Tis the Season

Mmm... I love Christmas. It's so fun in so many ways. Anyway... here are my munchkins playing with Josh before bed last night. I love it that Maddie is old enough to play along now.

And here are the munchkins before church this morning. It's so hard to get a picture of them both looking at the camera. It doesn't help that I was too close and the pictures are overexposed. Sorry. It's what I've got.

Have a great day!

Sick Day

Oh the joy of childhood stomach bugs. Caleb was sick for a week straight. I've cleaned up more vomit and diarrhea in the past few days than any person should be subjected to. (Although in the interest of fairness, Josh has done his share of clean-up duty.) It didn't help that somewhere in the middle of all this I came down sick too. Luckily, Josh and my wonderful in-laws took care of the munchkins (nasty stuff and all) so I could recuperate.

After the first night of stripping his bed every time he got sick, Caleb was moved to a sick bed. Luckily we still have his old crib mattress, (which is plastic covered) so we put it right in his doorway. (Which is conveniently located next to the bathroom.) We lined the hallway with towels, (who wants to scrub carpets at three in the morning?) and hunkered down for a week of feeling cranky. Today is the first day he's really acting normal again. Here you can see his new independence shining through. He's liked to pick out his clothes for quite a while now, but he always wants help getting dressed. After a minor milk catastrophe at lunch I told him to go pick out a new outfit. He came back looking like this. Notice the fashionable striped shirt (that he put on all by himself!!) combined with the Cars pajama pants, and the mismatched socks. This boy doesn't like it if his socks are the same color. He was so very proud of himself... and I'm proud of him too! It's about time he started dressing himself a little more often.
Due to the same milk catastrophe, Madeline needed a new outfit as well. (It was a wide spread bovine juice event.) I told Caleb that he could pick Maddie's clothes, too. Here's what he decided on. His explanation went something along the lines of, "Maddie needs a cars shirt, but she has to wear pink pants so she's a girl." Apparently wearing the pink pants makes her a girl. Good to know.

Have a fashion-tastic day!

The Problem of the Christmas Tree...

Okay... so how do I protect this... from these???
Answer: the barricade system.

Caleb is old enough not to break anything on purpose, but Maddie just likes to take the shiny things off the tree and eat them.

And here's the ornament Caleb picked out for Madeline:

And here's the one he picked for himself. Cars... naturally.

Have a Christmas-tastic day!

Highlights From Branson

After a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, we loaded up the kids with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed off to Branson. Spirits were high.... but only because the kids didn't have a clue how long they'd be stuck in the car. hehehe. They handled it remarkably well.
They could have been distracted by the one lane bridges we had to pass over. I didn't think quickly enough to get a shot of the first (and cooler-looking) one of the two we went over. The i-phone had interesting ideas about what the shortest route to Branson would be. It would suffice to say we were on the scenic route.

Early Saturday morning we headed out to the outlet malls. Caleb, toast in hand, was chipper and up for adventure.

Maddie, with a decided lack of toast, was not so chipper. Thankfully she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion in her stroller while we shopped.

I have to admit I took almost no pictures of Silver Dollar City. I was too busy stroller wrangling on all the steep inclines. It was a nice workout. That's probably a good thing when I consider the yummy fried park food (funnel cakes, anyone?) that I ate. Here's Caleb watching Wild Fire from the observation deck.

And here's Maddie running amok on the observation deck.

If you look on the second row... left hand side... you'll see Cassandra and Nathan. Their presence is the only reason Josh and I were able to ride anything at all.

Here are my men taking a well deserved break. You've gotta give props to a theme park that sells milk.

Me and my Maddie girl.

A photo op with some handy snowmen.

This cracks me up because I have pictures of me in the same jail.

Caleb wanted to sit on the rocking horse... until it started rocking. Notice the little black strap running from Caleb to Josh? It was a life saver. It's one of those baby leashes (that I swore I would never use) that velcros to Caleb's wrist. It kept him from dashing into the crowds at the park when he saw something neat to look at... which was often. He's pretty good at staying with us, but it was very, very crowded. It was also very dark after the sun set. The park lights are pretty dim because everything is covered with Christmas lights. I can't tell you the peace of mind it brought on the occasions when one adult was watching both kids.

Here's Caleb decorating his own Christmas cookie. And that's really the last of the pictures I have from the park. Sad, I know. We watched the light parade (from the front row) before we left. I think the kids really enjoyed the park.

Here we are on the (normal... totally near civilization) way home. Yeah. We ignored the iphone and went the marked way home.

Yeah. Everyone was all smiles until Caleb threw up all over himself. Oh well. Something had to happen, right?

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend! Now let's get ready for Christmas...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ah... Sleep

So. I'm tired. It's my fault. I went with some of the girls (and about a hundred rabid teenage girls decked out in their Twilight tee shirts and pajama pants) to see New Moon last night... or technically early this morning... at 12:22 a.m. I finally got to bed somewhere after three in the morning. Somehow the sleep gods smiled on me, and my beautiful children slept until seven this morning. (Imagine heavenly voices singing "La".)

Tonight when I was tucking Caleb into bed, he looked at me and said, "Momma, I need more friends in my bed." He was holding his puppy... The Puppy... but he wanted more. So we went through a rigorous selection process and found a couple of new companions. Meet bear I and bear II. This is fairly monumental. Caleb has never shown any interest in stuffed animals other than Puppy before. I think it's cute. I couldn't really get a sleeping picture of Caleb without one of Maddie. Please ignore the hand-me-down Caleb pajamas. Thank you.
I love that my kids love reading. The best part is that they'll sit together and look at books. Sometimes Caleb will "read" her stories that he's memorized.

And sometimes Maddie plays with soda insulator coozie things.

Hey... nobody said blog posts require a graceful narrative flow. I can throw in a non sequitur with the best of 'em. You're allowed to ramble when you're tired, right?

Conversations with Madeline

So Maddie walked (yes walked!) up to me this moring and said, "eat-ah kkk." Which translates into "eat milk." I'm counting that as her first sentence... because I can. :-) I keep finding it so amazing how different our two kids are. When Caleb was little bitty he said "drink" for everything he wanted to eat or drink... as in, "drink cheerios," or something. Now Madeline says "eat" for everything she wants to eat or drink. Too cute.

Conversations with Caleb

I told Caleb that he could pick a piece of Halloween candy after lunch. This was the conversation after he broke some kind of world record for speed eating:


Caleb: (mouth still partially full) Momma, can I have candy now?
Me: Yes. After you chew your food.
Caleb: (sorting through the candy) This one's from Grandma. This one's from Grammie. This one's from FaFa. This one's from the guys. I need these.
Me: No, you only need one.
Caleb: (in an exasperated voice) Momma, it's gotta be fair.


I was trying very hard not to laugh. I'm not sure where he's suddenly getting the concept of keeping things fair, but he was determined to eat one from everybody. Unfortunately, he had to settle for just one... a mini hershey's bar... from Grandma's house... he was very specific.

Happy Halloween!

Playing Around

For some reason our entry table is fascinating to the kids... especially Madeline. I think it's because the bottom shelf is the perfect height that she can crawl up to it, pull up, and crawl right onto it.
You can find her there several times throughout the day. It doesn't matter how many times I get her right back off. (I'm afraid that between the two of them they'll break the shelf.)

But it makes her so happy. I just had to get some pictures.

Have a shelf-tastic day!