Birthdays and Underware and Surgery, Oh My!

Life has been busy, as usual. The kids went back to school last Thursday. As always, I miss them, but enjoy the structure that returns to our days.

Beth's birthday is today! Somehow she's seven! I really have no idea how she got to be that old. She's such a character and adds so much to our family :) She asked us to give her one of her presents last night. She got a gymnast Dora doll in a purple leotard. Her other present, which she will open tonight is a Dora sleeping bag and laundry hamper. She pulls off the sheets when she sleeps and assembles them into a nest, so we thought the sleeping bag might be helpful. She's slowly decorating her room with a Dora theme, so these will help out with that as well.

She decided she wanted to bring treats to school for her birthday. We've never done that before, but we had lots of cookie stuff left over from Christmas since we didn't make Christmas cookies to hand out this year. We were all too sick and I didn't want to spread more than Christmas cheer to all our friends. I let Beth pick what type of cookies to make. She chose cut out sugar cookies, shaped as teddy bears, hearts, butterflies, and candy canes. We decorated them with red and green frosting and Christmas sprinkles. Her favorites were the ones she literally covered in sparkly sprinkles.

We started off her official birthday with a breakfast of mini cinnamon rolls. We put a candle in one of Beth's and Kylie and I sang Happy Birthday to her (Megan and Jack were a bit slow to get downstairs this morning, so they weren't there yet).

We'll finish off her day with hot "toe-toe" (as Eva calls hot cocoa) and molasses cookies when she gets home from school (I love molasses cookies - they always remind me of playing with my friend Laura as her mom made awesome molasses cookies), then dinner out at BK or McD's so she can play on the playset there, followed by her big present (the sleeping bag/hamper set).

Happy Birthday Button girl!!! We love you and are so glad you're part of our family!!!

In other news, Eva has potty trained herself. Rob and I stopped by Kohls a week ago as I had Kohls cash that expired. We spotted underware in Eva's size on sale and grabbed some as she had shown some interest in potty training and we figured we'd need it in a few months. Eva found it and decided it was too cool not to start potty training right then.

Potty training is one of my least favorite parts of parenting. After going through it four times, we have it down to a science though. We find a few weeks where we can just stay at home and we strip them down to nothing and let them run around. For our kids, this has worked really well and we only have a day or two of accidents before they start using the potty. We have to keep them naked for a few weeks though for it to sink in. If we put them in underware too soon, they treat it like a diaper.

Eva was not interested in this method. My mother-in-law says Eva's the most proactive of our children. I think that's a good description of Eva :) Anyway, Eva decided that she was just going to skip the naked part. She was very insistent about wearing her underware right then and she was very excited about it (you can see the packages of underware in the background as she sorted through them to find her very favorite ones)  ~

The first day, she had two small accidents and one that necessitated throwing a pair of underware away (we don't clean up poopy underware). The second day there was only one accident; it required tossing a second pair of underware. The third day was like the first. The fourth day she pooped in the potty for the first time and figured out how excited we got when that happened. That was it. No more accidents. We're still putting her in a diaper at night, but she's been waking up dry. She took her first nap today with underware on and stayed dry (fortunately as she was in my bed!). AMAZING!!! I am thrilled! :)

School for me started up yesterday. I'm taking one class this quarter and have one left before my internships start. I will be applying for internships over the next few weeks, although it probably won't happen this week as I had planned. Rob went into the doctor yesterday and will be going in for his third hernia surgery tomorrow morning (yes, they have all been in different places - I *think* we've covered all possible locations now). Having done this twice before, we're not horribly worried. Once he gets past the first few days of recovery, it's usually fairly easy. He just can't sit for long periods of time. He has all the tv shows he plans on watching picked out already and is looking forward to relaxing for a few weeks!

Comparisons

About 4 months old ~

Laura

Eva

Jack

Beth

Kylie

Megan

She definitely looks the most like Jack in my opinion :)

4 Months Old!

My littlest munchkin is already 4 months old! She is growing up so fast :( She is starting to grab things and stuff them in her mouth (she was particularly fond of Susie's scarf) and eyes our food and drinks. She hasn't figured out how to crawl yet, but it's not due to lack of trying. She loves looking around and watching her siblings playing. She sleeps pretty much through the night, although there are still nights when it's hard to get her to go to sleep. She loves being held and laughs and laughs when I kiss her cheeks or tickle her. She's losing all her hair, like most of our kids did. It will be interesting to see what color it grows in as. It still looks pretty dark to me, although there are definitely red highlights. She looks sort of like a cross between Jack and Megan, with a grin similar to Beth's. She looks a lot like Rob; we even had a lady stop us in a store on Tuesday and tell us that Laura and Rob looked exactly alike :) A few weeks ago she suddenly went from hating binkies to loving them. They are now one of her favorite things, although they have to be the right kind. She is such a cutie! We are so blessed to have her!

