Nothing like a lazy Saturday morning. This weekend Mike took Aiden to his 8am basketball game and I decided to have a little fun with my kids & bubble wrap.
Finley was a bit timid and didn’t want to jump.
Little GoGo jumped with all his heart. The joy is evident in these pics.
Colin and Aiden enjoyed jumping too.
We played “Superman” and the kids flew in the sky and I got a leg workout.
Finley enjoyed goofing around with her brother Colin.
And then Princess Finley rode her chariot around her castle.
Later that day my boys went to work shoveling the snow.
Sunday morning I slept in and Mike got up with the kids to make them breakfast. Then they went downstairs for Sunday morning cartoons and couch snuggles.
Today we took Finley’s 2 year portraits. I am proofing those and then hope to get them printed and thank you cards mailed out soon. Check back later this week for a sneak peek of her pics.
First some more fun in the snow pics. Remember I told you about that sunny warm day where we all played in the snow for a few hours? Here are some pics of that day. I wish I had kept my camera out when we started doing the “snowboarding” but I didn’t. It’s snowing today, but not much of an accumulation. But next week they are talking about more snow! : )
I’ve been trying to slow down the pace of our life and document the little details. It’s easy to do b/c when it’s winter we don’t play outside so much. So I’ve been doing little photo shoots in the house with the kids.
First up, the many faces of Fin Kate and one more of her in a ridiculous outfit that just makes me smile!
Next up, the man faces of Owen, our little Go Go!
When Aiden is at school, the younger three kids love to go upstairs into Owen’s room and listen to and dance to music. There’s one song on the Elf Soundtrack that they love. They seriously interpret the song through dance. When the music is fast they run in circles and spin all around. Then the music gets slow and they all lay down and pretend to sleep and then it gets fast again and they laugh and giggle and start dancing again. I love watching my kids all play so nicely together. These are the moments I want to remember.
I took these photos one morning when it was just us girls at home. On T/Th morning I have almost 3 hours with just her. She loves to do her cutting food and play in her kitchen.
Lunchtime with my favorite kiddos!
Colin catching snowflakes one afternoon when Finley and Owen were asleep. And two of Miss Finley being casual and cute.
Finley giving Daddy a kiss and hug before he left the house for a job interview.
The old cliche that kids change so fast is true. Newborns become babies and babies turn into toddlers and toddler turn into little kids. It’s happening so fast. I was holding Owen’s hand the other day and I noticed how his hand is still small and chubby like a toddler. Aiden’s hand is big and more grown up looking and so is Colin’s. I decided right then and there I wanted to take a pic of Owen’s chubby little hands before he loses that “baby fat” completely. So what better way to do that than to do a Peek a Boo and silly face photo shoot?!
And I’m not a big foot fetish person or something sick like that, but I love little tiny baby feet. And little tiny baby feet turn into toddler feet and then into big kid feet and someday into nasty stinky adult feet. LOL But for right now Finley’s feet are still tiny and cute, so I snapped this cute pic.
Like I said, I’m trying to document the details and little memories and focus on that.
Here are a few more pics from Finley’s birthday. She wasn’t in the best mood that day, so she’s a little haughty in the first pic. But she sure enjoyed the cupcakes once she started eating them.
That’s all the pictures for today! I think that’s enough. Tomorrow my #1 goal is to take Finley’s official 2 year photos. Wish me luck!
I have sooo many pics and stories to share for the month of January. I will probably need to break it into 2 blog posts. I downloaded about 400 photos this afternoon so I am sifting through them right now. I still need to take Finley’s official 2 year portraits but she has had a little cold this week so I didn’t want to do a shoot with a snotty nosed cranky child. Being 2 makes a shoot challenging enough as it is. I digress yet again…
Some pics of family Wii time. The kids love the new Super Mario Brothers game. Even Finley is mesmerized by it. Everybody plays but Finley. For now she is content to just watch.
Have I ever mentioned that Finley wakes up with crazy hair? It’s because she likes to burrow herself in her bed and rubs her head down into her sheets and sticks her butt up in the air (we can watch her on her video baby monitor). She also likes to put her silkies (soft tiny blankets) on her head and walk around the house and they must be on her face when she sleeps. Because of this she wakes up with some BIG ratty hair. The other day it was especially crazy. Check it out!
