'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

We had our traditional Christmas Eve celebration, complete with extra family, a truly over-the-top amount of presents for our lucky little monsters, a super yummy Prime Rib and Crab (*gag*) feast, and lots of chaos, which is what we do best!

The present orgy

Auntie Auntie and Mace

Then, at the close of the evening, we read The Night Before Christmas and the Christmas Story. Mace wanted to read the Christmas Story this year, and here it is (I think he should read it every year! His sweet voice says it so well):



Letters, Drawings and Candy for Santa (and Mrs. Claus)



Anniversaries

PJ and I seem to have many anniveraries (maybe most people do? I don't know...). There's the Wedding Day: August 15, 1997 and the Sealing Day: August 15, 2001. The Day We Became Engaged (unofficially): February 14, 1994, and (officially): May 20, 1995.

Then there are the two that started it all: November 27, 1993 (edit: thanks to a sharp-eyed reader) - the Night We Met. We often debated whether it was the 26th (the night we left our respective houses to hang out at the Quest with our respective band of hooligans), or the 27th (since it was definitely after midnight when we met) - now we're sticking with the 27th. Yes, it was roughly 1 or 2 a.m. when that handsome, swaggering boy with the towering blond hair (whom I'd been eyeing for the past few weeks)  finally gave me the "come hither" finger crook, and I boogied right on over to dance with him. (Yes, that was the first and last time he ever had anything so easy with me.) After whiling away the rest of the night and exchanging numbers, I fully expected to never hear from him again. But I did, which leads us to:

November 30, 2003: Our First Date. I'd never really been on an actual date before, so I was really excited. And he seemed in a hurry to see me again, so I was really, really excited. However, by the end of school, it was clear that I had a fever and some kind of cold coming on. But I was going on that date, by-golly! So I drove home as fast as I could and took (children of mine, never do something like this!) *ahem* 6 Tylenol with Codeine. Because as any teenager knows, if one of something helps, multiples will help even more - and faster! Half an hour later, I'm feeling fine, and PJ arrives to take me on our date. We drive to Round Table to eat (yeah, and for him to get the a-ok from his friend Steve on me), but on the way, I get this horrible pain in my chest (apparently, consuming that much medication can cause some problems!), and I panic a bit, thinking we might have to cancel, but it passes, and the rest of the evening passes beautifully. I guess it really was Meant To Be. And the rest - as they say - is history.



March 1994

First Date Movie

My Winter Formal - December 1993

Why always the Pregnancy Pose?

PJ's Senior Prom - May 1994

Man, we were young!

My Senior Prom - May 20, 1995

Engagement Night :-)

 

Off to school - Mace-style

Although I am generally barely coherent in the wee hours of the morning when I drop the boys off at school, I recently noticed a consistent pattern in the way Mace heads off to class, and thought it was just priceless, perfect Mace. With his Buzz wings waving ("Coolest backpack in the school!" the principal tells me every day), he bops off down the sidewalk until he gets to the hopscotch squares, where he (of course) doesn't just run over them, but completes the sequence - twice. So here is Mace, boogying off to school:

I do love this kid.

Halloween! Take 1, 2, 3

MaraJade as the Red Princess.

Mace as Ben 10 - he insisted this was "the face Ben makes". Ick.

Tristen as Dastan from Prince of Persia. Complete with polo shirt underneath. :-)

Trunk-or-Treating!

Eowyn - my little lamb.

We had quite the busy 3 days: Friday night was Boo Boogie at the kids' school (carnival/dance/harvest festival?), Saturday (after 2 soccer games) there was a Halloween party for the boys, then Trunk-or-Treating at church, where the kids scored a small mountain of candy, then Sunday trick-or-treating in a friend's neighborhood to increase the sugar haul. Tristen has a backpack bulging with Halloween candy, and Mace isn't far behind. But they had a ton of fun!

Eowinners!!

That's one of her few nicknames, and here are a few "winners" of this sweet, trying, hilarious, exhausting little baby:

That's my leg in the lower-left. As long as I'm within reach, she's a happy little girl.

If you've got great cleavage, you've got to flaunt it!

Under the table is so fun! And a great place to constantly bonk your head.



She's always crawling around with something in her mouth!

First Day of Preschool!!!

The day is finally here! After a brief stop at the pediatrician (yes, I managed to completely forget her 4-year well-child visit and the accompanying shots that are necessary for school) and a first-day-of-school lunch at Wendy's, it was finally time for MaraJade to go to school!

She was surprisingly (well, I guess not so very surprisingly, given her recent transition to super-shy girl) hesitant for me to leave, but after about 5 minutes, I was given the OK to leave. My baby girl is so grown up!

The Trials of Eowyn

She's a sweet little baby, but unfortunately for me, is a horrible combination of severely attached to Mommy and a terrible sleeper. Up until about a month ago, she was sleeping fine - just nursing a couple of times a night, but had to be with Mommy, of course. Which is fine - we have co-slept with all our babies; it's what works best and we like to do. However, once she started sitting up and crawling, plus teething, it's gotten really bad. She nurses incessantly through the night, nursing and pulling away so much that my attempts to sleep through it are constanly interrupted.

During the day, she needs to be with me pretty much all the time. If I manage to put her down and get her distracted with a toy, then sneak away, she's perfectly fine - until she catches sight of me. Then it's a mad crawl back to me, yelling all the way.

Her yelling: she doesn't "cry" so much as "yell". I've tried many times to capture the sound of her displeasure at not being the center of my hands-on attention, but strangely enough, as soon as I turn the Flip on, she shuts off the yelling and starts cooing and performing for the camera. Little twerp.

