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!