Christmas, Round Three

So we did Christmas in Gruver, and at home, and today it was time to do Christmas with my Dad, Deanna, Jered, and Anna Lisa.  Frankly, I'm stuffed on deer summer sausage, and I'm borderline braindead, so I'm going to let the pictures tell the story.

Papa Val, I'm not sure that these particular bows are for our heads......

There is always one present every Christmas, that once it's opened, your kid could give two shits about the rest of the unopened pile.  I present to you this year's winner.

Kadey got some new dress up digs.

Beaster didn't care too much about the goings on.  She just wanted to ham it up.

Buzz Lightyear!!!!!!!

Not sure which of these two was having more fun.

So yeah, maybe Jered and I had more fun with Buzz than Taylor did.  Maybe that's because we weren't sharing......

Pure bliss!   Beaster officially has her very own black eye chair (if you don't remember, when Taylor and Kadey got theirs two years ago, both scored black eyes in the process of climbing them within a week).  Now we can stop hiding Taylor's since they each have their own.

Princess Marida, or in a few years, we can recycle the bow and call her Katniss Everdeen.

The Alligator queen.

Hooray!  We now have dueling chairs!

So that's it!  Christmas is (finally) officially over!  Can I get a woot-woot? And even better, just 3 more days til January 2, which is the official end of the holidays.  So glad we survived another year, and even happier that we have 12 months before we have to do it again.

Christmas 2012

Thank God, it's finally over.  This has been one of the most hellacious Christmas seasons I can remember us ever having as a family.  For the last two weeks, we've all taken multiple turns being deathly ill, I made and even shipped a bajillion cake balls, my house is utterly destroyed (and I have not even a tenth of the energy required to clean it), and I'm so sick of spending money it's not even funny.  But again, we survived, the kids had a great time seeing their family in Gruver, and we had a blast watching them truly enjoy the concept of Christmas presents for the first time.  

We started our festivities in Gruver with Jody's family.  Every year his 93 year old grandmother puts on the Christmas shindig (and yes, she actually does most of the work involving the prep and cooking by herself).  This year, mainly since Jody's mom was laid up with a broken hand, I had the distinct honor of assisting Mary Jo in the kitchen.  She put me to work, I sweated my shirt soaking wet (older ladies tend to like their homes nice and roasty I've noticed), and I didn't even get reprimanded more than once!  In case you were wondering what my offense was, I may have overfilled the corn muffin cups.  Anyhoo, we had a great time, and so did the kiddos.

Mary Jo with all of her great-grandkids (minus one), and her great-GREAT grandbaby too.  And in case you were wondering, Ava is wearing one of Mary Jo's latex dish gloves.

Mary Jo flipping me the hook for screwing up the corn muffins, lol!  

Ava may be a bit infatuated with Grandpa.  Or as Joe says, she's trying to be the sole heir to his inheritance.

After a long day in Gruver, followed by a long drive home, Jody and I got to work getting the girls' presents wrapped and under the tree.  Number one, I HATE wrapping presents.  Number two, I was utterly exhausted and feeling shit-tastic.  So, the presents may have been lumpy looking, and some had a few holes patched with bows.  Who cares, they were destroyed within five minutes anyway.  Oh, and Wonder Mom here also happened across all of the girls' birthday money (still in the cards) while rummaging through the closet for gift bags after I ran out of paper.  Nice work.  Oh well, between that stash and the Christmas money they received, Jody and I plan on opening up savings accounts on their behalf.  

This one took some convincing to get up today.  It was the promise of bacon for breakfast, not presents, that finally lured her out.

Ava had a blast being allowed to tear stuff up.

Daddy's girl.

Remember those "dress me" dolls that teach kids how to do buttons etc?  Apparently they don't exist anymore, so you have to settle for wooden puzzles that do the same thing.

And the number one Christmas present this year?  Markers.  A $2 box of Crayola markers.  Which have already been confiscated for the offense of "redecorating" Ava's high chair.

