My baby turns 4

A Preschooler, a Sunbeam, and now a 4 year old. Things are moving too fast in our home. On January 8th, our Reagan turned 4. I guess I officially have to stop carrying her around. But I can’t help it. Whenever I look at her I see this….

It’s like I’m in this time warp where she will always be a baby… a really really cute one!

Our family was blessed the moment she entered this world. She brings so much flavor. (I sat here 10 minutes trying to think of an appropriate word…. flavor is the best I could come up with). There are many flavors, and she brings them ALL. Sweet to sour, tasty to tart. This girl is like an Everlasting Gobstoper!

If you don’t know Reagan well, this picture is her 100%. I took about a million pictures with these faces and got about 2 decent smiles!

Saturday morning we went to her favorite place on Earth, Chuck-e-Cheese.

The kids got the most of their tokens by sharing them. I like how they all crammed into this tiny seat to ride together.

They’re all obsessed with tickets and how many they can get. The boys his a few jackpots and got 800 tickets. They only kept 200 for themselves and gave 400 to Reagan since it was her birthday, so sweet!

When we got home, Reagan didn’t waste a second opening her presents.

Happy Birthday Hugs!

After gifts, we watched the Tinkerbell movie, then had dinner…. Birthday Girl’s choice of meals: Macky-Cheese, salad, and pink lemonade, delish!

Reagan was VERY specific on what sort of cake she wanted. It was to be a “Pink princess cake.” And it had to be a “real princess,” she said “with a head and arms and legs.” Nice. Luckily I found a photo on Pinterest and copied the cake. And… it had to be a “strawberry cake, with strawberry frosting.” (one might think she were spoiled with these demanding requests!)

You are looking at 2 boxes of cake and 4 containers of frosting! I think we could have fed the neighborhood dessert.

But it really only had to make 1 person happy… and I think it did!

About to blow out the candles…

Reagan, you may be stubborn as a mule, but I love you and cherish your spunky spirit! You have brought an irreplaceable light to our lives!

You will always be my little princess, no matter how many birthdays you continue to have, or how big you get! I would make you the birthday cake your heart desires… I would make you the moon! Happy Birthday Reagan

A Happy Holiday indeed!

I haven’t posted anything in a while. I wish I had a good reason why… like we went on some exotic vacation, or maybe we won the lottery and have been busy buying houses and boats galore. Santa did leave us lottery tickets in our stockings…. I had such high hopes!

No, instead Shawn has been working like crazy. The Dr. he is interning for is a workaholic, I swear. In the meantime, I am being driven crazy by a combination of awful weather and rowdy kids. Are my kids the only ones who fight and wrestle all day long? And who race through our narrow hallway, non-stop? And only speak in whines?

Yes, this post was intended to be about our Christmas…. not my woes

We were able to do a lot to feel the Christmas spirit, like go view Christmas lights, bake/decorate sugar cookies, and other fun stuff…. all of which I DIDN’T snap a single picture of. We’re lucky I remembered to take the camera out for Christmas Eve.

We were lucky to have my mom spend Christmas with us this year. Here we all are Christmas Eve. I made everyone matching pajamas, then ran out of fabric, so Shawn has pajama ‘shorts.’ They are hilarious looking, I love them, and I love that Shawn is more than happy to sport them around the house.

Christmas morning went pretty smooth. We had church in the morning, so the kids had to wait to see what Santa brought them until afterwards. There wasn’t any fuss…. amazing! They were so patient.

Here they are, lined up after church, ready to go in the living room and see their toys.

Grant is obsessed with Armadillos.

Reagan with her doll house she touched once. I never know what this girl will like. Looks like Santa was just as clueless.

This is the first year that we have had the kids actually buy gifts for each other, with their own hard-earned money. Reagan had Jefferson to buy for….. after some coaxing she decided he would like a Lego, rather than a Barbie. And here we have our first hug-tackle. Jefferson was thrilled!

Jefferson had Grant… he chose to get him a Playmobil figurine. And here we have our second hug-tackle of the day. Grant flipped out!

It was so fun to watch them give and receive from each other. Grant had Reagan to buy for. He had a very difficult time thinking of something to get her (huh, not unlike me, or Santa). On Christmas Eve night he made the decision to make her new play dough, but it was too late. Luckily I had some extra gifts he chose from to give her.

And our third hug-tackle was with this beautiful blanket. I mentioned Jefferson’s baby blanket HERE. My girlfriend’s mom, Lisa, read that blog post and actually made Jefferson a new blanket. UNBELIEVABLE. I swear, if you had been here Lisa, you would have been knocked to the ground with a hug. Jefferson was so happy! He uses it constantly, although the old one tags along too.

The kids made Shawn this city shirt so they can drive their cars on his back and give him a fun massage.

My mom made Reagan a couple of these adorable scarfs. See, Mom, you are crafty! Reagan will wear them with enough bribery.

I tried my hand at crochet and made this hat for Reagan. She wore it for 5 seconds! I’m saving it for my granddaughter, who will cherish and adore handmade gifts, unlike my daughter!

 

This Season went by lightning fast! This is the only family picture we took this season, lame.