Owen is quite the kid these days. He’s so full of love and just stout and squishy. He’s big into puzzles and drawing these days. And is quite proud of his work. Recently he’s fallen asleep in some weird positions b/c he is not wanting to take naps anymore, but still needs the sleep. Check out these pics. Even though he is wearing the same jammies the pics were actually taken 2 weeks apart.
I took this picture of Finley and myself one random day. I am looking rough, but in this pic I can really see a resemblance of myself in Finley. And thankfully my bloody eye is all gone. : ) Aiden recently took a photo of himself with Finley and I really think the 2 of them look alike as well.
So the big day came and went. My sweet baby girl turned 2. It was a very emotional day for me for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into detail here. But mainly b/c time is flying by and my kids are getting so grown up. It’s crazy!
We had a small celebration here with just us. We have enough kids to make a small party anyhow! Finley did not like the attention when we were singing happy birthday to her. She did however like to open presents. She is in love with the new princess blanket that Auntie Beth and family gave her. I still have yet to buy her a new scooter, but that’s what she is getting from Gran and PeePa. And GeeGa sent her a cool princess phone that she adores. And a cute little outfit with an adorable peter pan collar that was just what I needed. It makes her look like a baby/toddler again and not the big girl that she is quickly becoming.
Finley is interested in potty training. We talk about it all the time and she hates to have poop in her diaper. She currently thinks it’s hysterical when she has gas thanks to her older brothers. So now she will pass it, then giggle and say “I’ve got gas!”. How very ladylike! But I’m going to hold off on the potty training until it’s warmer outside. So maybe late March/April ish? We’ll see.
My kids are a lot of fun and I love them bunches, which is why I keep having them. They say and do such cute funny stuff all day. I wish I could take mental notes and photos and somehow transfer all the stuff onto my computer to keep forever.
Here is my girl over accessorizing a few weeks ago. And my 2 little monkeys goofing around on the couch.
Lots more pics to share, but I need to edit and weed through them first. Check back soon.
We had some more snow and actually got to enjoy it this time. The first few days the temp outside was seriously like 10 degrees outside and the windchill was negative. We bundled up the best we could and tried to enjoy it, but when the wind blew our faces hurt. Finley did not like it one bit. But I did get the chance to sled down the hill with my girl and even got proof of it.
A few days later, the sun came out the wind stopped and it was mid 20s so we went outside and seriously spent 2 hours outside. Then I got the genius idea to stand up on the sled/snow disk snowboard style. It was so much fun, even though I kept wiping out. I bit it hard a few times and the next day I was so sore. Old age sucks. But my little Aiden was a natural. That’s my boy!
The Colin went back to the eye Dr and got some new glasses. His prescription is very minor and the Dr wants to try them out. He was super jazzed about his new glasses when we ordered them and while we waited for them to come in. But now that they are here, he hates them. I can’t blame him. He can see pretty good without them so there isn’t much incentive for him to wear them and his nose and ears hurt when he wears them. So we’ve been letting him wear them for an hour and then take them off, then repeat. But he looks so cute with them on.
Mike took this pic of Aiden and Finley one day. I don’t know where I was, but he must have thought they looked extra cute and I think so too!
I took these pics of Miss Finley recently. Wearing her brothers GI Joe helmet, wearing her cute little ruffle butt pants (I will miss these when she outgrows them) and wearing my most favorite dress of hers ever! Do you like the Stars? Hope so b/c I have bought that dress in 3 sizes so she will photographed wearing it for the next few years. And I even bought a matching outfit for her baby doll. She loves it when she is dressed like her baby! She kept saying “we match!” over and over!
We had another “uneventful” New Year’s Eve. My days of wild NYE are long gone, but this year was a bit different. This year Aiden and Colin were old enough to know about NYE. In the past we would put them to bed like a normal night and then just hang out at home. This year the kids wanted to stay up. So we let them. We watched the East Coast NYE ball drop and then put them to bed at 11. Finley stayed up until almost 9 o’clock!
