O Christmas Tree

We always buy and decorate our Christmas tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This year the kids did such a magnificent job on their Saturday chores that we decided to get Chinese food for dinner as well! It took us a while to get everything done and everyone ready.

Beth and Eva decided to be headband twins ~

Megan, Kylie, and Laura read Calvin and Hobbs while waiting for everyone to be ready ~

We always get our tree at Home Depot. They have the best prices. We always get a 5'-6' Fraiser Fir as they are the cheapest. We put or Christmas tree up in our climbing structure so it won't get knocked over by children or pets, so we can't get one taller than 6ft or it won't fit. One nice thing about getting a shorter tree is that it fits in the back of our minivan, even with all eight of us in the minivan. Have I mentioned that I love my minivan? :)

We texted Kiki as we left to pick up the Chinese food and she joined us just as we got home. She even brought cupcakes!

After dinner, Rob, Megan, and I set up the tree while Laura hung out with Kiki and Beth.

Kylie and Eva played on Kiki's phone ~

Rob and I put on the lights and the tinsel, then we let the kids decorate it. This year I got to pick what color lights we used. I always want multicolored lights and silver tinsel. Rob prefers a solid color - usually blue, although he often picks silver tinsel to go with it. We alternate picking the lights and tinsel colors. 

All of our ornaments are kid friendly. They all have ribbon or string instead of metal hooks and most of them are plastic. The kids love redecorating the tree over and over again throughout the month of December, and this way we don't care if they play with the ornaments. Plus it makes packing them up super easy as we just throw them all in a box. Kiki partnered up with Eva this year.

Rob apprehended Kiki's phone while the kids were busy decorating the tree.

Megan's lovely ballerina-tree-decorator pose ~

Laura took a nap on my lap ~

Eva (well Rob really) put up the angel this year. 

Kiki and I had to laugh when the angel was put up. The top branch stuck out a good foot above the tree. I guess it could represent that the angel was really floating above the tree . . .

But we had Rob cut it anyway so the angel fit a bit better. There were two branches at the top and we kept them both, which made the angel fit better as it couldn't wobble. There was an ornament on the smaller branch that Kylie hung so she would have the highest ornament. Rob kept her ornament on that branch and just stuck the angel over it. It's all about details at our house ;) For anyone suffering from OCD, I strongly suggest having 6 children in 10 years. You will give up on being OCD out of desperation :)

The finished tree ~

Megan put on one of Beth's dresses as a shirt and asked me to take her picture taken with her Russian princess ornament ~

Group hug for Kiki before the kids went up to bed and Kiki when home to bed! ~

Thanksgiving

First a few random pictures ~

Kylie, whose behavior constantly reassures me that my children have retained their ability to use their imaginations, dressed in an outfit of her own creation ~

Jack cuddling with Laura ~

Eva with her new cell phone toy ~

This year the kids got an entire week off of school for Thanksgiving break. I don't remember them ever having that much time off before, but I loved it! I love having them home (and not having to get up in the morning)!

We didn't do much. Laura was sick for several days so we took it easy. We did a family night on Monday. After dinner we jumped in the car and went out for ice cream. We sung along to some of our favorite songs on the way to Sonic.Rob had me play a couple of the songs more than once as he loved listening to the kids belt the words out :) Tuesday Beth and I went grocery shopping for last minute Thanksgiving things. Wednesday we made turkeys. We let the kids pick between oreo turkeys and apple turkeys and they decided on apple turkeys.

Jack's finished turkey ~

Eva decided the gumdrops were best on toothpicks, but the apple didn't need any decorations ~

Kylie's finished turkey ~

Beth with her turkey ~

Eva with more gumdrops on toothpicks ~

Megan's finished turkey ~

Kylie's turkey morphed into an "apple man" ~

Beth's turkey decided it couldn't let Kylie's be the only apple man ~

Kylie's apple man developed a facial expression made of toothpicks ~

We had a very laid back Thanksgiving. The older four kids got to watch shows on the roku for several hours, while Eva, Laura, Rob, and I got to nap for a bit :) Our only guests were the missionaries. We really like our current missionaries and had a wonderful time talking with them! One is from SC and plans to be a MFT so we have a lot in common. The other is from an island near the Marshall Islands and is another interesting conversationalist.

This year we sat down as a family and decided what we wanted to include on our menu. We decided on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, spinach salad (with croutons), jello, and pan de queso (Brazilian cheese bread). We kept dessert simple and only had three pies: coconut chess, pumpkin, and chocolate. We had sparkling lemonade and raspberry limeade to drink. Everything turned out really yummy!