Sick and Tired

For some odd reason, my kids are having a hell of a time staying well this holiday season.  So far, we've had the stomach but a total of four times in the last two weeks, and Ava's had some sort of hellacious virus that caused her temperature to skyrocket on two separate occasions, and has kept her on breathing treatments for two weeks now.  Jody and I have been trying to take turns calling in with the girls, but it seems the minute we get one healthy enough to return to daycare, the other one takes a turn for the worse again. 

Yesterday afternoon when Jody went to pick the kids up, he was informed that Taylor had just thrown up.  Great.  After he got them both home, Taylor puked again.  Not to be outdone, Ava had 3 bouts of diarrhea within 20 minutes of my arriving home.  So, needless to say we did the disinfection dance again.  This morning they both seemed rather puny, but all digestive outbursts seemed to be ok enough to let them return to school (I really didn't want to send them at all, but Jody and I have missed so much work this month, that we really felt like our hands were tied.).  WRONG.  I got the call at 10:30 that Ava was having colonic pyrotechnics again, and Taylor wasn't doing anything but laying her head down on her desk.  *Sigh*

So here I sit, thankfully in an already cleaned house, while my two sick babies try and sleep.  I'm just hoping they're over it enough by Monday to go to family Christmas in Gruver.  In the meantime, I've decided that they are going to stay at home (via some creative measures, and the help of my awesome niece Kaylee) and rest up until then. 

Beaster hams it up even though she feels (and smells) like shit.

Taylor crashed almost immediately after I got her in the car.  

I Still Hate Winter

How much longer to spring already??????  I am already sick and tired of being cooped up in this house.  I know the kids are feeling it too, because besides acting like completely wild-ass banshees, they keep getting sick.  Our doctor's office personnel knows us by sight nowadays, and I'm pretty sure they have our particular pharmacy on speed dial.  So, what does one do to try and help these kids burn off some pent up energy?  Well, for starters, I let Taylor "fix my hair." 

Thankfully, she doesn't know how to properly maneuver a rubber band yet.  

So, instead of any wild ponytails, I just got my hair pulled all to hell for about half an hour.

Oh well, she enjoyed it, and it wasn't too terribly painful for me either.

Beaster could care less, she just wants to terrorize her sister.

Aside from playing beauty shop, Taylor has become rather infatuated with our Christmas tree.  As you can see, she and Ava have taken to regularly "redecorating" it.  This folks, is why I don't spend very much money on a tree, ornaments, or a topper.  

Ghetto fabulous suits our needs just fine, thank you.

The master in action.

So, spring is only what, three or four months away?  I'm already counting down.  At least I'll get to put the damn tree up and set my house back in to it's usual state of dishevelment soon.  

December........

Oh winter, how I have NOT missed you.We are the type of family that prefers to at least have the option to run around outside.  When it's cold outside and we're all cooped up, no one has a very good day.  So, we make due however we can.  Taylor has taken to trying to skip her naps, you can see how that pans out by 5:00:

Crash!  It's amazing what a movie in Mommy and Daddy's room can do.

Ava is being her beasterly self:

I take a nap, and I'm still a shit head, Bwahahahahaha!!!!

And when all else fails, take your cabin fever out on the furniture.  Also, Taylor was giving you all a good look at her tonsils, in case anyone was concerned as to their well being.

I'm still losing the hair battle with Beaster, this is my latest attempt to keep it out of her face, and to keep all rubber bands intact by school time.

Six rubber bands, and she still managed to pull the front right sprig loose and look like Bill Murray by the time we arrived at daycare.

Ava demonstrates how to properly terrorize our stockings.  This was taken exactly 30 seconds after I had them up out of the box.

Me, "Taylor, go sit by the tree and smile!"  Instead, she looks like she's popping a squat.

"Taylor, Ava, go stand by the tree and smile!"  Yeah, not so much.......

Friday at Gigi's

This year Jody had his annual work Christmas party, which means we had our annual evening to pawn off the kids on my parents.  Thankfully, Gigi and Papa Val were happy to watch our rugrats for a whole evening (despite the fact that neither one seemed to have it in them to sleep late Saturday morning).  These pics were taken by my step-mom, Deanna, Saturday morning.  As you can see, she had her hands a bit full, and we're still SO thankful she and my dad agreed to keep the turd princesses at all!

