Fashionista

 I came upstairs to help Aubrey do her hair before preschool this morning, and I found her wearing this.

I could see that she had carefully chosen each piece of this ensemble (those are two different shirts she's wearing), and while a part of me wanted to make her go change, it WAS weather appropriate, and I knew I should leave her be, so I did... after I took her picture and texted some friends. :)  I fixed her hair in a fancy braid and ponytail, and she was so pleased. She's a "free spirit," as her Grandma M. put it, and I love that about her. It may drive me nuts in the coming years (I'm not exactly a "free spirit" myself), but it's who she is, and she sure did look cute today.

Some things I don't want to forget and one that I do

The one I would like to forget: lice, lots of lice in Kari's thick hair. Ick, ick, ick. Yes, I panicked and scared my daughter and husband. Thankfully, no one else in the family got it, likely thanks to the fact that Kari is so careful to always puts her stuff away in her own room right when she gets home from school--nothing ever out of place. We took care of it (many hours of combing), and we're done with that for now. We figure it must have come from school. I will be on high alert for a while because I do NOT want to do that again anytime soon.

I want to remember Grant and Aubrey buddying up and playing My Little Pony and all kinds of Aubrey-led games. He plays ponies with Aubrey and Star Wars with Joel--very adaptable little brother.
I want to remember Grant's cute little voice (must video more). He's talking all the time, telling us all about how he feeling about everything. I have a difficult time refusing his requests when he asks in his sweet, polite voice and says please with no "l."
I want to remember this often repeated request: "Mommy, p'ease snuggoo wid me."  It won't be long before he no longer has a desire to snuggle with his mama, so I can't refuse. When he storms into our room in the middle of the night, door banging against the wall, and peeks his head over the side of our bed, saying there are monsters in his room and, "P'ease snuggoo wid you," I pull him up into our bed.  He burrows in, falls asleep, and then I carry him back to his bed. It won't last forever.

I want to remember what Aubrey said when I told the kids the Moffat family Disneyland trip was postponed. There were a few tears from the eldest but after we talked through all the positives of waiting until next fall and the reasons (the main reason being Aunt Michelle is having a baby and can't travel @ 8 months pregnant), they calmed down and accepted the reality of the situation. Aubrey got a little smile on her face and said, "They have too much babies!" That made us all laugh. We have the same amount of "babies" that they'll have! Silly girl. :)

I want to remember this strange little accent Aubrey has developed. We have no idea where it came from. Sometime she sounds English, and sometimes she sounds like she's from the East Coast. It's funny.

I want to remember the smile on Joel's face when he's completed a Lego project and when he's finished a difficult level/part on Star Wars Kinect.  I want to remember the big brother smile he has when Grant is wrestling with him, jumping on him, hanging on him, and "hi-YAH!"ing him like a crazy little man. Joel's a wonderful big brother to Grant.

I want to remember the way Grant can fall asleep anywhere, when he's tired. The last photo was taken at 4pm yesterday. He fell asleep sitting up. He's starting to drop his nap but can't quite make it through a day without any sleep, so he often falls asleep late in the day, which means he's up late that night, even if it's just a 15 minute snooze. The pictures below are from a night last week when Grant was literally running in circles at 9:15pm. He stripped down to his nite time pull-up and ran for probably 15 minutes straight.  Some of his happiest times of the day are after 8pm. All the other kids are upstairs in bed, and he's hanging out with us downstairs until our bedtime. We're more tired than he is! It's in the evenings that I most often hear, "Mommy, p'ease snuggoo wid me!" Greg says he's been displaced. :) It's temporary, my love, just temporary displacement. If Grant can make it til 6:30pm, he's down for the night, so that's what we're working toward.

Birthday Weekend for Joel

Joel didn't just get a birthDAY; he got a birthday WEEKEND. Lots of celebrating going on for this just-turned-7-year-old. Being the center of attention and having super high expectations can make birthday parties a little stressful for a guy like Joel, and he had a couple typical near-tears birthday-boy-Joel moments but got through them and really did have a great time celebrating with his friends. :) He's got some great friends who made him feel very special.

We had a big party Friday night that started with me picking up six elementary school kids from school in our van and heading to JJ Jump where we met up with more friends and their families for a wild and crazy jump/run around time. Joel finally worked up the nerve to give the big harness swing thing a try at the very end of our time there. We were so glad he did, otherwise he probably would have regretted not doing it and been very sad later.  I was so intently watching, though, that I forgot to take his picture when he was up there. He had a great big grin on his face when he was done with his turn. He liked it. :) The kids had a blast jumping and expending a bunch of energy, then we piled back into cars and headed to our house for pizza, presents, and dessert.

Love that smile!



16 kids in our house! (Miles didn't get in the photo)

Saturday morning was Joel's breakfast with Grandpa. He was so excited, he woke up way too early (the clock had a 4 in front), stayed in bed for a while, and got up at 5:30am.  

Sunday was Joel's real birthday. He enjoyed being sung to at church in Sunday school and getting to wear a birthday crown.  We had his family party that afternoon. He requested a "lego" theme, so I did my best to oblige. We played some Lego bingo, which Greg did a great job of "calling." He had a different voice/saying for every Lego character. :) Joel loved all his presents. His reaction to the monkey card from G&G Moffat was hilarious. The silly monkey's grin on the front of the card struck Joel's funny bone; he couldn't stop giggling, which made the rest of us laugh, too. Joel was one happy birthday boy, and it sure was fun to watch him enjoy his day. Love that big little guy!