Recent Random Kid Quotes

In the car after school the first week back, I asked Tristen if Dolcee was in his class (Dolcee was his "girlfriend" in Kindy and first grade). He said, "No. But that's OK." Me: "Why? Don't you like her anymore?" T (getting embarrassed): "No. But sometimes, when I see her, I get embarrassed." Hmmm... The conversation continues randomly, then he turns around to Mace and explains, "Sometimes, when you see that special girl, you might feel funny. That means you like her." That special girl? Oh, crap. And for the next few days, he and Mace would have mini-talks about that sort of thing, always talking about that special girl.

Related (probably during one of these talks), Tristen tells Mace that, "It's OK to get scratched up or hurt a little. Because girls think scars are hot." My heart literally stopped for a second. I had been sure he'd say "cool" or "gross" or anything else. Hot?? My baby boy is saying this word in this context and I simply cannot believe my ears. Just last year, if we even teased him about Dolcee, he'd get embarrassed, but also a little icked out. Now people are "hot." Oh, fercryin'outloud.

The other day (again, in the car - we spend a lot of time there), Mace and MaraJade are playing in the backseat and Mace says or does something random. MaraJade giggles and replies, "Oh, Mace, how romantic!" in this high-pitched affected girlie voice. Weird.

**Update: Have heard her say this a few more times in play - apparently it's her new "go-to" phrase. Never used in proper context, thank goodness.**

Maceism of the Day - 9/21/10

So the boys are cleaning their room, which - as always - consists of lots and lots of time spent poking and picking at each other, fighting over who isn't helping, etc., etc., etc. At one point, apparently Tristen wasn't helping for a moment, then went back to policing Mace, to which Mace vehemently responded, "You're a minion of Satan!"

I honestly don't know where he comes up with this stuff sometimes.

Well, it had to happen sometime...

And, in fact, I'm amazed it took this long.

Saturday morning, I was getting my hair cut, T was at soccer practice, and PJ was home with Monster, Mace and Miss E. I pick up T and come home after about 2 hours. I'm catching up with the baby and finally look at MaraJade, thinking, "Man, her hair is really matted on that one side." Pull her closer and see - no....it's gone!

I immediately know what happened, since she and Mace do everything together these days and Mace's current obsession is drawing items (Ben 10 Omnitrixes, Green Lantern rings, his favorite superheroes, etc.), coloring them, then cutting them out (and wearing them, in the case of the Omitrixes and rings). So obviously they took scissors to the next level. And who knows, maybe they knew I was getting my hair cut, so....?

Anyway, PJ was - how shall I say it - not pleased. I'm not sure Mace has ever seen his dad so angry with him. And I couldn't get a straight story out of either of them. All Mace could say (um, sob) was, "MaraJade gave me the scissors!" Oh, and, "I'm sorry!"

MaraJade was appropriately despondent when we informed her that we would have to cut the rest of her hair off to match the chopped section.


So, once the yelling and tears had abated, we made an appointment with my hair stylists (completely awesome, BTW!) to have them fix it. I probably could have done it, since I've always cut the boys' hair, but I wanted to see how they do it first. Plus, I thought it might have more impact for her? Who knows. Off to Teal Salon! Super Janelle's awesome work! (You can't see it, but there's glitter spray on the top.)

Side note: Later that day, I found this stuffed in one of Eowyn's toys:
Of course, we still can't get a clear picture of what happened from those two, but close as I can figure, they somehow matted the heck out of several chunks of her hair, tried to wash and comb it out, then decided just to cut it. To keep from getting in trouble, of course.

MaraJade, the Union Rep

Last night, we let Monster stay in the boys' room for a while after "bed time" (yeah, right - during summer that comes 1-2 hours after we send them to bed) to play and such. PJ was making popcorn, when suddenly she appears in the kitchen and says, "Um, we were wanting, um 3 (holds up 3 fingers, just in case) po'corns for us." We say yes, and she runs back into the boys' room, yelling, "Yay! We gonna get po'corn!" Look out, Norma Rae!

**Note: this was also Eowyn's first popcorn. Holy cow, I couldn't bite off kernels fast enough for her! She was yelling at me every few seconds until I gave her more. Looks like we've got yet another popcorn fiend in the house!

7 Months Old!

7 months ago today, after much drama and chaos, this sweet baby girl finally made her appearance. To be honest, towards the end I wasn't sure if she would really be worth it. (Hey, it was a long, rough, arduous pregnancy.) But she's made almost every moment since a true joy.

She's so very happy almost all the time - well, as long as Mommy is around. As tiresome as it is sometimes, I have to admit kind of liking this. None of the other babies so completely favored me and my presence over anyone else. It's kinda nice to feel so loved. She just lights up when she sees me, leaning and straining to get to me. Which doesn't mean it doesn't get old sometimes - but overall, I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

But she really just goes with the flow, playing with her big bros and sis, yanking on whichever appendage the foolish dog happens to leave within her reach, and just being in the middle of whatever is going on.

She's trying hard to crawl, currently wanting to be on the floor rolling around and scooting all over the place all the time. She'll push up on her hands & knees and somehow maneuver her little body far from her starting point. Soon she'll be everywhere!

The first of many (many, many) waffles!

Man, I love this baby girl!!

6 Month Pics & Kids

Much as I'd love to get the super cute, creative family and kid pics that are so popular these days, I don't quite have the budget for them (or the connections - darn!), so off to JCPenney we go! But when the subject(s) is so cute, you can't go wrong!