Pudding pie and brownies

Today the kids are outside in the backyard "making pudding pie and brownies", which are apparently created by dumping dirt into the water collected in the upside-down shell of the turtle sandbox and stirring it around with old paintbrushes :) They're certainly enjoying themselves though and it's bath night tonight anyway. Plus, this way the inside of the house stays clean! Everybody wins :)







For those of you who haven't heard, I'm going in for surgery next Tuesday. My doctor found a mass in my right ovary and is removing it. It looks like a dermoid, which is benign and is what I had removed in 2001. This one is only 1/4 the size of the last one, so that's good :) They are operating laproscopically, so it will just be out patient. Fidelity will give Rob up to two weeks off with full pay so he can stay home and take care of the kids while I recover and Christy is taking the day off work so Rob can be at the surgical center with me :) Honestly, I'm not horribly concerned about the surgery. I'm sure it will be fine.

Other than that, we are doing well :) Meg is enjoying being back in school. Kylie, Beth, Jack and I are taking it easy for the most part. We've come up with a new name for Jack - Destructo-boy - he can decimate a room in under a minute when the conditions are right! Boys are SOOOO different from girls! Jack just gets into so much more trouble than the girls ever did! We're going to have to go out and buy some cheap sets of silverware because he's been throwing ours away (we got it as a wedding present from one set of Rob's grandparents). We have to make sure Jack's forks are all plastic because he now stabs the table with the prongs of the fork when he has metal ones. He knocked a chair over on Beth last week and she now looks like she was on the losing end of a fist fight. The bridge of her nose is horribly swollen and all black and blue. We finally had to tie the doors of the library shut as Jack has been pulling every book he can reach off the shelves. He has figured out how to open child locks and loves to play with the mixer. He pulls chairs over to the tables and counters and climbs up on them when I'm not looking. He dumps his food on the table to splash in it and eats with such gusto that his food almost always ends up on his head, his clothes and everywhere else. It is just a completely different world than it was with the girls. He is such a cutie though and we are so glad we have him!!!

We had a wonderful Christmas, albeit a busy one. My whole family came down, as did Rob's sister, Becca, so we ended up with 15 people here. Fortunately some of them were able to stay at Christy's house, so we had plenty of beds. It was wonderful to finally have everyone here as Travis has been gone for the last two Christmases serving his mission. We missed being able to see the rest of Rob's family, but we were glad Becca was here!

Tomorrow is Beth's 3rd birthday. We had a family party for her on New Year's Eve so that my family could be there (unfortunately Becca had to leave shortly after Christmas) and are going out tonight for dinner. Beth wants to go to Cici's Pizza, so it looks like we'll be heading there. We gave her the present from us, which was a doll stroller, high chair and carseat. She loves playing with dolls. She missed moving up into Sunbeams this year (the youngest class in our church's children's program) by 8 days, but that means she will get to spend a full year in nursery with Jack, who will be old enough to go to nursery in just a few weeks. This is the first time we have ever had a child go into nursery (the church class for 18 months - 3 years old) without being weeks away from delivering another baby. It's kind of weird!

I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday season!