Hello 2009!

In 40 minutes that is. I'm trying really hard to make it up until midnight tonight. So if you have some weird comments on your blogs... sorry, I'm up way past my bedtime ;)

I'm really looking forward to a new year. I'm not one for resolutions though, so... I'm just going to try to do better at everything for as long as I can ;)

I'm just glad to say goodbye to 2008. It wasn't quite the best year around here. All told, we had a really rough year. I won't bore you with all the gory details... but we did have some good things happen. And for those things I am very grateful. And feel so very fortunate. One of the good things that will be coming out of this year is a new baby at the end of June. We are really looking forward to this new addition :)

And this year, we won't be making any rash decisions about moving ;) that was our biggest mistake of 2008, which we will not be repeating anytime soon! We were just so fortunate that we were able to move back to our home and find employment in a reasonable amount of time.

I'm just really hoping that this whole digital conversion thing helps out with our television reception. We are probably one of the few people who do not have cable or satellite. We have a good old fashioned antenna on our roof and an ancient tuner on top of the tv. Right now we are really trying to watch the New Year's Eve special, but its not working out so well... between the intermittent snow and blue screen... unfortunately the NBC channel we get best decided to show some lame drama instead of the New Year's Special... last year they opted for their local sports show. Grrr. Sorry Carson. Wish we could watch. We used to watch the Dick Clark show when we were kids. I think they still have it on, but we very rarely are able to get in ABC or CBS. Well, that's something to be hopeful about in the new year, if we can find a converter box that is... (my last complaint of 2008!)

I'm going to try for being more positive in 2009!

Happy New Year!!

Just a little blurb about the holidays...

I have been a horrible bloggy buddy as of late... but I would imagine that most people are pretty busy this time of year. And its the same around here... busy getting ready for the holiday, busy with the holidays... busy recovering from said holidays...everyone is home from work and school... so alone time is just impossible ;) and leisure time? Well, its been spent spending time with the kids. Breaking up fights over little people and monster trucks...

When do we have to quit watching Christmas movies? Can we just watch them all year long? Or should I put them away until after Thanksgiving next year? I know there are a few my little ones will miss.

I noticed one of my friends on facebook had their status as having put away all the x-mas boxes until next year. She must've packed up the day after x-mas. Around here we leave everything up until New Year's Day (or the day after). It just seems too early to do it any sooner.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and here's wishing you all a Happy New Year!!!

I'll be back around when everyone goes back to work and school.

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas is on here! We've been tracking Santa's progress with the Norad Santa Tracker. The kids are all excited! And we are too. We broke down this afternoon and let them open one of their gifts already. I know, shame on us ;) We usually let them open one gift on X-Mas Eve, and then the rest on X-Mas morning. But every year we end up letting them open one a day or two before X-Mas Eve, and somehow this year we didn't do that. But they've been better about keeping themselves entertained this year.

Last night when we were going to bed I started talking about Santa to D.
Me: "Tomorrow night, when you go to sleep...and then wake up in the morning-"
D: "Watch Clifford!"
Me: "Well, you might watch Clifford, but tomorrow night when you go to sleep Santa Claus will come!"
D: "Santa come and pull D's pants up"
Me: "What??!! No, Santa is going to come tomorrow night while you are sleeping and bring presents"
D: "Santa bring pprrreeessssents!!"
Me: "Yes! Santa will bring everyone presents! What is Santa going to bring D?"
D: "pppprrrreeessseeennnnts"

The other day he said that Santa was going to bring him a footstool :)

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas!!

And We Have Winners!

The two winners for my first ever giveaway for the Ferrero Christmas Tree full of Chocoaltes were:

JanetFaye from Grammy Janet's Place
Nut Nut from Nutty Tales

Next time I'm totally going to do a random number generator :) It took a very long time to write out all those names! ;) But of course I was happy to see so many people stop by and comment! I had my husband help out by drawing the names from a hat. I thought about letting the two little ones do it, but I'm sure they would have chewed up the names before I could get them :)

Check you emails and be sure to email me with your address so I can contact the sponsor!

Congrats ladies and enjoy the chocolates!!! :)

Wordless Wednesday: Christmas Card Outtakes #'s 3-5

Don't forget to enter my sweet giveaway here!

One Sweet Giveaway!

My very first giveaway is an especially sweet one!