Fun with a box

Isn't it amazing what kids can do with a box? My dad brought this copier machine box over with a little flap door cut out, calling it a "2 hour babysitter." It did occupy them for hours and for multiple days, too. It's still hanging around, three days later. They turned it into a house, complete with duct taped roof and curtains for the window. Greg says next year for Christmas we're getting four large boxes and a roll of duct tape for each. :)

Family update: We might finally be done with the stomach bug now and all other illnesses for quite a while, I hope. I did finally succumb, the last to fall, and it was brutal, but it's OVER, and I'm back to feeling like myself again. This last month has been a little rough, going from strep throat to the never-ending plague with an extra little cold virus thrown in just for fun. I am looking forward to going to church this weekend--haven't been for the last three weeks! I got well just in time to work on party planning for Joel's birthday this weekend. Party#1 is this afternoon with his friends. I'm picking up six kids from school in a couple hours and driving them all to JJ Jump where we'll be meeting up with more friends to play before coming back to our house for some pizza, presents, and cake and ice cream. It's gonna be a wild and crazy time!

I'm a sucker for "reading" pictures

This was from way back in mid-December (we are now a binkie-free household!), but I had to post it. Aubrey was reading the Christmas story to Grant and Russell, and they were all just too cute together.

Sad Christmas Day and the one photo I took the rest of the break

Aubrey had just stopped puking a couple hours earlier and wasn't feeling well, so we moved present opening to the other room where she was stationed on the couch. Looks like fun, doesn't it?

It snowed for a couple hours on New Year's Eve--so exciting! We let the kids go outside our quarantined house to get some fresh air and enjoy being in the snow while it fell since we knew it wouldn't stay this time.

Happy Christmas Eve (pre-plague)

opening his Schleich bears

excited about the helicopter

in love with Caroline already

so pleased with her new big bike

opening the family gift--Xbox with Kinect (and the last photo with a binkie in Grant's mouth--took them away two days ago. I actually snipped off the tips, so now they're "broken." No turning back!)

The whole crew. We were glad Blake's girlfriend, Lindsay, was able to join us for Christmas Eve.

 

Another Christmas with The Plague (quite possibly the Norovirus)

I went back to last year's blog post about our Christmas to try to determine which year was worse, this year or last. It's a toss-up (like my pun?). Last year the sickness started a few days before Christmas and ended before New Year's. This year it started Christmas Eve and, so far, has gone on for 11 days with a few days of "wellness" mixed in here and there.  We may or may not be done. I haven't gotten it yet!

Aubrey was the first to fall victim. She woke up at 10:30pm Christmas Eve with severe diarrhea for a few hours and then added vomiting for a few more hours. We didn't get any sleep that night. Christmas Day was very, very sad. Aubrey had to miss out on the Moffat family gathering. Several members of our family shed tears that morning. She and I stayed home while the rest of the family went over to Grandpa and Grandma's house with the great-grandparents and all the aunts, uncles, and cousins. Two days later Greg got it, and he was down for two days. Three days after that, Joel got it. It was Sunday, and we decided we'd better all stay home from church to keep our germs to ourselves. Turns out, that was a good decision because Grant wasn't feeling so hot that afternoon, and the next day (New Year's Eve) Kari wasn't feeling well and had some tummy trouble.  Grandma and Grandma M, who had both gotten the plague earlier in the week, came over so Greg and I could go out and see Les Miserables, which we thoroughly enjoyed (didn't love Russell Crowe's singing, but Anne Hathaway's, along with the rest of the cast's more than made up for it, we decided). After the movie, they stayed and played cards with us until New Year's east coast time at 9pm. We had some sparkling cider with the kids, said good-bye to G&G, and went to bed.

Greg went back to work after New Year's Day, and we thought we were done with illness, but then Aubrey got it AGAIN. I don't know why or how, but she did, and it was bad--up most of the night again.  She was miserable; we were exhausted and just plain cranky.  Aubrey was on the floor in our room. We'd changed her bedding multiple times already and kept encouraging her to use the bucket. We'd hear her start to stir, and Greg and I would both say, "Bucket, use the bucket."  One time, we just said, "Bucket!" in unison. It sounds funny now, but there was nothing funny about it...until about 3am when, after throwing up for the fourth time and still leaning over the bucket, Aubrey, in a dramatic yet pitiful little voice said,"I just can't take any more of this!" That struck my funny bone, and I had to turn away to hide my giggles. I chuckled about it off and on the rest of the night and thanked God for returning my sense of humor. Apparently, she could take more, because she did. Poor thing!

So, Christmas break/Greg's vacation was a bit of a bust. We didn't get to go out and do fun things as a family. We didn't get to see any of our friends. We didn't get to go play in the snow when they went up to the mountain. However, we have spent a lot of time at home together as a family, and a lot of that time has been good. Those of us who were well have played board games, played games on the new Xbox Kinect, worked on puzzles, read books, and watched movies and shows on Netflix together. I had time, in between massive loads of laundry, to organize the post-Christmas chaos, sort toy bins and closets, and just get things in order for the new year. That always feels good. The kids don't go back to school until Monday, so we're hoping for a good, healthy weekend together. We'll see if we get it!