The kids were riled up. We had a fun dinner, ate some yummy ice cream and had a fun Super Mario game session.
That’s about it for now. I’m bloggin and watching the NFC Championship game. Go Vikes! If they win this and go to the Superbowl, I think Mike might crap his pants. J/K. But seriously if they win, the Superbowl will be entirely different this year!
Here are a few leftover pics I found on my computer form early December. You may recognize the pics from the shoot b/c I stuck a few of them on our Xmas card. Anyhow I download my pics to my desktop and then they get backed up to our server and an external hard drive. Both of those devices are backed up to Mozy, an “in the cloud” remote server. Overkill, probably. But we once lost 2.5 months of digital photos and I hate myself for letting it happen. It’s almost as if November 2004-January 2005 never happened. : (
PSA of the day–back up your photos!
So as I was saying, I was cleaning off my desktop and found these pics. So I thought I would share them. Just Aiden looking grown up, Miss Fin and Owen acting cheeky for the camera and one of the 3 of them. Colin was in a mood that day and didn’t want to take pics. *eyes rolling*
Now I’m off to download some more pics off my camera and put them on my desktop. And the cycle starts yet again…
We had a wonderful Christmas this year. Everybody was so excited for Santa to come. Starting with the traditional advent calendars that my mom sends each year. The kids really got into eating their little chocolates every day.
On Christmas Eve we made cookies and then I took some pics of the kids by the tree and fireplace. Do their jammies look familiar? They should b/c they were their jammies from last year. I bought them big and since I have pretty skinny kids, they still fit, but just are shorter this year! : ) Plus I decided to buy them some “ugly” character jammies this year b/c it’s what they really like. We read our books before bed that we read each year and then left the cookies out for Santa.
Here is a video of them opening their new Xmas jammies:
The kids did a pretty good job of going to bed, although they were a little concerned that Mike and I weren’t going to bed. B/c how could Santa come if we were awake? We assured them that we’d be going to bed in a little bit. After Santa came and put out the presents I went upstairs to check on the boys and when I opened Aiden and Colin’s door I was shocked to feel a cold draft and breeze blowing my hair! Apparently the boys thought they would open up their window so they could hear Santa better! It was freezing that night and super windy. So windy that our patio swing was blown over, but they still didn’t wake up. I swear it was 30 degrees in their room! We are pretty lucky that they didn’t hear when we went outside to disperse the Reindeer food. We would have been busted big time…
In the morning, Aiden and Colin woke up early but just sat in the living room looking at all the presents and organizing them. We told them not to come and get us before 6 and they politely waited until 7. I was quite pleased with that! Last year it was such a flurry of present opening and paper flying everywhere. This year we decided to make the kids open the presents one at at time taking turns. It was much better for photo ops this way and wasn’t over in 2 minutes. : )
Go Go loved his new Bumblebee helmet and Finley loves her new stroller.
Aiden and Colin got Twister from Santa and love the game! An oldie but still a goodie!
We finally got snow! Not a lot, but enough to enjoy a little. The sledding was a bust though. We had rain for a few days before the snow, so the ground was soggy and after a few times down the hill the mud was slushing up through the ground. Messy, messy and not good for my lawn, so I was the mean mom and told them they couldn’t sled anymore.
Finley got her first taste of snow, literally. The day after Xmas we went and ran errands and when we got out of the car it was snowing. The boys all decided to try to catch snowflakes on their tongues. Finley tried it out too and screamed with delight when she caught them. “I caught a snowflake mama!”
Finley saw the boys shoveling and picked up a shovel and dug in herself! A few days later when it snowed again, I sent my strapping young sons outside to shovel while Finley and I stayed inside. The boys loved it and it kept them busy all morning. Works for me!