"For the second straight year, the Ferrero Company has partnered with Share Our Strength®, one of the nation’s leading organizations working to make sure no child in America grows up hungry. The partnership extends beyond a typical donation and helps create awareness and understanding of this important issue in ways that resonate with Americans. A perfect pairing, both companies have a deep passion for food as well as the ever-growing concern of childhood hunger in America." (Share Something Sweet).

This partnership is in its second year, and this year Ferrero has donated $150,000 to Share Our Strength and is giving others a chance to add to that donation. Right now, if you log on to Share Something Sweet and use it to "send something sweet" (that is, a customizable e-card), Ferrero will donate another $1 per e-card sent, up to $10,000.

And for every person that joins the Ferrero Facebook page, "Ferrero Lovers Unite," Ferrero will donate another $1 to Share Our Strength (up to $1,000).

To win one of these wonderful Ferrero Chocolate Christmas Tree gift boxes filled with Ferrero chocolates just leave a comment!

For an extra entry subscribe to my feed (if you are already a subscriber let me know).
You may also gain an extra entry for following me! (again, if you are already a follower, let me know!)

I will randomly draw the two winners Friday, Dec 19th at 5pm. Please be sure that you leave your email in the comment if your email address is not on your blog (or if you do not have a blog). I will email the winners as soon as I draw the names.

Christmas Card Outtakes #2

Where did D go? Baby sister swiped his antlers again and then got mad when E took them away from her!

Christmas Card Outtakes #1

Those of you with more than one child (even those with one child) know how difficult it is to get that much sought after Christmas Card picture every year! We usually make a big deal out of it, get the kids all festively dressed and such... but this year we just decided to do it spontaneously after the tree was all decorated... so the kids are all in their jammies...

And my son, for some reason has this thing with this hat... it is his superhero hat. Don't ask me what kind of superhero would wear this kind of hat... but whatever makes him happy and whatever gets him to take a nap ;) but of course he insists on wearing it much of the time - christmas card photo shoot session was no exception. We just put the antlers on top of his hat. No problem. Except for the fact that baby B just wouldn't leave his antlers alone :)

Weekend Reflection

Well, here I am sitting waiting for a big snow storm! Its supposed to start snowing today and not stop until Monday! Over the last week, it has snowed just about every day, but its only been flurries. Last week we got a few inches. And its been freezing here! Yesterday it was -16 at 8am. Today its actually warmer.

We've spent the last week or so watching Christmas movies :) D's favorite one is Rudolph. I think D really has a good idea about what the whole Santa Claus thing is this year and its pretty exciting! I keep asking him what Santa is going to bring him and he just says "presents."He had lots of fun helping the older girls decorate the tree this year.


And I think I may have solved part of my photo uploading problem. I think most of it had to do with my virus software... not sure, but when I uninstalled it I was able to upload pics one at a time (it still failed out a couple of times and still failed out every time I tried to upload more than one...) so we'll see how it works with the new virus program I installed... 'cause of course you just can't be without virus protection! :)

Visit Healthy Moms for more Weekend Reflections

Wordless Wednesday: Antler Edition

WooHoo!

I finally got one photo uploaded! It was a fluke ;) Well, several times now I've had success only with the first photo upload - and those times I have just chosen a random photo to see if its working... so this time I got smart ;) and tried to upload a picture that I wanted to use first! And it worked!! :) Of course I was aiming for a series of 3 photos, but one will work out just fine thank you! :) So be sure to come back tomorrow when I will have my first Wordless Wednesday in weeks!! (yes, I scheduled the post for tomorrow).

For about the first time ever the southern parts of Wisconsin got more snow than here up north! But we finally got a few inches! Not that I'm really excited about it or anything... while it is absolutely beautiful in the pine trees, I am not into the winter driving. I just hate it. And snow is in our forecast for at least the next 7 days. I'm going to try to get out while its good and stock up on groceries. Mostly Nemo fruit snacks and goldfish, which we are completely out of! And I've been hearing about it all day. Oh yeah, and those Lightning McQueen pull ups! Regular diapers are just not fun anymore, not while there's Lightning McQueen pull ups!

Weekend Reflection: Holiday Traditions

Cascia from Healthy Moms started this really neat meme: Weekend Reflection I thought I would give it a shot this weekend.

This morning I was thinking about some of our holiday traditions, and then some traditions that we had when I was growing up. Mainly because I was thinking about food and remembering these hors d'oeuvres my mom used to make for New Year's Eve. They were the best! But they took so long to make, we would all help. She would take a bag of Doritos, spread a little dab of refried beans on a dorito, add a sprinkle of cheese and then a slice of a green olive and then pop them in the oven until the cheese melted. We would do up just about the whole bag. And those things were so tasty that they wouldn't last longer than 30mins tops. Can you imagine how much work that took? But it was so worth it.

