Snow day - take 2

A few more pictures of the kids enjoying the snow:

Yes, we really are rednecks and Nae sent Mya and Alena down the hill in the swimming pool.

Gabe preferred going down like this:

and then all the neighborhood boys came out and threw snowballs in the pool. (I'm not sure what Mya is doing, but she's not in a very safe place.)

That is the end of the snow for us. The sun is out today and I'm sure by tomorrow afternoon most of it will be gone which is good because I've washed all the hats, gloves and coats and put them away.

Snow - day 1

For once the weather people were correct; we have gotten our promised snow and it still falls. Everyone bundled up this afternoon to brave the cold temps and enjoy the snowfall. I had to laugh when I was getting them ready because our hand-me-down snow gear definitely decreases as the kids get older. Alena was decked out in a real snow suit, Mya at least had on snow pants and poor Gabriel had to wear a pair of my pants. The girls also had snow boots but Gabe had to wear his rain boots. Despite it all, however they stayed warm, dry and Gabe stayed out with the neighborhood boys until it was too dark to see.

Why yes, that is a Yoda hat that Alena is wearing - we had a small battle of the wills over the hat wearing until all parties were satisfied with this one.

and, Mya is sporting a Shrek hat that Emma got from saving cereal box UPC's

This is the first time that Gabriel has really enjoyed playing in, "The most snow Nashville has ever had!" according to him. It makes me wish we had a sled but I don't guess it's really worth storing one for the couple days every few years we could actually use it.

I'm sure they'll be more pictures to come tomorrow...

Their Daddy is an engineer

I've seen the kids make a seesaw before, but never seen them make one for all of them to "ride" on. Watching them get these things stacked up just so was hilarious. The posts are pretty heavy and it took at least one person on each end to get them moved. One child (I'll let you guess which one) was directing the other two as to how they should place the posts. Once it was built, Gabe would switch back and forth between bouncing Mya and Alena although Alena is so light she could bounce herself. Just more proof that kids don't need a bunch of toys to stay busy.

Almost sitting...

Eden can sit now propped in the boppy pillow for short periods of time, and it'll be nice to have a baby who can sit before they crawl. Alena was crawling at 5 months so by the time she could sit up it was too late - she had better things to do. Eden is no where near crawling, though. She's the first of my kids who hates to be on her tummy and when she is there she spends her time screaming, not attempting to move. I'm going to enjoy these last few months that she is immobile 'cause once she starts crawling...

The Fashion Police are going to get us

I'm not sure at what point as she was drifting off to sleep last night, Alena thought to herself,"Oh, I'll get up and put on my black patten leather shoes." Right before I went to bed, however, I went in to check on her and found this. Needless to say, Nae and I got a good laugh; not only did she have these shoes on, but she had also dumped a whole container of blocks in her bed. This girl certainly has a mind of her own.

Sisters

A new view

After Christmas, we put up the swing (which Eden was never a huge fan of anyway) and brought out the Megasaucer. I have a love / hate relationship with that thing - it's so big and takes up a lot of room, but on the other hand, Eden really enjoys it. It's nice to have a "safe" place to stick her when I need to put her down, and I'm sure Eden enjoys being upright to play instead of always in the reclined position.

A long awaited day

Today was a very exciting day for this little girl. She has wanted to take ballet for probably a year or more and we were very thankful that she got into the Metro Parks ballet program. We've only heard wonderful things about this program and the lessons are very affordable. So, today was the day that Mya has been counting down for weeks. I was a little nervous about how she would do in there by herself (no parents allowed in the room), but she had a great time and is already looking forward to next week.

Our Boy

The rest of our week

On Thursday, we made these spiders to go along with our study of Ancient Africa and reading several Anansi the spider stories. They turned out pretty cute although it would have been more appropriate to do this in the fall when it doesn't seem strange to decorate your mantle with spiders as we now have.
Not even an hour after the above picture was taken, Mya was on the couch looking like this as she had become the second unfourtunate victim of the stomach bug. Thankfully it only lasted 24 hours as she was throwing up every 15 minutes - not fun!
Gabriel has moved back into the land of the well and hopefully will stay that way a while. Here he was playing with some playdough.
Alena, has yet to fall to the stomach bug, but has developed a very nasty cold with an on again, off again fever. Where does this stuff come from when she has not been out of the house for a week?
And Eden, thankfully remains healthy and we pray will stay that way. She hasn't made it out of her pajamas many times this week partly due to the cold and partly due to the fact that I was already doing so much laundry and really we weren't going anywhere. We did, however, find time to decorate her head and this is one of those pictures which she is probably going to look back and say, "Why in the world did you make me wear that thing?"

The snow that wasn't

After all the hype about the snow we were supposed to get - schools closed in advance, milk and bread shortage at the grocery stores, we ended up with maybe half an inch. Really pathetic! It was such a little amount though, that the kids didn't even ask to go out which was fine by me. I don't need anything extra to clean up this week anyway.

It's our turn...

We somehow made it through both Thanksgiving and Christmas with everyone well (I believe for the first time since Gabriel was born) only to be awakened last night by a certain little boy, "Mommy, my pillow smells like throw up."And thus the fun has begun even though I think Gabe has passed through the worst of it so only three more kids to go. Also, I don't think that he and Mya understand that the point of having him quarantined on the top bunk with the DVD player is to keep him away from everyone...

5 months old

and {finally} rolling over like a champ!

The two Es

I had a lot of fun doing the December Photo Challenge. Knowing I needed a picture everyday made me leave the camera out and capture photos of everyday things that I normally wouldn't have. While I don't think that I can keep up with a picture for everyday, I am going to try to take more pictures and post them. I really love this picture of Emma and Eden - their eyes such different colors but both so striking.

Dress -up time

It's been a while since I've posted any dress-up pictures of Alena but she was hilarious tonight. We started out with this (and I think she looks really funny next to Gabe because you can see how small she is especially in that costume which is too big for Gabe):

and then we went to this without any hesitation:

After I took the above picture, Alena wanted to see it on the camera. She was very upset that she couldn't see her face so I had to take a new picture without the "master." (That's what she calls the mask).

A Review of 2009

So, I sat down last night to get an end of the year post done and what should happen? our power goes out! My husband works for the electric company and our power goes out on New Year's Eve. It was only out a couple hours, though and we had no exciting plans so all was well. This post, however is a day late but better late than never.

Instead of doing month by month pictures like last year (I was much to lazy to go through all those pictures.) I've compiled four pictures of each of the kiddos that I liked for one reason or another. 2009 has been a great year and it's fun to go back and look at all that's happened.

Happy New Year's Day!