Beth's Family Birthday Party

Beth's birthday isn't until next week, but, as usual, we did her family birthday party early so family members visiting for the holidays could be part of it. This year it fell on New Year's Day.

In lieu of presents, Kiki got the kids a two hour pass to a trampoline park. She and Susie took the older five kids there on New Year's Day. Rob and I took the opportunity to go see The Hobbit with Laura, who cooperated and slept through the whole thing :) The kids had a blast, especially Jack and Eva. I have decided rather than replacing the flooring in our playroom, I will just remove the foundation and dig a pit to fill with foam squares, leaving enough room to surround it with trampolines ;)

When we all got home, we let Beth decide what she wanted for dinner. She picked Domino's Pizza. Kiki, Beth, and I headed off to Kroger to pick out Beth's cake and then to Domino's to pick up the pizza. Beth was in quite a good mood and it was a bit contagious. The kids laughed and laughed at Susie during dinner, although I don't think Susie was doing anything other than smiling at them :)

After dinner, Beth got to blow out the candles on her cake as we sang to her ~

Megan, Kylie, and Jack headed upstairs to apprehend the tv after they finished their cake. Beth stayed downstairs and directed Kiki, Susie, and I in an interesting game of her own invention. It involved quickly coming up with items that fit into a category Beth randomly chose (like animals or food) and started with a letter Beth chose. There was a bit of a hurdle though; the word didn't necessarily have to start with the letter Beth chose; she just had to think it started with that letter. She stood firm and was unswayed by our arguments for various words that we thought began with the letter she had picked.

I grabbed a photo of the birthday girl with Kiki and Susie just before Kiki took off to head home ~

Sadly, we did not manage to convince Susie to give up college life in UT and move in with us permanently :( She left our house on the 2nd. We loved having her visit and we are so glad she decided to spend the holidays with us!

Our Rockin' New Year's Eve

We don't really fall into the category of party animals. Every New Year's Eve, I consider moving to the west coast so we can watch the ball drop in NY at 9pm instead of waiting up until 11pm. Yes, we are lame. But that's ok :)

This year we started off New Years Eve by having Kiki and Susie join us for dinner. Kiki brought over turkey pies she brought home from a farm we used to buy them at in New England. They were super yummy; I really need to figure out how to make them :)

Kiki took off after dinner and we hung out for a bit.

I put together the five little gingerbread houses that comprised the gingerbread village I bought. This will be the last year I can use that kit as next year we'll need six houses! Eva and I divided the candy up between four plates and Eva's mouth. The kids each picked a house and Susie and I made the rounds, armed with frosting.

Kylie was the first to finish her house. She insisted on two pictures so we could see all four sides of it ~

Eva finished next. It's easier to finish decorating your gingerbread house when you eat most of the candy before it makes it to the house :)

Beth with her masterpiece ~

Jack decided all his candy pieces were little men. The candy men crawled all over his gingerbread house.

Godzilla attacked Jack's candy men.

Godzilla jr then attacked Eva's gingerbread house ~

A third Godzilla made a quick visit to Kylie's house. 

I somehow didn't get a picture of Megan's house, which is too bad because it was pretty cool! She painted the walls with frosting and made a cool circle pattern on the roof.

After gingerbread houses were done, we pulled out our party bag and fired off the poppers in it. We didn't know if anyone would fall asleep before 11pm and setting off poppers doesn't help if you are trying not to wake children up.

Jack was first. It took him a few tries to pull the string hard enough to set his off, but once he figured it out, he loved it!

Beth was next. Note the lady-like extension of her pinkie fingers ~

Eva needed a little help with hers.

Kylie did hers so fast that we didn't have time to take a good picture.

Megan was a little apprehensive about setting off something with gunpowder in it, no matter how small the amount.

She seemed to enjoy it though!

Susie got a couple of poppers too ~

When all the poppers had been fired off and all the confetti from them was cleaned up, we turned our dining room into a movie theater and watched "The Santa Clause". Hot cocoa and marshmallows were a must!

The movie finished up just in time to make our way upstairs to watch the ball drop in NYC. None of our channels were showing NY, but the channel featuring the Dallas celebration showed bits and pieces of it. Rob used Jack to count down the minutes when the clock in NYC wasn't on tv. As you can tell by the picture, Jack hated it ;)

One minute before midnight (actually 11pm for us), we handed out cups of sparkling juice to toast in the new year.

Happy New Year!!!