put in his eyes as they are healing and he has to wear plastic shields taped to his face to protect his eyes at night for the next week. He also is not supposed to rub his eyes at all for the next couple of months and has to be careful, especially in the shower, to not get anything in them. DH's right eye has a red spot in it where one of his blood vessels broke from the suction that is done in the first part of the Lasik procedure, but it is a fairly normal side effect that will disappear in a week or two.

Right now DH is still getting used to going places without wearing glasses - after all they have been his constant companion since he was in high school! He is also having a hard time trying to put the eye drops in himself (due to some long and thick eyelashes) and he is paranoid about damaging his eyes by accidentally rubbing them (and who doesn't touch their eyes multiple times during the day without even realizing it!!).

Here is a picture of all of DH's glasses that he has gone through over the years. The kids have a lot of fun looking at the different glasses and trying them on. I'll take some pictures of them next time. At DH's next visit to the eye surgeon he will probably donate them all since he will never use any of them again.