Christmas Cookie vs. the Sprinkle Bomb

You know the tradition right? Baking cookies for Santa? Well, for someone who REALLY hates messes, this simple tradition is very difficult for me. I try to take deep breaths! I try not to think about an entire bottle of sprinkles being dumped on one cookie. I try not to think about the gooey frosting wiped all over the counter, under the counter, and on everyone's clothes. I try not to think about frosting/sprinkle/cookie crumb mess all over the kitchen floor. I try not to think about the clean up afterwards.

I can't say I'm successful, but I can say I still managed to enjoy it!

And I think they enjoyed it too.

Samuel created what I would consider to be a "sprinkle bomb". (I stole this term from another fellow blogger!)

Mmm...yummy!

If there's one way to describe Josh, it's that he "thinks outside the box". He will never do what is expected. And that includes decorating cookies. Most people when they are given a bell shaped cookie, or a Christmas tree shaped cookie, will decorate it to be a bell, or a tree. Right? Not Josh.

Josh will take that bell and tree, turn them upside down, and make Rudolph and a carrot. Last year, he turned a snowman shaped cookie into... I just love him! Never a dull day.

All in all, we had a pretty successful run! We even have our cookies set aside for Santa. Merry Christmas everyone!

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree...

7 years ago when we first put up our pre-lit tree, I thought it was the best thing EVER.  How easy!  How convenient!  No stringing the lights around and trying to make sure it was even...just perfectly spaced lights as far as the eye could see!  

The last couple years we ran into some trouble.  Big sections of lights wouldn't work, so Josh would spend some time fiddling with it.  WHEW, sigh of relief, the lights would come on.  

This year...our luck ran out.  Nothing would make those lights turn on.  So Josh decided he would simply take the pre-lit lights OFF the tree.  What's that you say?  Why didn't we just go buy a new tree?  Simple.  'Cause we're CHEAP! 

But let me tell you, 10 man hours into un-clipping what turned out to be THOUSANDS of tiny clips holding who knows how many light strands on that tree, we were cursing our frugality.  Yes, we may have saved 150 bucks, but the price of our sanity would have been worth it!

Those little tiny things on the floor are just a fraction of the clips that were all over our house by the time we were done.  That big mess of lights?  Josh thinks he's going to untangle that somehow!  Yeah...  I think I might sneak out to the garage and throw it away on trash day.  

So we're back to decorating our tree old-school style.  And I think it turned out pretty good!  

YES.  That is a baby gate around our tree.  After not putting ornaments on the bottom half of our tree for 5 years, and me losing my mind trying to keep my 3 boys from dragging the tree down on top of them every year...I got smart last year.  I picked that baby up off Craigslist and have never looked back!  Last year I tried to put some tinsel-garland around the top but it ended up looking like barbed wire.  This year, we're going with peppermint lights.  

How is your Sunday going?

Mine has been...well, see for yourself:

Let this be a lesson to you all.  If you are potty training your child, and you think to yourself, "I should see if they need to go potty..." but then you get distracted with the needs of your other children, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS IGNORE THE OLDER CHILDREN!!   Otherwise, your 3 year old will come to you 5 minutes later with poop on their foreheads and everywhere else you can think of, and lead you into the bathroom to this lovely scene.  

I love Texas!

Okay I'm still playing catch up here.  This trip was back in July!  

Josh's sister and her husband moved to Amarillo, TX about a year and a half ago.    They have 3 boys also, about a year younger than each of our boys.  Needless to say, things get crazy when our two families get together!  I wish we could live closer to each other so the cousins could grow up together.  The trip to Texas was so the boys could play together, and so we could see what Texas was all about.  I am ashamed to admit, I have never been further east than good 'ole Arizona.  Not through any fault of my own!  My family didn't start taking awesome family vacations until I was moved out and on my own.  And by that time, I was a poor college student, then a poor newly married woman, then a poor mother with small children.  None of those are conducive to travel opportunities!  Oh well, life happens right?  Anyway, I was pretty excited to finally "travel"!  

