Christmastime

This was our first Christmas spent without any extended family. Russ and I were a little bummed about being by ourselves, but we tried to do a lot of fun holiday activities in December and we tried to plan for some good new family traditions. Unfortunately, nothing really went as planned.

Our Christmas Eve started around 2:00 AM when Kaylee woke us up to let us know Brenna had thrown up in her bed. All sorts of fun. She was sick and ornery and whiny and tired all day long. She just wanted her Mommy to hold her, but that's tricky when you've got a 4-month-old baby. And it becomes really hard for Mommy to get anything done. At the end of the day Brenna and Ashlyn went to bed early while Kaylee and Russ went out to drive around and look at Christmas lights. We didn't make any cookies for Santa. We didn't even act out the story of the nativity.

Christmas day began much the same as Christmas Eve - Brenna throwing up in her bed at 4:00 AM. We had told the girls they couldn't wake up to open presents until 6:00 AM, but at 5:00 AM they were all awake (except McKell) so we decided to just go ahead and let them come out. A day that begins so early for everyone is bound to bring on exhaustion and general crankiness later in the day. Brenna was basically the same as she had been the day before. McKell decided to have a particularly fussy day. It was super.

After dinner that night Russ and I were discussing the misery that was our holiday celebration. But then I thought about families in Connecticut whose Christmas was certainly much less enjoyable than mine. And I instantly felt thankful, rather than miserable. Even after a rather awful day, I am so thankful for our four little girls, and thankful that our family was all together to celebrate Christmas this year.

Here are a few pictures we managed to take:

Sick Brenna 

New Christmas Pajamas 

Opening Presents 

Playing with the phone she asked Santa for 

Finally exploring the unopened gifts she had dumped in her new shopping cart that morning 

Russ and Brenna trying out our new piano 

 Kaylee and Ashlyn playing on their new Barbie tablets

FOUR Months!

Can you believe this sweet little girl is 4 months old already?!

Here are her updated stats:

BIRTH              7 lbs 7 oz          20 in

2 MONTHS     11 lbs 2 oz          23 in

4 MONTHS     13 lbs 9 oz          24.75 in

She's doing great and we all adore her!

Jolly Old St. Nicholas

 Here is our assortment of Santa Claus photos for the season:

At one of the Christmas parties we attended there was a table set up for face painting. Ashlyn was the first to run over and she came back with a candy cane on one cheek and Santa's face on the other.

When it was Brenna's turn she also requested Santa on her cheek, and ended up with this impressive artwork (different painter).

And here's the whole gang. (Do you like Kaylee's glowstick-turned-headband, and my fashionable camera string-hanging-out-of-the-pocket look?)

Smartypants

Kaylee (2nd grade) has a spelling pre-test each Monday. The deal is that if a student aces the pre-test they are not required to take the post-test on Friday. Kaylee often does this, but I thought her accomplishment was particularly notable today. Here's the list of words she spelled correctly (without having seen them ahead of time):

basketball
someone
weekend
something
birthday
riverbank
bathtub
backyard
driveway
bedtime
mailbox
raindrop

I've a feeling we're not in Kansas (Delaware) any more.

Last night we headed out to visit "Christmas at the Creek" - an outdoor holiday event hosted by the city of College Station and held at a local park area .

When you live in Texas you can enjoy an outdoor holiday event on December 1st and not have to worry about your kids getting cold. You don't even have to bring jackets. If they happen to wear long sleeves, they'll probably roll them up before long.

When you live in Texas, things are more family-friendly. The fact that you have three or four children does not make you an anomaly. You're just part of the crowd.

When you live in Texas, people are openly and happily religious. The event we attended last night, which was hosted by the CITY (as opposed to some church group), included a live nativity. I love that the city did not shy away from including something so openly Christian in their holiday celebration.

And apparently when you live in Texas, the petting zoo adjacent to the live nativity includes crazy things like donkeys and camels.

So, I should qualify all of my "when you live in Texas" statements, because our experience is limited to living here in the Bryan/College Station area. But I have a feeling much of Texas would be the same.

Wobbly Baby Video (probably only interesting to grandparents)

We Are Thankful

Earlier this month we hung a posterboard on the wall and instructed the girls to draw and write things they're thankful for. They've done a great job of filling our poster with many things our family is thankful for!

Here are a few of my favorite drawings from the board:

 "President Obama" by Kaylee

(for some reason this picture always reminds me of a Jack-O-Lantern)

"Nana and Papa" by Ashlyn

(of course she also drew a picture of Grandma and Grandpa)

"The Bishop" by Kaylee

"The Temple" by Ashlyn

I drew this one - I'm SOOOO thankful for my wonderful family!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Beautiful Baby

McKell was finally blessed in church this week. It was supposed to happen about a month ago, but I ended up home sick that day, so it got pushed off until now. Everything went well, and she made it through the blessing without crying (hooray!).