I really wanted to make these when we had our first New Year's Eve party as a family. We had my sister in law and her daughter over to stay the night. But of course with the amount of time it would have taken to do those hors d'oeuvres, we settled for a big pan of refried bean dip with cheese and slices of green olives on top. But it just didn't taste the same. One of these New Year's Eves I will totally make those hors d'oeuvres. Maybe it will be in a few years when I will have more than one child able to help put them all together. My mom probably only did it because she had about three of us in a line: one spreading the beans, one sprinkling the cheese and one placing the slice of olive.

I know, crazy to be thinking about New Year's Eve when Christmas is approaching way too fast ;)

With our own family we have started a few traditions of our own that we really enjoy. Every year, the morning after Thanksgiving we always have a pie breakfast. The kids really enjoy that one!

Our special Christmas tradition used to be to make a big fire in the fireplace and get all cozy. But we haven't had a fireplace since we moved up to Wisconsin... But last year we got one of those big heaters that looks like a fireplace, so that was a nice stand-in last year. Also last year the two older girls made their own gingerbread houses and we had tons of fun doing that! We will probably try to do that one again this year. Of course there was a little more licking fingers going on the building ;) but why not?

And for New Year's Eve our special thing is to get a bunch of snacky oven foods (tater skins, buffalo wings, mini tacos, taquitos, etc...) and just munch the night away :) I think that one's my favorite :)

Vocabulary of B

Is it just me or do girls gain their vocabulary at a faster rate/earlier age? I swear my son didn't say more than a few words until he was maybe 2 or older. (Of course he pretty much went from one word utterings to almost full sentences about overnight!).

Baby B is almost 14 months, and her verbal skills are just amazing to me. When she sees daddy she will say "Hi Daayee!" when she vacates my lap she will wave and say "buh-bye seeya."

She will point and say "wassat?"

This morning she was calling to our little dog sally "saay saay." She can say the other dog's name pretty good too - "jo-jo." My son D named her when he was a little over 2 years old. Around the time my husband brought her home, D was saying "Jo-Jo" quite a bit. Around here, they call the potato wedges (like from KFC) Jo-Jo's and he really liked them.

And she loves her big brother "Duh Duh"

It's been quite interesting having a boy and a girl within a couple years of each other, in comparing how and when they reach certain milestones. I do know that all children are different and regardless, reach those milestones in their own time. But through my observation, there does seem to be a difference between the genders. It seems to me that boys reach those physical feats sooner than the girls. D was crawling, pulling himself up, cruising and walking much earlier than B. And I remember my neice, who is 2 mos younger than D, also seemed to reach those physical types of milestones a little later than he did (while her verbal skills continued to be way ahead of his). But on the other hand, it seems that the motor skills, hand-eye coordination and manipulation of fingers and objects happens a little quicker with the girls. And the girls also reach those social milestones a little quicker.

Has anyone else noticed these kinds of gender differences in reaching milestones?

I know, I know...

It's been forever since I posted anything of worth. And today just isn't going to be one of those days either. This whole photo upload business has me frustrated as heck! (being very polite there). Apparently there are other people having this problem. I've looked all over message boards and all the miracle fixes that worked for everyone else...?? not so much here. I've tried it all. It's firefox, its IE7, its facebook, myspace, youtube, its the proxy, its the cookies, its the firewall, its a couple of lines in the config of firefox, its the dns server settings, its the wireless connection... the list goes on... and its none of those here... so here I am unable to upload any photos anywhere. Grrrrrr. I've spent all day trying to fix it. By some kind of fluke I was able to upload one picture to my family/friends update blog and of course it was a picture of a pie... but could not get any more uploaded.

Anyway, aside from the photo issues... Thanksgiving was pretty good around here. Tons of food, tons of leftovers. We are finally down to just a sandwhich or two of turkey left :) My step-daughter was able to spend the holiday with us and we had a really good time. We all set up the Christmas tree on Saturday. D was even old enough this year to help and had a great time doing it.

Then we attempted to get a good picture of all the kids in front of the Christmas tree for the Christmas card... You can imagine, 4 kids... 12 pictures... 0 good ones. There may be one or two that aren't all that horrible. Unfortunately, it was about our only opportunity to get all the kids together in a picture. Maybe I should do a photoshopped one this year? ;)