The drive to Texas was probably the most boring drive EVER, in the history of the universe.  Desert, desert, and more desert.  That's what you will see when you drive through Arizona and New Mexico.  Anyway, 10 hours later (which I drove by myself because I rock!) we were finally there!  Driving into Texas my first impression was...this place is FLAT.  Seriously, it was weird.  I never really thought of Arizona of being mountainous, and it's not, but compared to Texas it might as well be the Rocky Mountains!  It was a little disorienting throughout our week stay.  I never realized how much I depended on the mountains to know where I was at any given moment.  Still though, I found it absolutely beautiful.  Look at that sky!  

The boys had SO much fun with their cousins.  We figured that between all 6 of them, we had a 1 year old, 2 year old, 4 year old, 2 - 5 year olds, and a 6 year old!   

Mostly they played with bugs.  Really gross ones.  Which I might as well say now, might be the one part of Texas I most definitely DO NOT like!

Those are potato bugs, or "roly polys" all over his hands!  Yuck.

Then the boys were collecting the potato bugs, and putting them in this old trash can, making a sort of "habitat" for them, if you will.  

Oh, and don't let me forget about the snail collection...

Boys are gross right?  But they sure are cute in their excitement!  

There were a lot of trips to the park:  (and a lot of failed attempts to get a picture of all the boys together)

And a gun safety lesson.  Because after all, what is a trip to Texas without handling a gun right?

And a couple trips to Palo Duro Canyon!  Can you believe all that red rock/dirt?  I thought they only had that in Utah/Sedona, AZ.  I was wrong.  It was really cool!    

Palo Duro Canyon was beautiful!  But once again...I was reminded that Texas has bugs.  REALLY gross ones.  Like tarantulas and millipedes.  Lots of them...

 Anyway, we pretty much had a blast!  And should the opportunity ever arise, I think I'll take my chances with the disgusting bugs, and move to Texas!  Everyone was so friendly there, and I just love my SIL and her family.  I know the boys would be in heaven to live near their cousins.  Built in best friends, right in the family!  Now if only we can find a good job out there and sell our house here in AZ in this crappy market...well a girl can hope right?  

First Day of School

Okay at this point, I'm so far behind that I feel silly doing a first day of school post almost 3 months AFTER school has started.  But I don't care, I need to catch up and I might as well start somewhere.  

School started August 11th.  This year I have all 3 boys in school!  Can I get a "WOOT WOOT!"  It worked out so that I have 3 days of 2 hour time blocks during the week with no children at home.  So I thought to myself, "Yes!  Now I can finally get some projects and deep cleaning done around the house!"  I even made a HUGE to-do list of all I was going to accomplish (I LOVE making lists), and figured it would take a month or two to complete.  Want to know how many things I have crossed off that list?  A BIG FAT ZERO.  Turns out, that time flies by!  As in, I have no idea where it goes.  By the time I sweep the breakfast cereal off the floor, do the dishes, and run an errand or two, my time is up.  It's all very disappointing.  Oh well.  Maybe I'll be more productive in a couple years when all 3 boys are in all day school?  I'm not keeping my hopes up.  

Anyway, all 3 boys are also in 3 different schools.  I opted to put Trey in a half day Kindergarten program, which meant I had to get a boundary exception and put him in a school in the neighboring city.  It also means there's no busing and I have to drive him to and from each day.  But it was definitely the right decision for him.  He is NOT ready to be in school all day.  In fact, I think it's fair to say he is barely ready to be in school even half a day, based on the fact I was called into a meeting with the teacher the first week of school and have since been to two more parent/teacher/school psychologist meetings.  But what can I say?  I'm not surprised.  It was a rocky start, but I feel like he's doing much better now.  And wasn't he just the cutest thing ever on his first day? 

