Christmas Morning

Who needs presents when you have paper and boxes?

New Tradition

Thanks to the family that I previously babysat I have started a new tradition with my girls. Every Christmas Eve they will each get to open 1 Christmas present. It will be a set of matching Christmas PJ's. Here is our first Christmas PJ set. I hope that they enjoy this tradition down the road.

Christmas Card Photos

These are the pictures that we used for our Christmas card. These aren't professional by any means, but they worked. My mom took the picture of the 4 of us and for her that was a great picture. She usually cuts off you head. Until this year I usually did a picture of our cat and I would have loved to include him this year, but he isn't that fond of the girls and I knew there was no way that I could get the 3 of them together for a picture.

Hand me downs

We have gotten bags and bags of clothes and shoes from a family of 4 girls that I used to babysit. Once the girls hit sizes 18 months to 5t we are set in clothes. The other night Billy and I were sorting through the last batch (5 trash bags) of hand

me downs and I came across this super cute hat from The Children's Place. I put it on Emma tonight to see if it would as cute on as it did laying on the floor and I had the most horrible thought. Since she hardly as any hair and this hat hides it all I thought she looked like one of those kids in a commercial for kids who have cancer and have no hair. It was hard to get a good pictures with the camera of what I was seeing, but I tried.

Who needs toys?

The girls are having the best time in the kitchen playing with old plastic dishes

and lids. Who needs toys when you have Gladware? Even though they make a mess it's nice to know what they are doing when we are out in the kitchen doing something.

We like to share

Being sick is no fun, but we have shared it around the family. I think the girls are getting better, but Billy and I still aren't feeling our best. Ali started with the diarrhea Monday and then she threw up last night. Emma was throwing up yesterday afternoon and evening. By mid afternoon today they were ready to start eating again. I hope its over for them. I've munched on crackers all day, but that was all my stomach wanted. Billy stayed home from work today because he was in no condition to work. I also learned my lesson today on the importance of having emergency lesson plans together and everything pulled. I got up this morning at 5:30 and drove to school to get things ready for the sub and I was home by 7. The girls had only been up about 10 minutes so Billy was able to handle them. But it was no fun being out on the roads in the rain by myself at that time of day. Well everyone in this house is resting and I guess I should be as well since I don't feel the best either. I only hope everyone gets better tonight and not worse.

Once again....thanks April

Last year before I was brave enough to have a ebay account April ordered this reindeer set for my car. Thanks April.....what would I have done without you for so many things. This past Monday we put it on my car to finish our Christmas decorating. Most people laugh when they see it and probably think that I'm crazy.....but look what you will do when you have kids. The girls are to young this year to understand, but as they get older I hope that they will enjoy this.

Growing Up

Monday the 8th of December Emma came from from the babysitter's house in her new big girl car seat. I was able to go by the fire house after school and have help getting it put in the vehicle correctly. The weight limit on her old car seat was 22 pounds and she is just over 20 pounds but we went ahead and moved her up. If you ever carried her in the old car seat you would understand why.......she was heavy in it. Here she is enjoying her new seat. Thanks to Uncle Johnny who helped purchase one. We got two and put one in the truck and one in the car.

Emma's Meds....my poor baby

My poor sweet baby is being pumped full of meds and I worry if its good for her. This is a picture of everything that she takes during a day. The stuff in the white bottle she gets twice day. That lovely stuff has also given her diaherra and her bottom is so red. We both cry when it's time to change her diaper......which is all to often because of this medicine. She gets to stop taking one med tomorrrow, and another one is decreasing. Instead of having three doses a day she is now getting two, and I hope to decrease it to once a day. The doctor doesn't know what's wrong with her. Maybe asthma? Thinking of sending us to an allgerists? Maybe it's related to acid reflux? We have heard it all. All I know is I'm sick of going to the doctor's office and doing all this "stuff". We go again next week so we will get the latest story and course of meds.

Why would I post two empty bottles?

April was right when she saw my shelf full of shampoo, baby wash, and lotion. She said it would last forever. Here are our first two empty bottles. The girls are 8 and 1/2 months old and we have finally emptied a shampoo and bottle wash bottle. We give the girls a bath every other night and we have been working on these bottles since we started doing a bath at home. I think they will still be using baby wash and shampoo when they are teenagers because we have a shelf full of this stuff in their closet.

Happy Thanksgiving

Here the girls are on Thanksgiving day in their Little Turkey onesies. We have so many things to be thankful this year!

Christmas Photos

Monday the 24th we went to Wal-Mart and had photos taken to give away as Christmas gifts. These are their Christmas dresses that mom got on clearance last Christmas for 7 bucks. What a great deal! Now I just need to get them dressed up again and work on getting a photo for our Christmas card. I don't think it is going to be as easy as I thought.

