A Trip to the Grocery Store

Lily decided she want to wear her princess dress to the grocery store. Well, the other 2 certainly couldn't be left out. They ran around the house looking for something to wear. Before I knew it, I was shopping with a princess, fireman, and football player! Lots of smiles at the store today.

100 Day Club

At Alex's kindergarten there is a list of 100 skills for a student to learn by the 100th day of school. They celebrate the 100th day of school with a party, and a certificate for the kids that know all of their skills.

On Friday, all the kids wore t-shirts decorated with 100 items of their choice. Alex decided on "eyes", which was a lot of fun for me to glue on! At least he helped me count them out. He liked the eyes, because when he moved, the little eyeballs jiggled and made a cool noise. His teacher really liked it when he was jumping around the classroom making the eyes jiggles! :)

On Monday, I was able to attend a special breakfast, and watch Alex receive his certificate from the school principal.

Alex with his teacher

Alex just loves to have me stop by his classroom. He's so proud to be in kindergarten (big kid school), and likes to show me everything in his room.

We are very proud of Alex and all of the progress he has made this year in school.

First Day of School

Lily has started preschool..........and she loves it!!

Although we wanted to put her in Michael's class, there was no space available. Matter of fact, there was no space available in any of the 3 day/week 3-yr old classes, but the was a space in a Friday class. We decided that it would be a good starting point, so we planned a visit. Lily had been to the preschool daily to pick up her brothers, and she had also attended some of their parties with me, so she was familiar with the building and classrooms. The day I took her to visit, she sat right down with the other kids to play with the play dough. She looked back at me a couple of times, and then seemed to forget I was there. Matter of fact, she was doing so well, the teacher (who Michael had last year and we loved), kicked me out!! Although we had only intended to visit for about an hour, she told me to leave her for the morning. When I pointed out that I had not brought her a lunch, she sent me to Chick-Fil-A to pick her up some food! :)

Well, she ended up staying for the full 4 hours, and I picked her up in the carpool lane with Michael. She was all smiles when she got in the mini-van and couldn't wait to pull out the painting she did! She told me about her day, and how there was a boy named Tyler in her class just like her brother. About her painting she said, "I show daddy he get home". She carried her school bag with her most of the day, and as soon as she heard daddy, she ran into the garage with her school bag to show him her painting!!

We also just found out that one of the other children has dropped out of the class, and now she'll be able to go 2 days per week. It's great prep for pre-k next year, and it also gives me a morning home with just Michael. I'm really looking forward to my one-on-one time with my baby!

As excited as Lily was about her first day, her sleep issues, which had gotten much better, resurfaced. This time though, minimal night terrors.......just crying that is more easily calmed. It was a couple of times a night the first few night, but has now settled to just once a night, with an occasional night with no awakenings. Big changes can cause anxieties to surface, but that will continue to get better over time.



So proud of her first piece of art!

The Big Snow

Only one week back at school after the holidays, and we're hit with the "big snow". That's right, 5 inches of snow layered with ice. Now those of you from up north, are probably thinking "what's the big deal?" The big deal is 8......as in only 8 salt/sand trucks for the whole Atlanta area. (Chicago has 274). Now obviously, Atlanta doesn't need hundreds of salt trucks, but when the city is covered with ice, there's nothing it can do but shut down. The storm came in on Sunday night. On Wednesday, Ruben tried to go to work. He made it out of the neighborhood, which is huge as it's very hilly, but the main road outside our neighborhood was closed because of ice in the direction he needed to go. He turned the other way to see what he could do, but after seeing cars on both sides of him trying to climb a hill and sliding all over the place, he turned around and came home. A short while later, they closed the road in that direction too.

He was able to make it to work on Thursday........very carefully. I finally ventured out on Friday, but even I managed to get stuck in ice on the way back into our neighborhood. At least I knew what to do, and didn't just spin my tires and dig myself in deeper while burning up my engine, which is not uncommon to see here in the south!