He was VERY excited:

Then started to get a little nervous:

Now here comes the saddest picture I've ever taken:

J.J. had ZERO problems starting school this year.  You might remember the hard time he had last year.  Well, this year it was a completely different story.  Not only did he know what to expect with riding the bus, but he ended up having the same teacher as least year too!  She was a substitute for half the year due to his regular teacher going on maternity leave, and the school ended up hiring her permanently for 1st grade!  I really like this teacher so I was very happy too.  And can I just have a bragging moment for a sec?  J.J.'s teacher called me a couple weeks into school to tell me that during the beginning of the year placement tests, on the math portion he "blew it out of the water" and was "heads and heads" above the rest of the 1st graders!  And that it was "unheard of" for a child to score that well at the beginning of the year!  (sigh)  My little genius...

Now for Samuel.  He qualified for a development preschool this year because of his speech delay.  I felt a little strange having him start school and only being 2 years old.  He's just so little still!  But this is to help him "catch up" on his speech and other delays.  I've heard great things about this school from a neighbor of mine, and was very impressed with the campus and his teacher.  Believe it or not, after only one week of school I swear he started saying more words!  He has definitely progressed and I feel confident he will start Kindergarten in a few years with no problems.  

I love my boys.

My baby is a big boy :(

So last Saturday, my oldest son turned 7.  I can't believe it!  I should probably try to remember his birth story and document it on here since it was pre-blog days but...maybe it's something best forgotten!  Oh well, I'll do it anyway.  And look, I even found old pictures to go with the story!

Yikes...I put on a few lbs. during pregnancy.  

Here's the story in a nutshell.  He was induced at 38 weeks because he was huge, and my dr. was afraid if he went to 40 weeks he would be over 10 lbs.  (huge babies run in my family)  So I checked into the hospital on the 27th at about 6:30 to start the process.  Blah blah blah, had to do a lot of crap to prepare since I wasn't effaced or having contractions or anything.  Also had a really mean nurse who kept saying she didn't think I should be induced, and she shoudl send me home.  "Hey guess what, NOT your call lady!  Do you have an MD?  No, that's what I thought."  So all day I was scared I would be sent home until finally they broke my water that afternoon and started the pitocin.  Also got my epidural.  (And the mean nurse left!)  Then came the longest night of my ENTIRE life.  Lots of puking, the worst headache ever that I thought was a migraine but turned out to be a spinal headache from the epidural.  I didn't say anything about it because I was scared to death they would stop my epidural!  I hardly progressed at all the entire night.  Finally at about 4:00 in the morning, I felt crazy pressure and like I needed to push.  It's a weird feeling...

Pushed the button and called the nurse in who checked me and then did that thing that medical people do when they're freaking out but pretending everything is fine.  Turns out I went from a 3 to a 9 in about 20 minutes!  'Cause that's how I roll.  Doctor arrives, and I push for 2 hours.  Beforehand I was determined not to use any suction or anything to pull that baby out of me.  But thanks to J.J.'s GIANT HEAD, after two hours the dr. asked me and I said, "Just do whatever to GET HIM OUT!"  

Poor thing had a swollen lump on his head afterwards but I was so out of it that I missed the worst of the swelling.  He was 8 lbs. 12 oz.  He had a little difficulty breathing so they rushed him away to the nursery and I was pretty much comatose for a couple hours.  The spinal headache, being up for over 24 hours, pushing for 2 hours...it just wiped me out.  

When I finally did get to see him and hold him, well...it's indescribable holding your child for the first time.  And boy oh boy, was he CUTE!  And he just keeps getting cuter.  

Man...times flies by, that's all I can say.  I love this kid so much.  He's funny, smart, artistic, silly,  caring, and determined.  He LOVES school, especially math!  For his special day he choose to eat dinner at Costco, then go play games at Chuckee Cheese!  

 Happy 7th Birthday J.J.!