Mister W Turns THREE!

February 2, 2013

Mister W loves horses. Well, he's sort of terrified of horses, but he really loves the idea of horses. When we started talking about having a party he really wanted to have a cowboy theme and that seemed perfect to me.

We held the party at a local rec room to rent. He wanted his party at home but I think that I may be unable to have anymore parties here. It is always wonderful and fun but our house, which normally is just fine for us, never seems so small until you have a birthday party in it. We had barbeque for lunch and some cowboy tattoos and arts and crafts. He picked out lots of the things to do and I think he had a wonderful time. We were so grateful to everyone who came to make his day special and I personally can't tell you how my heart gushes when that boy so obviously feels so excited and special.

 

 There were some other activities available, but running around the room seemed to be the most popular. That's also when I breathed a huge sigh of relief that going to the rec room to rent was the BEST idea!

 

 Don't worry. There were no actual bandits at the party. :o)

Snow?

January 25, 2013

This is definitely the first year that I can remember that miss L has been SO EXCITED about snow. She asked often if it would snow. She'd watch the weather reports. Then, as soon as anything fell from the sky, she'd be in her snow pants and ready to go out in it. It was too bad that we didn't get much but I love that girl's spirit. She was always really excited to get out there no matter how tiny the flakes!
 

Baby it's cold outside!

January 24, 2013

The kids got an amazing gift for Christmas this year. My super fun sister in law made them a teepee. It's been a great place to read, to pretend camping, to hide from siblings and to warm up! When it was cold out miss L would pull it over the vent while the heater was on and enjoy hanging out inside. This day she took her schoolwork and went to her little warm spot to complete her work.

Homeschooling Week (we lost track...)

January 17, 2013

After taking a large part of the month of December off of school (I had jury duty for one week and then there was Christmas) we got to business in January.

We enjoyed making portraits with our people colors. It's seriously disappointing that people come in a thousand shades and yet our crayola choices for skin tone are really lacking. I'm not really peach or salmon and miss L isn't really brown or mahogany. We love these colors. Lots of people. Lots of colors.

 

 We are loving these alphabet stampers. Spelling is hard for miss L, so we do as many different spelling activities as possible. This was how she started her words for this week. It's a fun activity and there are lots of sensory components to it!

Playing Pretend

January 12, 2013

One of the best thing about babies is that sometimes you can just WATCH them think. On this day sweet little man really enjoyed filling up his cup with magnets, pretending to eat them, dumping them out and then filling them up again. Every once in a while, he'd offer some to me too.

Can't I just bottle him up?

James

Sometime this fall we got fed up with the fact that James was peeing all over the basement. It was starting to be less of a once in a while sort of thing and becoming the sort of thing where we couldn't leave anything on the floor or he would pee on it. We decided to take him to the vet just to figure it out.

They did some bloodwork and we changed out our litterboxes while we waited. When the call came in, we were all shocked. James's bloodwork was very abnormal. All signs pointed to multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma in his blood. We were referred to a veterinary oncologist.

The process to diagnose was thousands of dollars and the best we could expect with treatment was for James to live another year and we sort of tabled the topic thinking that we would make a decision after the Christmas season. Then poor James took a turn for the worse. Before the holidays were really over we came home from church to find James unable to walk. We took him to the emergency vet and the bloodwork revealed that the amount of protein in his blood was astronomical. He had likely had some neurological episode because his blood was actually gloppy. We took him home and set him up in our room with food and water and a heating pad under his bed. We loved on him as much as we possibly could and on a Wednesday in mid-January we said goodbye.

He was such a stinker of a cat but I loved him and he loved me. He was just 12 years old but had been a crochety old man for awhile. We miss him so much.

A trip to the Eye Doctor

January 7, 2013

Brad's family has a strong family history of lazy eye so mister W gets a yearly visit to the opthamologist (since he does show symptoms from time to time) but this was miss L's first year to go. She had a mystery swelling thing and the doctor wanted to rule out sarcoidosis so she got to go this time. We bought some new sunglasses the night before (mister W wanted to match, what can I say?!) in preparation for the dilation process and how could I not take a photo? These two are so cute!

Sometimes...

...you get to go to the store with a princess.

AND sometimes she even pushes the cart.

Stay-cation!

The time between Christmas and New Year's Day was divine. We don't usually spend so much time in our pajamas. :o) We don't usually get to spend so much time just together. It really is the best time of the year!

We did some family yoga (of course!).

 

We did some perler biggie beads. Both mister W and miss L loved this activity and it is so great for building those fine motor skills!

 

We took some fun photos. I love those eyes!

 

We even did a little backrub when things got too intense. Lately miss L really wants her back rubbed when she feels overwhelmed or just too excited. I'm really proud that she knows when she needs it!

 

We finished previously undone perler bead projects.

 

I love how she concentrates. What a beautiful girl.

 

We have floating stairs at our house. I hate them. I think they are dangerous. The kids love them. They are perfect for throwing things to the bottom of the stairs. Sweet little man did this for a long time that day.

 

We played with water beads. Miss L got these in her stocking. All you do is soak them in water and then you have hours of fun! They are mushy and wiggly and really sort of interesting.

 

We also got to play new games that we got for Christmas too. I just love family time!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! We were able to wake up even a little late on Christmas morning. The kids came down to find their stocking stacked by the tree with care and with too many presents behind it. I hate that our kids have so much when others have so little but it is hard to describe Christmas morning as anything but magic. They just enjoy themselves so much. Every year we pare down just a bit and every year it's still too much but they love it and for now I'm going to be really thankful for that.

 

This year we didn't get much snow except on Christmas Eve. It was gorgeous and when the kids wanted to go out and play on Christmas morning, we weren't going to say no. They put their snow pants and parkas on over their pajamas and headed out for some snow time. 

 

Then it was back inside for more pajama and play time. What a great day!

Whoa!

Somebody tell me that I haven't only updated this thing through Christmas Eve!

It's summer here and that means that we have a little extra wiggle time. I'm hoping that in the next couple of weeks I can get up to date. I have so much to share and I know that you guys, our family and friends, would rather know what is happening with us now and not what happened with us in 2012. I keep thinking, "I really want to post this!" but then I feel like I want to update to today first. So... here's my project. I'm giving myself a couple of weeks to get it done and then I'm just going to start posting recent stuff. Get ready for some posts!