Family of 4 Plus More

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Wordless Wednesday: Little Gamers & a Cutie Pie

They take Mario very seriously around here, you never know when a bad guy is gonna jump out and attack ya!

Usually Emma is right there with her own controller "playing" with Aiden. Yesterday, she was too busy to be bothered so here's a picture I got of us the other night when we were watching the red carpet together. Well for the .25 seconds she actually sat with me. :-)

Seriously? Could they be any cuter?? Yeah, I don't think so either! :-)

Friday, January 11, 2013

Christmas Eve 2012

For the past couple of years we've tried to calm the Christmas time running around down. It's exhausting to run all day long and it's really tough for the kids who are so excited about their Christmas presents, but they aren't home at all to play with them. In order to try and cut down we have my in-laws over on Christmas Eve to have our Christmas with them and then Christmas day, we mostly stay at home to do our own thing and then have dinner with my family. I love it. We don't feel rushed and actually get to enjoy the time we're spending with our family.

Before everyone got here, we went out and sprinkled the reindeer food on the front lawn. The kids take this pretty seriously and make sure that it's all spread out really well! Then it was back inside to wait for everybody.

Emma hanging with her Daddy

Our little ones on Christmas Eve

Sampling a cookie before everyone arrives

Excuse the funky chocolate in Aiden's teeth! He couldn't stay away from it!

Aubrey doesn't get the big deal, she'd rather snooze

Once everyone was here, we ate meatball sandwiches, fries, and lots of stuff that's fattening! {My favorite part of Christmas!} Then we watched an old family video from the year or 2 before Patrick's mom passed away. It was pretty funny to see Patrick as a 12 or 13 year old. :-) The best part of Patrick? He got a Champion sweatshirt to which he yelled, "This rules!!!" Hahahaha!It was fabulous! Another great part was getting to see and hear his mom. I never got the chance to meet her and it was really nice to hear her voice and to show the kids who she was.

Finally it was time to get down to business and let the kids open their presents!

Grampy and Aunt Bailee

Rosalynn, Gigi Forey, Uncle Jon, Aunt Jen

She was so happy about this pillow pet!

Hot Wheels. For the wall. Thanks Grampy.

This has been one of his favorite gifts, a remote controlled helicopter from Papa

Emma showing Aubrey her outfit from Papa

His reaction to seeing the helicopter flying :-)

Clearly, he thinks it's fab!

Once the family left it was time to get in our pj's and set Santa's cookies out.

After a ~~thousand~~ few pictures in front of the tree, it was off to read The Night Before Christmas and then get into bed so Santa could come!!

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

More Christmas Traditions

I mentioned earlier that one of our family traditions at Christmas time is picking out new ornaments. Since this post is late, I'll keep this short. :)

More family traditions:

Eating an early-ish dinner, putting on our pj's and driving around listening to Christmas music and looking at Christmas lights. I love this! We always did this when I was growing up and it's one of my favorite things to do at Christmas time. This year the kids were really into it. And? Both Emma and Aiden stayed awake the whole time!

Ready to go look at Christmas lights!

Watching Christmas shows/movies: Some of their favorites this year: Frosty, Frosty Returns, SpongeBob's Christmas, The Grinch, The Polar Express (this one was watched no less than 15 times)

Watching The Polar Express

Making Christmas cookies together. Their favorite part is adding the sprinkles/decorations to the sugar cookies. However, they really don't like eating the cookies. Sometimes I wonder if they're even mine! Who makes cookies, but doesn't want to eat them?!

Making Christmas crafts to display in the house

Making and sprinkling reindeer food on the front lawn Christmas Eve night so that Santa and the reindeer will be able to find us

And a new tradition that started this year was The Elf on the Shelf. Ours was named Sprinkles and he was a crazy little guy. He got into all sorts of things!! The kids still ask about him often. They can't wait until he can come back again!

I love Christmas time!

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Aubrey's Loves to Eat

You may have seen here that Aubrey had her first taste of rice cereal (from the spoon) when she turned 4 months. At first she seemed to like it, but the next day not so much. I thought maybe it was just that she was super hungry and getting frustrated that she couldn't quite get it in her mouth like she wanted. It absolutely was not that she wasn't ready for it. She can hold herself up and she'll watch you like a hawk while your eating and try to grab it if she's in your lap. This yucky rice cereal was not her fav.

We tried for several days and every day was a battle. She'd cry and scream and turn her head and I swear a couple of times she tried to smack the spoon so that it would fly all over me. It just wasn't worth the fight so we decided to move along to foods. The doctor told us to start them with her about a month after the cereal, but you know your baby best and she was ready to move along.

On December 16th we tried out sweet potatoes for the first time. Things went over much better! At first she was crying and yelling because she thought it was the cereal, but after a bite she realized it wasn't and things went much more smoothly!

Since then she's tried peas (which she loved the first time she tasted them and not so much after that), squash (that's been a big hit but I think it may give her gas :( ), and she got to taste mashed potatoes for Christmas. She didn't want too many bites of that, but she devoured the spoon on the bites she did take.

Yum! Yum! I'm just afraid that once she discovers the world of fruits, she'll never want the veggies again!

Christmas Tradition: Ornaments

**Yup, I've been slacking/super busy with the kids and I haven't even thought about my blog. But, the reason I have this blog is to keep memories and whatnot as the days seem to go racing by so I better try to get back here and there. And this post is way old. I wrote it a few weeks before Christmas, I just never got it posted because I was waiting to not be too lazy to put the pictures on the computer. So...since I wrote it and those pictures are finally here, here is it, even if it's too late!**

Every year we take the kids to a place called Ronnie's Market, "Ronnie's Super Market" if you ask Emma, to look at the Christmas trees and to pick out new ornaments. I've been going to this place ever since I was a kid. They have a ton of trees all decorated with different themes and all kinds of Christmas decorations that you could ever need.

When I say that we pick out a new ornament each year, I mean individually. Yes, that means this year we got 6 new ornaments from the store ourselves and then Aiden made some at school and my sister got each of the kids one so total that at a ton of new ornaments for one year! And I thought our tree was already jammed packed! Patrick and I get one, the kids all get one, and this year we had to get an updated family ornament, plus an ornament with a picture of the kids that I absolutely love. Good thing my grandmother offered us a tree that she wasn't using anymore. Now that one is up in playroom/Aubrey's room/storage room :-). So the kids have their own tree to decorate.

Here's some pictures from our trip to Ronnie's. (*Patrick looks miserable in some of these. I swear he was happy to be there, he claims he just didn't know that he was in the picture.)