I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this but we’ve taken to calling our little girl FEARLESS Finley! The girl is fearless. She does things that her brothers would have never considered. She the first baby that I ever had to use straps on in the highchairs and the first baby to climb up on top of our kitchen island. I could go on and on. She is just super brave and a little spitfire. Mike says she is just like me. ;-P
So when it came to sledding for the first time, she was ready. Maybe it’s b/c she’s our fourth kid and we are much more relaxed or maybe it’s b/c she is so fearless or maybe b/c Mike wasn’t thinking. But when Mike sent her down the hill for the first time he just picked her up and put her on the sled and pushed her down. She squealed with delight and loved it. When she came to a stop, I asked her if she liked it and she said “yesh”! Then I realized that it was her first time and we had never done this before. With the boys we had to hold onto them while they were scared going down the first time riding in our laps. Not for FEARLESS Finley. She wanted more and climbed back up the hill ready for her next turn. I LOVE this girl!
I have a lot to blog about. Lots of Christmas video and photos to share, but first some other stuff.
I’ve been in denial about Finley growing up. I’ve been putting off her big girl bed for months now. She’s been ready. She climbs into Owen’s bed and pulls the covers up and say “night night”. My heart is/was not ready for her to be in her big girl bed. But I knew it was time.
So one afternoon I pulled took the side off her crib and decided to give it a try. The same day I took away her binkie too. She was only using her “binks” to sleep, but it had to go too. She did so good. I was so proud of her. She asked for her binks the first couple of times she went to bed, but we would distract her and she did just fine. No big deal at all for her. It broke my heart to see my *baby* in that bed, but she was ready and I had to let go. It was hard, I won’t lie. With the boys it was no big deal.
A few weeks ago I woke up on a Sunday morning and Aiden asked me what was wrong with my eye. I thought he was pointing out the fact that my makeup was smeared or something. I checked in the mirror and didn’t see anything odd. A few hours later I was talking to Mike and he blurted out “What the heck is wrong with your eye?!”. Freaked out, I ran to the bathroom. I looked closer and on top of my eye, above my iris there was a big old red pool of blood. I googled bloody eye and found that it was most likely a subconjunctival hemorrage otherwise known as a popped blood vessel that can be caused by vomiting, coughing, trauma to the eye or for no reason at all. I fell into the no reason at all category. Since my vision was not affected, I didn’t go see a Dr. Apparently these things happen all the time. But I did look pretty freaky.
The blood pool was initially up on top of my iris and you could only see it when I was looking down. But it slowly crept down the side of my eyes until about 90% the white part of my eye was bright red. I looked scary. Too bad this didn’t happen around Halloween or in both eyes so I could rock the “Vampire Chic” look.
The blood is starting to go away now, leaving a nice yellow tint that makes me look like I have jaundice. I remember when Colin had his eye surgery and the same thing happened to him. I think it’ll be all back to normal in a few weeks…If you are brave or curious and want to see progression pics, click below. Oh and yes, I know in the last most recent photo I am in serious need of a plucking or wax. I have 4 kids, cut me some slack.
Aiden played basketball once again this fall. I felt kind of bad b/c I didn’t go to any of his games. Mainly b/c they were all during Finley’s naptime, but also b/c it’s a royal PITA to sit there with 3 kids who want to run around the gym and I want to watch my kid play ball. I went to all his games last year b/c it was easier when Finley would sit in her stroller and eat crackers. Not so much now.
Guilt got the best of me and I decided I should at least go to his last game of the session. We weren’t there for 15 minutes and I regretted my decision. Mike helps coach so he can’t help me watch kids. I tried to get Owen and Colin to play with their DSs but they didn’t want to. Snacks didn’t interest any one. They all wanted to run around like fools around the gym. I was taking pictures of Aiden with my Titan (my SLR camera) so I had to look into the viewfinder. All of a sudden I saw Finley run across the basketball court and almost get plowed down by the team running down the court. Mike ran out and swooped her up. Our guess is that she saw him on the other side of the court and decided she wanted to say hi. Mike was not pleased with me for not keeping a better eye on the kids. I just wanted to leave right there and then but couldn’t. *sigh* I did snap these pics though.
Finley likes to crawl into Buzzy’s crate and mess with Buzz Buzz. I took this pic and then in the next frame Buzzy was jumping out and she’s just a big white blur. I thought it was funny so I’m sharing it with you!