Here are some of the lovely pictures she posed for in her blessing dress!

 

 

  

Halloween 2012

 

Alice in Wonderland, who is making her parents feel very old lately. We hardly saw her during our church Halloween party/trunk-or-treat, since she was running around with two friends from her school class (who both happen to be boys) the entire time.

 

Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz", who realized that house to house trick-or-treating can be very tiring. Still, she was unwilling to give up before each and every house on the street had been approached. "But I want to get lots of candy!"

 

Cutest little Witch you've ever seen, whose father spent more time with her hat on his head than she did. Her little legs had a hard time keeping up with the older and faster trick-or-treating sisters, so she ended up being strolled from house to house (and still couldn't quite keep up).

 

Adorable Baby, who was so thrilled by the whole trick-or-treat scene that she spent the majority of the time asleep in Mom's arms.

McKell looks most like . . .

Here are the other girls at approximately the same age as McKell is now.
Whom do you think she looks most like?

 Brenna?

 

Ashlyn?

 

 or Kaylee?

(P.S. Didn't Baby Brenna have the most AMAZING hair?! Sometimes I forget just how crazy it was back then.)

Two Months Old

Little Miss McKell turned two months old on Sunday and had a great visit with the pediatrician yesterday (minus the three shots in her little thighs). Here are her stats:

BIRTH                    7 lbs 7 oz     20 in
2 MONTHS          11 lbs 2 oz     23 in

What do these two have in common?

 

Getting Comfy for General Conference

Good Times

Last Sunday Russ was sitting on the stand during sacrament meeting. That meant I got to sit alone with all four of our children. No sweat, right?

I tried to prepare. I made sure baby was well fed before the meeting began, and I strategically placed my family on a side pew at the very back of the chapel, so that if I needed to stand up with McKell I would still be able to hover over the other three girls.

Everything started out fine. Baby was content. Older girls were eating snacks. No problem. Then Ashlyn decided to lay down on the bench and put her feet on Kaylee's lap. After she refused Kaylee's pleas to remove her feet, I just had Kaylee move over by Brenna and I sat next to Ashlyn's feet. That was fine until Kaylee and Brenna began arguing over the snacks and I had to move to sit between them. Unfortunately, I didn't make that move quite soon enough and the cereal they were arguing over ended up all over the floor.

McKell decided to get fussy right about then, so I grabbed Brenna and made my way out of the pew and around to the back to rock the baby and keep the toddler from bothering the other girls. Somehow Ashlyn and Kaylee still found a way to annoy each other, even while sitting on opposite ends of the bench. Ashlyn ended up kicking the hymnbook holder attached to the pew in front of ours and knocking it to the ground.

My favorite part of the meeting was when I was rocking the fussy baby and trying to keep Brenna from escaping the chapel while leaning over the bench to tell Ashlyn to stop using the head of Brenna's baby doll to hammer in the screw that came loose when the hymnbook shelf fell down.

The five of us did survive though. And from Russ's vantage point on the stand he thought everything was totally fine.

This and That - in random order

Baby McKell is doing well and growing fast. When babies are born they lose some of their body weight, so they end up leaving the hospital at a lower weight than when they were born. Ideally, they will return to at least birth weight by their two week check-up. McKell was 7 lbs 7 oz at birth, 6 lbs 15 oz when discharged from the hospital, and up to a whopping 8 lbs at her two week doctor visit. A+ for weight gain! No other issues to report at this point either.

Big sister Brenna has gotten the raw end of the deal this time around - having to adjust to a new baby at the same time her two older sisters/playmates returned to school full time. She's been a lot more moody and ornery than ever before, but is beginning to get used to this new normal. She does love McKell though and frequently asks, "Where's that baby?"

 

 Ashlyn decided it was time to chop her hair, and here's the result. Super cute length for her, and SO easy to keep it looking nice. Random side note, after her hair was cut I went up to the cash register at the salon to pay and was informed that some lady who had just left had paid for Ashlyn's cut. Hopefully she just thought Ashlyn was really cute, and not that I was some poor single mother who could use a hand-out (if the latter, I'll have to work harder to be more presentable when going out in public).

Russ has been extra good about helping out at home and taking on extra jobs - like painting fingernails - since McKell was born. (P.S. Brenna is in the buff only because Russ thought it would be easier to get stray polish off her skin than off her clothes.)

My parents came to stay with us for a week, which was super wonderful. They cooked, they cleaned, they shopped, they played, the rocked - basically they just took really good care of all of us they whole time they were here. Best. Parents. Ever!!!

Still lots of baby love going on around here.

And here's our new little princess - Sunday 09 September 2012.