Christmas TIme

Last Friday night the girls went to bed to fall decorations throughout the house and woke up the next morning to Christmas time. We put up the tree and inside decorations Friday night (11/21/08) and put up the outside lights Saturday while they took their nap.

Thank You

Last night as the computer was shutting down I remembered that I didn't say thank you. A special thanks to our great next door neighbors. Sometime between 8:30 and 9 Billy and I were busy around the house putting things back in their place and getting ready for the next day when we thought we heard a knock on the door. It was Tracey from next door with 4 warm double chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven. She didn't stay, just came over to share the goodies with us. I love having such great neighbors!

Leaves!

I can't wait until the girls are old enough to help with the leaves. Our yard is full of them. Saturday Billy used the leaf blower and blew all the leaves (or most of) into a huge pile in the back yard. Now we just have to work on moving that pile to the front yard so that the town can come suck them up. Until we get them out to the road I'm sure the yard will be covered again. We can't win this war. The neighborhood kids love when we get all the leaves to the front ditch......small children could be lost playing in the massive mountain of leaves. Maybe we need to put a warning sign out there this year. And just think we had 15 trees cut down......our first year here it was crazy.

Emma

Reading books with little sis......or should I say eating books with little sis?

Watch out!!! She's on the move now.

Emma has been a very busy girl this past week. Not only did she catch a lovely cold, have a runny nose, start wheezing, need breathing treatments, start to crawl, and now start to pull herself up on things. It amazes me with being sick this past week how much she has done. Last week she started off with a runny nose and the cold going around Ms. Tina's house. Friday when I picked her up in the afternoon Tina mentioned how bad Emma had been. I knew that I had to go pick up Ali's spit up medicine so while I was that close why not have them check her out. The pharmacy that I use for the girls is right beside the doctor's office. She was wheezing and I had to start breathing treatments and a steroid. Today we went back to be told that she is doing better and to start and decrease the breathing treatments each day.......I think they just wanted my 25 dollar co-pay again.

Pulling herself up.....she's trying her best to catch up with Ali.

Ignore the crying face and you will see the two shining stars coming through. Once again she is trying her best to catch up with Ali.

If Ali can sit under the exersaucer so can Emma!

Emma!

I know that I have been slow about putting things on my blog, but after the girls go to bed there is so much to do and never enough energy. Emma has been crawling for a week now, and I still haven't gotten any pictures of her crawling yet. She is also getting a tooth..........maybe two I can't tell yet. My goal this weekend will be to get some pictures and do a fun blog entry.

Ali being Ali

Ali doesn't want to miss a thing so her new favorite place is looking out the window.

Why sit in the exersaucer when you can sit under it.



It's more fun to sit on top of the toys than to play with them.

Ali also likes to stand up in the crib now instead of sleeping.

As you can see we have our hands full with Ms. Alison.

Mini Update

I've gotten some good pictures of Ali this weekend and have some good stories to share, but I don't have the time to get the pictures from the camera to the computer. Hopefully one evening this week.


Saturday evening we attended the 4th annual Chili Cook-Off out our friend's house. What a special treat we look forward to each fall. Billy is becoming the cook in our family and I take care of the girls in the evenings, but he has always been the one to cook when it was time for chili. For the past three years he has always placed in the top three and come home with a great prizes. (Thanks Kevin and April!) This year was no different. He came home tied for 1st place and a gift card to .......you guessed it, Chili's.

He's so proud of himself. He told me on the ride home last night that it meant a lot to him to win, so I'm happy for him. He takes pride in what he cooks. So we wanted to take this chance to say a HUGE THANKS to Kevin and April for opening their home, hosting this fun evening, and having prizes for the top three winners. It really suprised me one that there can be so many types of chili....there were none there that tasted alike, and two that she didn't take pictures for her blog.

My Girls

I love these pictures!

I have an addiction to buying baby clothes. I loved these shirts and pants. What would I do without Kohl's? As summer has come to an end and I am packing up clothes that are sleeveless or just to small I have come across many, did I say many, outfits that they never worn or wore only once. I would see things and think they were so cute, buy them, and that would be it. We also had lots of friends and family that bought 2 of the same size, but with Ali being so much smaller she missed out on wearing many outfits. Next summer if I do my yard sale of baby things somebody is going to get a steal. New clothes with tags still no for nothing, because you can't price things to high at a yard sale or people won't buy anything.

Ali is so afraid that she is going to miss something that she now pulls herself up on anything that she can get a good handle on. She loves standing up. Before we know it she will start walking.

Look Close!

