We wish you a Merry Christmas

Christmas morning is such a blast at our house. The kids are so excited to see if Santa came. I guess they have a little doubt since they are not the best behaved. The paper gets ripped and me and Chino spend the morning cutting toys from boxes. It is such a pain to get those toys out of the boxes. Every appendage is held down with twist ties. Then you have to find where the batteries go and hope you bought the correct ones. But it is all worth it just to see your child's happy face when they get what they wanted.

Josie no longer lives with us. We now support Hannah Montana instead. Now if only she would smile!

Merry Christmas Eve

We went to Aunt Cathy's house for Christmas Eve. The kids had a great time playing with cousins and opening presents. Juan got a Little People tractor that he lost before we even left that night. So if any one who was there has an extra toy that they picked up on accident, please let me know.

This is the tractor that is MIA.

Shake a tail feather no more!

Tell me, do you notice anything missing? Something a bird of this breed should have?

Yes. Something is definitely missing.

Oh, this bird has no TAIL! "Not Me" has struck again. Poor birdie was the victim, again.

I have information that Josie, aka "Not Me", grabbed the bird by the tail to ketch it. I believe this loosened the tail feathers and they fell out. I am still trying to figure out how no body knew the bird was tailless until this morning, since I found a tail feather in Juan's room today. I have a feeling the kids removed the feathers themselves after they loosened them. But that is just a hunch and I have no proof without a reasonable doubt. Because this really is not at all "reasonable". The only child this bird likes is Gabby. This speaks volumes.

My little monster

Here Juan is sporting his "wife beater". It was a hand me down from cousin Logan.

Could we be looking at a future surgeon?

Cheese!

Oh, Christmas tree

Here is Audi modeling our Christmas tree. Only three ornaments have been broken and the only one I cared about I broke myself. With the aid of super glue, Juan's little gingerbread head was as good as new.

Isn't this sweet. Gabby and Josie

Look how short Gabby is in the middle. We have been teasing her because she is a short little flaca. Which means skinny. The other two have more than 10 pounds on her. Juan will pass her up soon. Well, maybe not too soon. I am amazed at their height differences. Audi was the smallest at birth and is now the biggest. Josie was the biggest at birth and now comes in second. Gabby moved from the middle to the end. Who knew then how they would change. I am excited to see what comes next!

Juan and Josie playing miniature gulf.

Audi and Gabby getting balloon animals. The girls are holding their ears because the balloons kept popping.

My company had a Lunch with Santa. It was free and it was a blast. We had good food, desserts, games and activities, a picture with Santa and each kid got a book as a gift. Not bad for a free event.

Bird bath

I recently discovered that our little bird enjoys a nice bath now and again. I put him in the bowl with a little water and he splashes around and enjoys a few drinks. The girls find it disgusting that he drinks his bath water. Little do they remember drinking their our a time or two.

After his bath I put him in his penthouse suite next to his heater. I don't want the little fellow to check a cold.

Another fun filled weekend.

We had an interesting weekend as usual. We went to the craft store and I was very generous and let the girls each get a foam easy to assemble little house, such as the gingerbread house below. The instructions said "follow the pictures". There were three pictures. The first assembled, the second decorated and the third with glitter added. So you can understand what a big help the instructions were. So me and the girls and Carly (did I mention that Carly spent the night?) assembled these houses the best we could. The gingerbread house was the only one that did not crumble when picked up to be move. It is now, of course, in several pieces that will eventually make their way to the trash. What a waste of money. I should have hired an architech to do the assembly because my accounting background did not help at all.

See how the front room falls forward. I could not figure out how to put the little roof on to save my life!

The kids always want to play outside, no matter what the temperature. They were running around with brooms, sticks, and rakes yelling "CHARGE". They would run accross the yard stop and then run back. I didn't understant the game but it sure tired out the kids. Especially since they were up until 1:00 a.m. then I kinda woke them by 7:30 a.m. It was an accident, I couldn't sleep so I got up to play on the computer.

Juan lost his bed to his sister Audi. He had been sleeping on the couch and the girls fight and talk and play and fight in their room, so I put Audi in Juan's room so she could get some sleep. Maybe she will stop sleeping at school!

Christmas card photo contest

Would any of these make a good Chrismas card? Please vote for your favorite.

number 1

number 2

number 3

number 4

number 5

number 6 - keep trying for a better picture

The winner is number 3 and will be arriving to you by mail, if I have your address. Thank you for voting!

I am thankful for my children..........usually.

We went to my mom's on Thanksgiving. But before we did I took Audi to urgent care. She had been coughing for a couple weeks and that morning she was throwing up. I thought it was an asthma attach. It wasn't. She has upper respiratory congestion and apparently an ear infection. So she was well medicated before going to mom's. Gabby's eyes got red and itchy, but other than that well all did pretty good. Juan was taught how to throw stuffed animals off the catwalk in the loft. Audi kept asking where all the other children were. And great Grammy had fun watching the chaos that children create. I did very little. Mom and Brydie did the clean-up and played with the kids. It was quite relaxing for me.

I don't remember why Audi was upset here. I thought it was cute that Juan had his arms on the counter like everybody else.

This jar is full of lady bugs. They come into mom's house by the hundreds to keep warm. They die from lack of food and mom sweeps up the little body's. They girls had a great time finding them. They wanted to bring them home but we couldn't since the bird is allergic. We let them go outside. I am sure they will make their way back into mom's house.

And for this I am thankful.

Knitting hats

I have done a little more knitting. Here are two of the hats that I have done. I am finishing a yellow duck hat for Audi. I need some orange yarn for the bill. Right now we call it the "yellow frog hat". Gabby wants a camel hat. Any ideas on how to do that?

This is the green frog hat. I think I did pretty good considering I made it up as I went.

How do you get syrup off a bird?

The answer is warm water. Lots of warm water. Like hold the bird under a stream of warm water in the bathroom sink and soak him to the bone and rub him until the sticky is gone. Now you may be wondering why I have the knowledge of "how to get syrup off a bird". Well, I have four kids and a husband that does not pay attention to said kids while babysitting. (Can a parent babysit their own children? Hmmm...that is a question for another day) So anyway, at least two little heads got together and syrup was brought into the living room and syrup was poured onto the birds back. The next natural question is "WHY!?". Well nobody seems to be able to answer that question. This is the mind of a six year old we are talking about. And it is even worse when two or more six year old brains get together unsupervised. The strangest thing is that when I called the Bird Store to ask them how to remove the syrup from the bird, they did not seem surprised at my questioning. Kinda like it was a question they heard everyday. So now we are all a little wiser.

Juan enjoyed holding the bird until Nibbles bit his ear.

Josie is doing better with the bird. Well, that was until the syrup incident. Now she is grounded from the bird. (Along with Audi, big surprise)

Full weekend

After the bird purchase (see below), we met up with Tom and Joy and family for dinner at Bandana's. We invited Carly to sleep over. The girls were up until around 1:00 am. Then Chino showed up unexpectedly around 5:00 am from Iowa. Then the kids were up at 8:00 am. So you can guess how much sleep I got. I don't think Juan got too much sleep either, considering he slept under the girls bed. We had a great time playing outside on Sunday. Riding the little cars, swinging, riding scooters and climbing trees. Gabby actually was the one climbing. Which she does often. She did wear tennis shoes for a change, but she wore a silky dress as usually. Juan climbed a little. He wanted me to put him up high with Gabby! I don't have children, I have monkeys!

Then after Carly left Abuelo showed up and Tia China with family. We had a little BBQ/wiener roast. Our fire pit has really come in handy. The kids crashed hard and fast when they went to bed!