Outtakes

I had a goal. It was to get a good picture of the kids in their matching Christmas outfits. I was even thinking that I might have it printed onto a canvas and it could be something that I could hang up at Christmas time for, oh, the rest of our lives. And then we had the "photo shoot". Believe it or not, this is the best we ended up with:


And just for all your viewing pleasure, here are some of my favorites of the hundreds of outtakes that we took.

Merry Christmas!!!

Snow

We get snow here only occasionally. It snows for maybe a day or two, last a day or two longer, and then goes back to the never ending rain. But it is a really big deal when it does, and today, it did.



Now, I've seen a lot of snow in my extensive years. Enough to know that I despise snow. Yet I have never, ever seen flakes the size of the snow that was falling here today. Some of them were literally the size of my palm. It truly did look like big fluffs of cotton were falling from the sky. I tried to take some pictures, which, of course, did not do these freak flakes justice at all. What can you do. But it was sure fun for the kids (and maybe even Mom and little tiny bit) to watch.


The bummer part is, this is the second day we've seen snow so far this winter, and both times the snow started right at lunch time. So I of course promised both times that as soon as the kids woke up from naps, we could go out and play in the snow. The first day (the day after Thanksgiving), I heard Cooper crying halfway through nap time, as she heard the rain outside the windows and knew that it was putting an end to her plans of an afternoon full of snowmen. You'd think I'd learn, but I made the same promise today, only to have the snow stop and immediately start melting as soon as I tucked the little ones into their beds.

We did find out today that we are for sure headed to Fairchild AFB in October (in Spokane, WA, hometown of all the coolest people in the world) so I suppose the munchkins will have plenty of years ahead of them to make snowmen. I cannot wait until they are old enough to go outside and play by themselves.

It was this or laundry...

It's been a while. A couple weeks ago we took all the kids to Rome to meet up with some friends. Then when we were just on the verge of a nervous breakdown, we came back home. Then we had a few days of only mild madness. Then my husband went to pick up our previously mentioned friends on a mountain in the alps (where it was required that he stay to board for a day and spend the night) while I stayed home with our three kids to clean the house and prepare it for company, to prep everything for the Thanksgiving dinner we would be hosting for our guests and several other friends, and to care for our newly spayed dog who wouldn't sit or lay down because of her new wound, and wouldn't walk around at all while wearing the cone of shame. Then our guests came, and we had lots of people around and had even more fun. And then they left.

I put our house back together. I restocked the fridge. The fridge got postponed a day, but it got done (I discovered, standing at the front door, kids in shoes and coats, that somewhere in all the madness my keys got misplaced. I had to wait for Jesse to get home that night and confiscate his key to my car). I have almost regained my sanity. And now all that's left is to clean the house. And yet, even with all the organizing and straightening, I have not yet regained my motivation. So instead of doing laundry or mopping floors, I am killing time with a cup of hot cocoa in front of the computer :)

One little story though from our days of mild madness. We were at a Thanksgiving function and Cooper fell in the parking lot and gave herself a bloody nose. It's a very long story, but lets just cut it down to: I left the function with no cell phone, at bedtime, and a bloody four year old who suddenly couldn't keep her eyes open, said her head hurt and that she was sleepy, and wouldn't answer any questions I asked her. In a panic I detoured from our house and went to our pediatrician's house, who happens to be a good friend of ours (at least for the time being...we'll see how much longer he'll take my calls on holidays and open the door for me on dark nights when something has happened to one of our kids). All that to say, she was fine, and is fine. Maybe just a little puny the next morning:

We actually have quite a few pictures of Cooper looking pretty bashed up. Maybe sometime I'll post the ones from when she fell out of the stroller onto concrete on her second birthday. The poor kid is so much like her mom...

The worst part is, Cooper looked a little beat up. Then Payton fell while we were all down at the square and scraped up her face. Then Zeke and I were playing with a balloon on Thanksgiving and my thumbnail scraped his forehead and left a big bloody scab. When some friends came over later that day, after seeing all our beaten children, she asked Zeke what happened to him. "Mom hit me."