If you look closely you can see them. Ali's teeth are shining bright!

Random Thoughts

The girls turned 7 months this weekend. Where does the time go? This time is so much fun. Ali is crawling around and Emma is trying. They can sit and play forever. Although this stage is so much fun, I miss my babies. They aren't my little babies anymore. I think that I get so emotional when I think about it because I know that Billy and I are done having kids. I won't get to experience the excitement of everything in the beginning again. I won't get to hold such a tiny precious life and know that he/she is part me. My "baby" time is over. My babies are growing up. Thank God that they have the sweetest smiles and look at me like I'm the best thing in the world. On Saturday we took them to Wal-Mart to have pictures done. I wanted to see what they could do because I can't afford to buy anything from my photographer who is doing pictures at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months. They got some good shots and I was a sucker. So I'll have lots of pictures to share soon. We get to pick them up on the 24th. The first six weeks of school has also come to close and the the second six weeks started today. I have lots of work I should be doing for school concerning progress reports, lesson plans, and general school work but here I am blogging instead.

I've been tagged

I've been tagged by my friend April. Here goes my attempt to share 7 random/weird facts. Let me say this is very hard to do. I have no special stories.

1. Every night or every other night when I check email I also go to the CBS webpage and read the recaps of TheYoungandtheRestless, TheBoldandtheBeautiful, and AstheWorldTurns. I want to keep up with what is going on so when we have days off, snow days, summer break I can watch and know what is happening.

2. I just got my hair cut short. Everyone has been nice saying they like it, but I hate it. But hey, it's hair and it will grow back.

3. Jealous of all the people out there that have these special talents. Some can sew, cook, scrapbook, blog, make crafts, take photos, and the list could go on. Then there's me still trying to find my niche. I'm good at watching TV. Does that count?

4. Since we have had the girls we have gotten out the "habit" of going to church on Sunday mornings. I am starting to miss it, but at the same time it has been our time to catch up on things around the house or time to nap while the girls are taking their morning nap. Morning nap is also the time that second service, which we once attended, starts.

5. I'm afraid of any type of bug. If it has legs, moves, flies, and doesn't belong in the house then I make Billy come kill it. I don't want to come close to it. For the first 3 years that we have lived in our home we had Dodson come spray for those lovely friends and it was great. Because of money I had to end that service and I've spotted 2 spiders in the house since their last visit. Times are going to be tough next spring when all my creepy, crawly friends are out and about moving again.

6. I miss reading books, but have no time. Well I do have time because I watch lots of TV when I could be reading, but you can do other things while you watch TV. If you are reading that's all you can do. So I would rather watch TV and iron then curl up with a good book.

7. I never went to a high school homecoming dance or prom. I always hung out with the "cool" kids, but always got left out at dance time. To this day I still wonder what it would/could have been like to have gone.

Ok, so I didn't have any super cool stories to share but I tried my best.

Halloween Time

The girls are all decked out in their Halloween costumes. We decided that Emma looked more like a thug ready to rob a bank then a cat. She would not smile for anything while I was trying to take pictures. I'm not a professional, but I was trying my best to get some good pictures. Emma still isn't the best at sitting up, so we put her in the bumbo seat. Thanks to grandma for the outfits!

Teeth

Ali has two teeth! They have been trying to come in for the past few weeks. They have popped up now on the bottom and they are sharp! You have been able to feel them for the last week, but now they are easily seen. Although, it is impossible to get a picture of them. I'll keep trying.

Sippy Cups

Tonight the girls had their hands on sippy cups for the first time. They knew to put them up to their mouth and start sucking, but they were confused when I titled the cups up so that they could get something out of them. I mixed some juice and water, but I had a little to much water because what I tasted was nasty. No wonder they wanted to play with the cups more than drink from them. Oh well, it was a new experience. They are growing up so fast.

WANTED:

Last seen on 19th Street. Blue in color. Country decorations throughout. Average size.

Our living room is disappearing. I've slowly been moving out things to make room for all the toys. Some evenings there are toys from one side to the other. Here's the room during a good time. Some days it looks worse.

Wanted to share some pictures

Ali is going to quickly learn the word "NO!" I can only imagine all the notes home we will get from school.

Now that they are mobile they think that is fun to roll under the couch or ottoman. At least we will know where to look when one is missing.

Ali has decided in the last week that she will begin crawling. I can't tell you the exact day that she truly started, but she is doing it now. Here are two pictures on her way to get the ring.

Everyone says that Emma is mommy's girl. Maybe so, but I don't try to have favorites. I think she has that special bond because she would nurse and was breastfed longer than Ali. Because she is mommy's girl I can get the best grins from her. Thought I would share one from today.