Has it really been that long.....

since I last posted pictures? Wow, way to stay on top of things! My last real post was in July right after Lilly's Minnie Mouse party. A lot has happened since then!! Leila started Kindergarten and absolutely loves her teacher Mrs. Maloy. Leila turned 6 in September. Cole started preschool and is so in love with one of his classmates Sylvia. She also is in Cole's class at church. Cole turned 5 in November. Lilly misses Leila and Cole while they are at school but is such a big helper with Laurel. They love to play babies together. To help keep the kids occupied and to help out some friends, I started watching little baby Carolyn (I think she was 3 months when I started watching her) everyday from 7:30-5:30 Monday through Friday starting in September. I also started watching one of Lilly's friends Will (age 2) on Mondays and Wednesdays for about 5 hours each day. I got a little too stressed and stopped watching Carolyn in early December.

Christmas was wonderful this year!! We started off by going to our friends (from church) house. We ate lots of yummy food, decorated cookies for Santa, acted out the Nativity, and sang Christmas songs. We had a wonderful time!! When we got home we sprinkled our Reindeer food on the lawn and sent the kids to bed. They were extremely easy to get to bed!! They knew Santa would not come if they didn't go to sleep. Roy and I were asleep by 11pm!! I was so excited!

Laurel woke us up Christmas day at about 8 am. (I was really excited we got to sleep in!) Lilly woke up shortly after and we had to wake Cole and Leila up. We continued on my family's tradition of lining up youngest to oldest and singing Christmas songs until we get to the Christmas tree. The kids weren't really big on the singing they just wanted to get to the tree! We let the kids open their stockings and then we ate breakfast. I made cinnamon rolls with icing and pecan sticky buns. They were delicious and brought back so many memories of working at TJ Cinnamons. (My mom and dad owned a cinnamon roll bakery.) After breakfast the kids tore into their presents. Before we knew it there was paper all over the place! We lounged around all day, played games, and watched movies. I made ham, sweet potato casserole, Brussel sprouts, hash brown casserole, and homemade rolls. I got the kids little plastic wine glasses to drink the sparkling grape juice. That was a big hit!! This will be our new tradition! We later drove and looked at Christmas lights. It was so wonderful to not have any plans and to just stay home as a family.

On the 27th at about 12:30am, Roy woke me up having a seizure. I have seen him having a seizure a couple times before but this one seem to really scare me even more! I think because he can usually tell when they are coming on and has about 10 seconds of the "aura". (He gets a ringing in his ear) This time he was asleep and didn't feel it coming on so I couldn't prepare myself. I am having a hard time with it still and continually wake him up at night asking if he is ok. Every snore he makes (or even doesn't make), and every weird noise he makes in his sleep I freak out and can't sleep because I just know he will have another seizure. I am totally traumatized by it! Really a tough thing to go through! The doctor told him to take more of the meds he is already on. Hopefully this will fix the problem and we won't have to worry about this anymore!!

Anyway, here are some pictures of Christmas.....well I take that back! The pictures were taking too long to upload. I will post some later in another post.

Cracking up laughing...

Cole saw a commercial on tv for Proactive. He says, "Mom we need to get that for me." I asked him why. He says because I have bumps. (He has REALLY bad eczema.) Leila laughed at him and said "nice try Cole!"

I love my kids so much! They continually keep me laughing!

Just a couple of funny things...

I know I always say this but Cole comes up with some of the craziest things. I bought a turkey baster the other day. He finds it, holds it up to his nose, and says this is the hugest snot sucker!!

On the way to Target tonight, I was trying to get the kids to behave and I said that Santa Claus was not going to bring them any toys for Christmas. Instead he would bring them reindeer poop. Cole immediately says, rainbow poop!? Wow, sounds colorful!

Funny things from my children's mouths...

So tonight I was making dinner and Cole said, "Dinner smells Delicious. It is off the hoozle." I laughed so hard!!!

I made cookies after dinner and the kids were sitting at the table. Cole moves his chair to sit by Leila. I asked him if Leila was his best friend. He said, "Yes, I love Leila." Leila said, "No Cole is not my best friend, he is my cousin."

Anytime we ask Lilly a question she so innocently says, "I dunno."

I love my kids so much!!!

Kids say the darndest things...

Roy had to work 2pm-12am tonight on his birthday. We surprised him at work and each kid gave him a balloon that they picked out with a bag of his favorite candy. We were going to eat with him at Subway for his birthday dinner (which is in the HEB shopping center not because we are cheap) but he got really busy and wasn't able to meet us. I told the kids that daddy wasn't going to be able to eat dinner with us because he got tied up at work. Leila and Cole almost started crying. Not because they weren't going to get to eat with daddy but because they thought he literally got tied up at work. They asked me if there was a friend at work that could untie him and asked why anyone would tie daddy up. Then Cole said I bet they used the balloons we gave him to tie him up. I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants!

Lilly's Minnie Mouse Party

Lilly's Birthday party pictures-

Minnie Mouse ears

Her new Elmo she got with birthday money.

Some of the decorations.

Minnie Mouse cupcakes

Lilly doesn't really watch tv yet but she knows 2 characters really well. She knows who Elmo is and Minnie Mouse. I decided to do a little Minnie Mouse party for her 2nd bday. I only invited a few kids her age because I didn't want it to get too chaotic. She had a great time! We had the pool set up, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, swing set, sprinkler, playhouse, Minnie Mouse ears made out of balloons, and balls for the kids to play with. I made pigs in a blanket, rotel and chips, watermelon, cantaloupe, cherries, Minnie Mouse cupcakes, and ice cream. For the party favors they got a fish shaped cup with a crazy straw, bubbles, candy, and a water gun. We only had 2 kids show up because alot of the families were going out of town and some of the kids were sick but I think the kids had a great time!

After the party we went to Galveston to meet Aidan and her family. We had a great time playing on the beach!! We were going to watch a fireworks show with them but they canceled the show at the last minute due to the weather. Of course I didn't get any pictures of it!

June 2010

We didn't really do much in June. It really went by pretty quick! We stayed home, swam, played, and had a garage sale. Lilly turned 2 on the 26th. I can't believe she is already 2! At about 21 months she started asking to go to the potty. So I started taking her and she does pretty good everyday! She could be totally potty trained if I would make the effort to potty train her. She usually has 1 accident a day and I don't ask her to go to the potty she does it all by herself! She wants to be a big girl so bad! She is such a great helper! She loves to get diapers, wipes, pacifiers, or any other thing we may need for Laurel. She loves her baby sister so much! She is really funny with her. She will walk up to Laurel and make funny faces and baby babbles to make Laurel laugh. Laurel just thinks she is so funny!! We gave Lilly her big present a couple weeks before her birthday. We got her a Dora trike. She loves riding it! We had a birthday party for her on July 3rd. More on that in another post.

Lilly and Laurel

Cole, Lilly, Leila

Lilly's new ride

Cole and Leila's lemonade stand at the garage sale! They wanted to help me with the garage sale and this was the only way I could get them to stay out of the way and not play with the stuff we were selling.