With all that ice, school was cancelled for the entire week! The kids, of course, LOVED the snow! It's the first time we've had enough to take them sledding. Monday was a beautiful day, sunny and not too cold. Just like the first warm day of spring when you live up north, everyone in our neighborhood was out. The older kids and adults were sledding down the steep streets, while the younger kids, like ours, stuck to the smaller hills. Our neighbor across the street has a steep driveway, and the kids went sledding down the driveway, across the street, and jumped the curb into our yard. They had a blast!! Lily usually went down on my lap, but by the end of the second day, she was sledding by herself! Alex was going up and down the hill as fast as he could trying to get in as many turns as possible, while Michael spent a lot of time rolling around in the snow, and eating it!

Helping Daddy work at home

The first time the kids have been sledding

Yum!

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

For the first time since 1882, our area had a white Christmas!!!! It was very exciting, especially for the kids who constantly asked, "can we go outside yet?". Although it snowed for most of the day, it was not a very heavy snow, so it took a while to build up. It was nice and wet though which made it great for snowball fights! We ended up with approximately 1-1/2 inches. Not much, but enough to make it fun!

As you can see, Michael was very excited!

When we first went outside, Lily just stood and looked around with a serious expression, not sure what to do. We showed her how to pack the snow and throw a snowball, and she was soon running with her brothers having fun. At one point we saw her clapping her hands together trying to catch the snowflakes - very cute!

Our rather sad looking snowman! Yum!

Merry Christmas!!

As excited as the kids were for Christmas, they actually slept until 7:30, which was really nice for their parents!
Just like my parents did to my sisters and I when we were kids, we make the kids stop and sit on the stairs for a picture. They could barely sit still, and were pushing each other out of the way to get downstairs once we said 'go'!

The boys ran straight to their stockings, while Lily just stood and looked, not sure what to do. I brought her the stocking and she immediately began opening the gifts.........it didn't take her long to catch on! Her favorite stocking gift was the Princess band aids. She talked about them for days :)

After the stockings, daddy passed out the gifts from Santa. The kids took turns opening one gift at a time. You're probably wondering how we keep them from just ripping into all of their gifts? They actually do really well taking turns. (we do it quickly) They get really excited to see what their siblings get.

All the kids asked for pillow pets. Alex was very excited to get a frog, as that's his kindergarten class's mascot.

Tyler's favorite animal is a panda so he was very happy with his pillow pet. He also really loved his Zhu Zhu pet and cat piano.

Michael is our funny one opening gifts. He'll get so excited about each gift, that he's not interested in opening any more. We have to push him to keep opening! A real football helmet is what he really wanted from Santa, and it didn't leave his head most of the day!

Lily loves to open gifts, and got equally excited about each one. Her favorites were her Dora doll, microphone, and of course, her princess band aids!

Lily's big gift was a doll house. All the boys helped with this one. (note the helmet!)

Ruben was very excited about his chip clips. He finds these in his stocking almost every year, as chip clips seem to disappear into a black hole in this house!

What???!!! Is that snow??? Could it possibly be a white Christmas?? More to come..........

Playing Kerplunk....one of the kid's new games. I remember playing this with my Dad as a kid, so it was fun to be playing it with my own kids.

We stayed in our pajamas all day, and had such a fun time as a family. Just being with the kids and enjoying their excitement........they are such a blessing to us. And of course, having Lily home and watching her experience her first Christmas was a real joy!

During this time we also think about our extended family spread across the US, Mexico, and the UK. We Love you and miss you all ! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

The kids have been bouncing off the walls all month, and on Christmas eve day they were even more excited as Grandma and Grandpa had arrived, and they knew they would be opening gifts that evening. All day long I heard "Is it time to open presents yet?"!

Earlier in the day we decorated sugar cookies for Santa. Lily wanted to make pink cookies for Santa.
There was a lot of eating of the decorations!

The red tongue gives Tyler away!

The finished product

Late that afternoon, we went to Christmas Eve service at our church. The service ends with the lights dimmed, candles lit, and the singing of Silent Night. It's quite beautiful.

Then it was home for our traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner of tuna spaghetti and anchovy spaghetti...........yum!!

Our family

The kids with Grandmas and Grandpa

After dinner, the kids went out back and put out the reindeer food for Santa's reindeer. They had each made a bag of food earlier in the day.

This is one of my favorite pictures! Isn't it precious?!

Finally...............presents!! The kids opened the gifts they received from their Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles.Lily loves anything to do with her kitchen.

Michael doing his Iron Man moves!

The Hess trucks were a big hit again this year.

Now we'll see how long it takes the kids to go to sleep tonight! :)