Sure, my mom says I sleep 'til 8:00 on weekends, but I'm going to go ahead and wake up in full ornery mode at 5:30.  Rawr!!!!!!

And yes, Taylor found Gigi's lipstick while she had her back turned.  I am told this was taken AFTER she was cleaned up, apparently, she coated everything from her hands to the bottoms of her shoes.  Again, kudos to Gigi for her patience and for the lipstick casualty, lol!

Angel Breakfast

At Taylor and Ava's daycare they host an annual "Angel Breakfast," kind of an opportunity to showcase the older kiddos and the stuff they learn.  Plus, we use a Lutheran church daycare, so they also go through the birth of Jesus, etc.  Either way, Taylor has been singing "Jingle Bells," and "Do You Hear What I Hear," nonstop for about three weeks now in preparation.  So, Jody and I decided to drag ourselves out of bed early today and go to daycare on a Saturday so that Taylor could have her moment in the sun and so that we could document it.  

I should have known we would run into trouble early this morning.  Taylor's morning greeting was, "Good morning Mama!  There's no school today!"  To which I had to reply, "No, but we're going up to the school so we can watch you sing songs."  Enter instant meltdown.  For the life of me, I could not coax her into believing this whole thing was even remotely a good idea.  Right before we took off she finally told me, in tears, "Mama, I don't wanna sing all by myself."  Oh.  Somehow it got lost in translation that she would be up there with her homies, and she thought she would be expected to sing in front of the crowd all by herself.  I totally get that terror.  Or, well, I used to.  Now, give me a microphone on karaoke night, and the world better watch out.  

Anyhoo, we got up to daycare, and after a lot of bribery, and some baby-snatching courtesy of Taylor's favorite teacher, we managed to at least get her in the vicinity of the other kids.

Ta-da!  This is the only pic I got before she saw me, broke down, and ran for my lap.  After that, no amount of bribery would get her back up there.

But I guess the important thing is that we went, and we tried.  And I didn't force Taylor to get back up there, no matter how badly it pained me to not see her really sing all these songs I just get snippets of at bathtime.

And on the ride home, they were both in an entertaining mood.

Amazing how being out of the spotlight brings the ham back out.

Ham-Beast!

Thanksgiving 2012

As per tradition, we once again made our annual trek to Ft. Worth for a weekend of family festivities.  Frankly, I am half brain dead from driving, so I don't have a whole lot of wit to contribute to this post.  But I know you just come for the pictures anyhow, so I'll let them do the talking.

Wednesday we were blessed with beautiful weather, so the kids spent the day outside.  Lovie helped Taylor bone up on her boxing skills,

followed by some wrestling tutorials.

Yes, I had pinkeye again.  Hence no makeup.  Beaster also discovered the joys of orange juice.  Kid survived on juice for almost three days solid because she decided that eating actual food was beneath her.

The girls LOVE their aunts Lauren and Rachel, thanks again guys for being such good sports while my kids played the role of your shadows! 

Taylor also learned a new "trick."  I know you're thoroughly impressed.

Sadly, this is the only picture I have from Thanksgiving day.  Everyone was zonked out after lunch at my uncles' house in Paris.  I would have taken more, but Jody and I were mostly wrangling kids outside.  It was better than risking having to clean up (or replace) anything expensive that they might have broken inside the house, lol!

Black Friday!  Poppy and Daddy attempted the door busters at Cabela's, only to drive away once they saw how long the line was.  Instead, Poppy brought back donuts and made this little girl very happy.

Later that afternoon, Lovie broke out the gingerbread house kits.  Notice the sprinkles all around Taylor's face?  Yeah, that's because she spent the majority of the time licking her house after we decorated it.

At least all that gingerbread didn't go to waste.....

Lauren was the frosting pro out of all of us, her houses looked great!

Poppy, you're in my shot.

After all the excitement, it was back home at a very early 5:00 a.m. on Saturday.  As I write this, both kids are zonked out for a nap. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!