Christmas Day 2008

Merry Christmas 2008!
Unfortunately Baby K got up just as I was going to bed on Christmas Eve and then she woke up bright and early at about 6:30 a.m. The rest of the kids, with Luke leading the way, were up shortly thereafter. It was snowing pretty good already at this point and we got a phone call from my sister and then my parents saying they were leaving to come over to our house. So I got breakfast in the oven and we waited for my sister and parents to show up and for my husband to get himself up...
Because of the weather it took everyone a little longer than usual to get to our house and then DH decided to torture the kids by getting up and showering beforehand. By the time Marilee and Roger and my parents got to our house we were all pretty hungry so we ate breakfast before we let the kids go down to the presents. They were pretty good-natured about it and we finally headed downstairs around 10:00.



Here is a picture of our best present for the year - isn't it great having older siblings?? I don't even think she realized she had something on her head.



The big present this year was two Nintendo DS systems for the family. Each of the kids got a game for it and they all had fun trying them out as you can see from this picture here.

While we were opening presents it continued to snow pretty good outside and my parents delayed leaving for a couple of hours. They finally left to brave the weather in the early afternoon to go and start the turkey dinner at their house. Then Marilee and Roger left and called and said that roads were fine once they got outside of our neighborhood.
So later in the afternoon we headed over to my parents' house for Christmas dinner and to open more presents over there.
By the time we headed for home the roads had become quite slick and our van almost didn't make it up the hill that my parents live on. After we got out of my parents' neighborhood the roads weren't too bad until we got over closer to our neighborhood. At one point DH and I jumped out of the car to help push another car that had gotten stuck.

We had a great Christmas and were sad that Kevin & JayneAnne and family weren't able to make it down because of the huge amounts of snowfall up in their neck of the woods...

Here are our annual Christmas pictures of the kids:

So close!!

Baby K is so close to crawling! She is slowly but surely putting two and two together!

White Christmas!

We definitely had a White Christmas this year! Did you??
We probably got about 6-8 inches of snow on Christmas day with some of the snow drifts a couple of feet deep...

Christmas cookie time!

We can't let the Christmas season go by without baking and decorating sugar cookies. Blondie amazed me this year with some of her decorating skills...
Kitty was all about lots of sprinkles!!

Christmas Eve 2008

My parents came over to our house for Christmas Eve dinner and activities. We read & acted out the Christmas story from the scriptures and then sang Christmas songs. After that the kids opened their annual Christmas Eve presents of new pajamas.

Baby K was not too interested in opening up her present, but she was not about to give up the ribbon to her older sister...

After that we set up some sleeping bags for M&M and Blondie on the floor in Kitty & Baby K's room so that all of the kids would be upstairs (their idea). Amazingly it was pretty quiet after they all went to bed so we didn't have to send them down to their own room. :)

Sunday best

Here are the kids posing for a picture after church on Sunday:

When Blondie sets her mind to something...

I've wanted to post this blog entry for some time but I have really struggled to come up with a good title for it...

Blondie has been a dedicated 2-finger sucker since she was just a month or two old. It has always been her first two fingers on her left hand and is usually accompanied with a blanket held under her nose. Her first blanket ended up in shreds about a year ago so we found a replacement that she was willing to try out. It took a little while to break the new one in but then she was hooked once again. When Blondie was getting closer to kindergarten age I started gradually trying to get her to not suck her fingers so much - but fingers are harder to take away than a pacifier. Whenever we would sit down to watch some T.V. or to read a book, in would go the fingers. I started getting after her more and more whenever I saw her doing it but I didn't try too hard to get her to break completely before school started.

Then about a month ago the kids were watching T.V. and I realized that Blondie didn't have her fingers in her mouth! I started thinking back a little and realized that I hadn't seen her sucking on her fingers in a while. So I asked her if she sucked her fingers anymore and she said that she had stopped! I asked M&M later if she had seen Blondie sucking her fingers recently and she said, "no". About a week or two after this happened I was at the school and I asked her kindergarten teacher if she had ever seen Blondie sucking on her fingers and she said, "no".

So somehow, on her very own, Blondie stopped sucking her fingers! I was truly amazed when I watched her for a few days after she told me she had stopped and I didn't see her once sticking her fingers in her mouth. When I told DH about this he was also amazed and couldn't remember the last time he had seen her sucking on those fingers. (She did admit to me a couple of days ago that one night when she went to bed she put her fingers into her mouth before she remembered that she had quit doing that!)

This is the most recent picture I can find of Blondie sucking her fingers (and notice the blanket next to her nose). I didn't like to take pictures of her sucking on her fingers. This one was taken on Father's Day in June.

My husband has remarked that he thinks Blondie might have a little bit of his Grandma White's drive in her. From stories that I have heard of Grandma White, whenever she set her mind to something, she got it done. Blondie is like this in more than just this instance of quitting the finger sucking. When it is lunchtime and I'm not quick enough at making her lunch, Blondie will go and try and fix something herself. Also, if she is trying to ask me if she can do something or have something and I am busy and taking my time in responding to her, she will just go and take my non-response as a "yes" and help herself to whatever it is. I think it is awesome that Blondie has this drive in her, but I will definitely have to keep a close eye on her - especially as she gets older...

Post #500!!

My last post was the 500th blog entry that I have published since I started my blog almost 3 years ago, in April of 2006! I can't believe I have been doing this that long!

Band concert

M&M performed in her school band concert last Thursday evening. The school hasn't had a band program for a couple of years so they are just trying to get things started with a new teacher. The kids seem to like him and the band is a good size for it being the first year. M&M is learning to play the flute and enjoys it. They played 3 short Christmas songs.
When we went to parent/teacher conferences last month, the band teacher was there so we went up to talk to him. He had nothing but praise to say about M&M and her flute playing. He also said that she is always offering to help the other flute players that are struggling and she will also get up in front of the class to demonstrate how to play the songs to the rest of the class.

Blondie's turkey drawing

Blondie was recognized on Friday for the Principal's Pride award for her very colorful turkey drawing! It was fun watching her receive the award - she was so excited to be getting it...