08 ends in an explosion. . .

of vomit!

I went in to wake Megan up this morning to find that she had thrown up sometime during the night or morning and was crawling around in it! Why she did not cry to wake us up, I do not know. Or maybe she did and we didn't hear her! In either case, YUCK!

Now I am scrubbing green beans and peaches out of her bedding! I hope this is a low note so that we can begin 09 in a much better way!

christmas in pictures

No Christmas is complete with out a Christmas tutu!

Gifts from mom-mom and grandad, the pink house from Aunt Melissa.

Dinner at the Roberts. Two fisted Christmas suckers in red and green of course!

Oh! We got a puppy!

Dinner at our house. Eating fake food.

Eating Santa's leftovers on Christmas morning! One of many funny memories Megan provided us with this year!

Santa brought Mark a bike and Mitchell a Star Wars Leapster.

Indy rescues Curious George.

The "Blue Gator"

Long story short: Mark asked Santa for the Green Gator John Deere Power Wheels for $300 after Santa had already purchased a bike for him. So in the spirit of Christmas magic, Santa scurried around and bought a slightly smaller blue option to add to the Christmas morning stash. On x-mas morning Mark made it clear that the surprise car in the backyard was not the green gator that was requested. Mrs. Santa was angry and a little (very) heart broken. It was hard for Mrs. Santa to keep her mouth shut. Sometime as the morning progressed, it was called the "blue gator" and we tried to push the name to give the blue F-150 some credibility. They do love to ride it and have tried several stunts running a jumping on the back and such. Ugh! Christmas!

Decorating the tree a few weeks ago. The second picture shows the part of the morning where I cried. Actually I was blinking back tears most of the morning. Decorating the tree always makes me cry! Seeing my kids delve into the box of family ornaments that my mom and Neil's mom gave to each of us on our first Christmas. Each year as a kid I loved opening each ornament with care and remembering who gave it to us or why it was collected. We did the same this year and remembered many family memories.

holiday projects

Here are the curtains I have been working on for the past two weeks! I am so glad to finally have them done and hung! With the Christmas tree and the removal of toys from the living room it looks like a totally new room!

Oops! Here is what happens when the air conditioner comes on! I had to push the back from the vent! These are our Christmas trees! The fancy one, the one I call the "tree of love" with all of our hand made ornaments and ornaments collected from when Neil and I were kids. Mark

thought the card tree needed its picture taken too! I think some of you should post pics of your trees too so we can see the family traditions of how each family decorates!

The boys showed up in the kitchen yesterday dressed as Mary and Joseph holding a stuffed animal wrapped in a fire bandana for the hay of the manger and a frisbee as the manger. They were looking for someone to be the wisemen, shephards and angel. They talked me into being the angel! It was too adorable! Note the blue for the Mary costume; isn't she always in blue? And she had a bag too that had to be in just the right place. They were so attentive to detail! We took several self-timer pictures but Mark could not keep from looking at the camera when it beeped the warning to take the picture!

family pictures

Words can not describe this experience. The pictures say it best. We were lucky to find only 4 poses even barely worth printing! Don't say it! Don't tell me where you went and took great family pictures with one of our friends! I know!

Mark's new activities

Mark has been into reorganizing things lately.

Here he is with all of the clothes from his drawers laid out for a garage sale.

He was supposed to be getting dressed!

He is into tent making too!

He has used all of the blankets from the closet!

I really enjoyed refolding all of the blankets!

He did this several days in a row a few weeks ago. One day he said that I needed to lay down in the tent and take a nap. I was tired after Sonshine School, so I did! I actually fell asleep on the floor under the tent and slept for about an hour! I have no idea what he did while I was asleep! Probably just kept extending the tent. Mitchell was watching PBS kids - his afternoon ritual. (For those of you who need to know where all of them were, Megan was napping in her room!)

Halloween

Finally! Here are our fall events and costumes!