Updates

Laura and Eva both had checkups this week. Laura weighed in at 12 lbs 6 oz (70%) and is now 23 1/4 inches long (60%). Although she is perfectly healthy, Dr Robert pointed out that she's running a bit skinny for one of our babies. She still fits into newborn clothing, but it's getting a bit tight. Zero- three months is the next size up and that's a bit loose on her. She's sleeping better most nights, although we still have nights where she's up until 2am. A few nights ago we had one of those nights. She was so happy to be awake and was grinning and grinning and bouncing around. I snapped a photo around 1:30am ~

Eva is up to 26 lbs (50%) and is 33 1/2 inches tall (35%). She's doing great developmentally. She has over 100 words, about 1/3 of what she says is understood by others, and she speaks in sentences. She's also started memorizing letter names and sounds due to our work on starfall. Dr. Robert pointed out that although she's still a little bit bowlegged (most of our kids have been), the position of her feet (slightly pigeon toed) actually makes her a really fast runner. He said it adds 5-10 mph to her top speed.

This didn't surprise us as she routinely chases her brother and sisters down. Last week, Megan was reading a book to Eva. When it was over, she handed the book to Jack (it was Jack's library book). Eva wanted Megan to read it again. She took off after Jack, shooting across the room. Jack, seeing her coming for him, tried to escape, but Eva covered the remaining distance between them in a second, wrapped her arms around Jack's waist, sunk her teeth into his back, and took him down like a cheetah taking down it's prey. Poor Jack! He had a horrible bite on his back and was quite traumatized. Eva got spanked (we don't spank very often - pretty much just for biting or doing something dangerous like running into the road) and put on time out until she apologized to Jack. Rob and I refrained from laughing until after we were out of the room.

Usually Jack and Eva are very good friends. She loves imitating him. I took a few pictures of the two of them playing with shaving cream in the bathtub. Jack was the "white ranger".

Happy Birthday Eva!!!

I can't believe my little spitfire turned 2 yesterday!!! It took so much work to get her here safely, but she has been completely worth every sacrifice. I love getting to spend every day exploring the world with her!

I tried to fill her birthday with things she loved. We had planned to take the kids to McDonald's for dinner and let them play in the kids' area there as a special treat, but Eva's been pretty sick this week and is just getting over it. We didn't want to expose her to the million germs those play places have, so we decided to have dinner at home instead.

We started the day, as usual, by driving the four older kids to school. When we got home, I asked Eva what she wanted for breakfast. I made the mistake of asking her that question just after telling her that we were going to go pick out her cake later. Her response was, of course, "I want cake", so we jumped in the car and ran to the grocery store then instead of waiting for later. I let her pick out the cake she wanted (we had some issues as she wanted ALL of them) and then we got her an individual cupcake that she could eat for breakfast. She picked on with a little ladybug and flower. She even wore her cupcake pjs in keeping with our cake theme!

After eating the frosting off the cupcake, Eva decided she was done. We headed upstairs so she could take a shower, one of her very favorite things to do. I squirted some shaving cream on the wall for her to paint pictures with (we've started buying cheap shaving cream for the kids to play with in the tub as they love it and it lasts longer than bubble bath) and let her play for as long as she wanted. She finally ran out of hot water and decided she was done.

We then watched "Wheels on the Bus" several times in a row and took a nap. We picked up the kids from school and watched "Wheels on the Bus" a few more times. Dinner was antipasto foods like salami, marinated mozzarella balls, olives, and tomatoes with Italian bread.

At 7pm, Betsy, Ashley, Josh, Caitlin, and Kiki showed up for cake and presents. I completely forgot to take a picture of the cake before we ate it. I especially wanted to get a picture of the corner Josh mistakenly bounced a basketball into. 

Eva loved being sung to, but didn't know quite what to do with the candles, so Rob helped her out. 

While I cut up the cake, Eva opened her presents. We kept it simple. She got a pack of little containers of playdoh and a toy cell phone that has all sorts of songs and games on it. I wish I had gotten a shot of the delight on her face when she opened the playdoh! :) 

Eva and Kiki played with the playdoh containers for most of the night, stacking them up into towers and knocking the towers over. I opened one up for her so she knew it was playdoh, but she insisted that I close it again so she could add it to her tower.

Megan made her presents too - a scarf and a picture of a baby. Megan also dressed up for the occasion in a pink dress with white polka dots and a HUGE pink bow with white pompoms on the ends.

We rounded out the night by letting the kids have a camp out in the living room (Laura actually stayed with me, but we had to include her in the picture).

Happy Birthday little girl!!!! We love you so much and are so glad you are part of our family!!!