Today Mike went to go run an errand and the kids didn’t want him to go. They grabbed his legs and yelled “Daddy don’t go!”. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that he was gone this weekend when he went up to Keokuk to play in a basketball tourney… I was jealous. I never get that reaction when it’s time for me to leave. ;-P
Today Aiden got creative and built a piano made of cardboard bricks. Maybe I should get him some real lessons…
Aiden is quite the big brother. He helps me out all the time. I appreciate it so much and don’t give him enough credit for it. Here he is feeding/sharing his ice cream with Finley.
I have so many Christmas photos to share and we even had our first snowfall so I have pics of that too. But I’m tired and ready for bed.
By some early Christmas miracle, my cards got back from the printer on time and I was able to mail them out on December 5th so I made my deadline! Yay!
It was Aiden’s turn to be student of the week last week so we made a big poster board “All About Aiden”. He loved helping me make it and choosing what to include. He chose to include that he plays baseball and basketball, loves snow, has 2 brothers and 1 sister and loves ice cream. Here are some of the photos we took to put on the poster:
I also snapped some shots of Colin and Buzzy and Miss Finley over accessorizing one day.
Buzzy got spayed a few weeks ago. She is such a wimp. When she came home she just whined and cried all afternoon. She wouldn’t settle down and kept moving around and then she would yelp and that would hurt even more. She woke up the next day and was 100% back to normal though. Weird little thing. The kids had a lot of questions about how/why she had surgery. “Why don’t we want her to have puppies?” they kept asking. LOL
One quick photo of Aiden and Colin giving their new cousin Noah some love at Thanksgiving:
And a virtual Xmas card for everybody out there in cyberworld. Although I think that most people who read my blog rec’d a card in the mail…
It’s easiest to take pics of Finley b/c I have 2 mornings when it’s just her and me and life is so much easier with only 1 kid. Or even 2 kids for that matter.
I’m frantically working on our Christmas card right now. It won’t be back from the printers in time to make my self imposed deadline. I suck. But it will get out ASAP!
Here are the pics:
And one random one from Thanksgiving. We went up to Mike’s hometown for Thankgiving this year to visit his family.
Yes, I know. I’ve been a slacker. I don’t know why but somehow time eludes me. Maybe it’s the 14 loads of laundry I do a week (did 4 yesterday, more to come soon). Maybe it’s the constant driving and picking up kids from school. Or the nonstop picking up of toys off the floor so they don’t all become Buzzy chew toys.
But between all that chaos I’ve been spending some good quality time loving with my kids who are growing up way to fast.
Miss Finley is talking up a storm. The other night we were getting ready for bed and Aiden was in the shower. She walked up to me and said “I want to take a bath!”. She has the sweetest voice and I love it when she answers “Yesh” to our questions. Or even better is when she says “uh hum” or “yeees”. She is quite the girl and is refusing to wear pants lately. Only dresses and leggings for her. I bought a tiny outfit for her doll to match her outfit. Today she matches her baby and squealed “wow!” when I showed her how they matched. I’ll take pics later today, but right now the princess must sleep.
Owen has started talking like a hick. Seriously, where did that come from. “Yayah” and “downstayers” and other things come out of his mouth. It’s odd b/c he doesn’t get that from either one of us. There must be a twangy kid in his class at school…
Colin doesn’t like PS anymore. I’m debating taking him and Owen out of school in January. That would save almost $400/month in tuition, but probably cost me part of my sanity… Colin has been into football lately and loves to watch Mike play Madden on the PS3 or 360.
Aiden is thriving in school and quite the social butterfly. Every weekend he is gone to another playdate or sleepover at somebody’s house. He’s playing basketball again and loves it.
Life is just going by way too fast.
I think of great blog entries and stories to tell you about when I’m driving in the car, but I’m driving in the car so I can’t type it. And then I forget. Maybe I should start using the voice memo feature of my iPhone. Then I can come home and listen to my dictations/ramblings and type away. As if I had the time to do that…
The little ones are napping and I am off to run a few quick errands before coming back here to get the little ones, then to pick up Colin, come home, snack time, playtime and then time to whip up some culinary delight that at least 1 member of my family is bound to detest.
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