Our Christmas tree got taken down Christmas day (it was completely dead) and the decorations shortly afterwards. We celebrated New Years, the kids went back to school, and now we’re back to reality! It is exciting to start a brand New Year. One of my goals is to try to document more on the blog, I feel like I’ve gotten lazy about taking pictures and writing stuff down. So, hopefully you’ll see more of us, like it or not!

Preschool Christmas Program

Last week was Reagan’s Preschool Christmas Program. She has been looking forward to it for several weeks. She’s been singing and dancing at home and was very particular on what she wore and looked like. But when we got there, she wouldn’t enter the school. Typical Reagan!

I was almost in tears when she finally decided she would go.  Here she is (on the right) with her classmates. This is both AM and PM classes. I was scared she would run to me at any second.

She relaxed a bit and got into the program. She sang and danced and melted my heart!

The kids sang so well, that Santa heard them and made a special stop (or so he said). Their faces were priceless!

Everyone received a surprise out of his bag. I asked Reagan to show me what she got….

It wasn’t until after we took this picture that I noticed the signs that said “please stay off the stage”. Opps! I feel really bad now. Everyone probably thought I was totally rude. Not to mention HUGE! Do I always look this ginormous? I have got to lay off the ice cream, seriously.

We ate some holiday treats, then stood in line to visit Santa. Grant refused to stand in line with us. “This is your chance to tell Santa what you want,” I told him. “He knows when I’ve been good or bad, and he already know what I want!” Grant said. Okay, I can’t argue with that.

Here is Reagan telling Santa what she wants. “Toys, I just want toys.” I guess Santa didn’t like that request, so he asked her, “what kind of toys? what about some Barbie’s or a Pony?”  To which Reagan said, “yes, I want a pony.” A PONY?

Nice, real nice Santa. I wish you would have just left it at “TOYS”

Holiday Essentials

Christmas is overwhelming for me. For everyone… I believe…. right? Or am I the only one?

There are gifts to buy or make, and timelines to get things to the post office, cutting down the Christmas tree, decorating the tree, wrapping the gifts, filling the advent calendar, watching a million Christmas movies, reading a million Christmas books, writing letters to Santa, setting up the Nativity, baking/decorating cookies, viewing neighborhood Christmas Lights, the gingerbread house, making gifts for neighbors, taking a family photo and sending out Christmas cards, baking, baking, and baking, visiting Santa, Christmas parties, teacher gifts before school gets out, oh, and making more gifts.

And this all must get done this month! within only a few weeks actually. and….. ready…… GO……..

Some years I feel on top of things, others not so much. This is a ‘Not-so-much’ year. We are just sticking to the essentials.

Our tree is up and glowing. You would never know from this picture that 2 rows of lights are out. My Dad was here for Thanksgiving and helped us pick this guy out. Our living room is smaller than earlier years so we wanted to get a smaller tree. We ended up getting our biggest tree yet!

The kids wrote their letters to Santa. I think Jefferson has better handwriting than I do.

Santa won’t have any problem fulfilling Reagan’s wishes. Don’t even question the artwork…. I have no idea.

We set up our Nativities. Thank goodness we have 3 sets! Everyone has their own particular idea of how it should be set up.

They did a pretty good job, although Grant might need a little reminder of the Nativity Story.

And we made our Gingerbread (graham cracker) house.

Good thing Shawn was there to scientifically size a cut the crackers to fit the box perfectly.

Honey, your skills are unmatched! Here it is ready to decorate.

And they’re off………

Jefferson was a wild icer. He did a great job. His creative touch was adding a dollop of animal poop behind every animal cracker. nice.

Reagan just like squirting icing everywhere

This was Grant’s contribution….

This is what we were aiming for….

And this is what ours looks like. Better if you ask me. I mean, look at those curtains in the windows… they’re so realistic looking. And ours has a pond filled with huge Swedish Fish in it.

And 2 days later, our Gingerbread house looks like this…. even the animal poop is gone! My kids have no self-control.

Hopefully I’ve redeemed myself from not carving a pumpkin this year.

There’s still a lot more to do (like get Shawn a gift… boy is he hard to shop for) but we certainly won’t be able to do it all this year.  What we have done has been fun, and everyone around here is getting more and more excited for the big day.

Lemon?

I know.

I haven't posted in a million years!

I have had nothing note worthy to talk about. And I haven't taken any pictures since our Disneyland trip.

Not even a single picture of Thanksgiving, or picking out/decorating our Christmas tree... criminal! Oh well.

This would be an upbeat update of the past few weeks.

Except I am in the worst mood ever!

Just minutes ago my sewing maching broke........... AGAIN........ For the billionth time since I got it 3 years ago.

And after almost a month of silence, this is all I can think to post about. Because this is infuriating!!
I'm sick thinking of how much money I have spent repairing this thing!

This isn't some junky machine I found at Goodwill. It was new and really nice! (or so I thought) What is the deal?

The sewing machine is my life-line. I might die without it. In fact, I'm already feeling a shortness of breath.

and does anyone have any idea what this means for Christmas this year???

I rely on this thing for gifts. I have projects up the wazoo ready to be finished.

THAT WON'T BE!!!

I

AM

SO

FRUSTRATED

and mad. I want to chuck the thing out the window! Instead I'm just going to cry. And I don't even have chocolate in the house to calm me down.

Hopefully our next visit shows a happier side of me, and not so disfunctional. But I guess that all depends on whether my machine gets fixed.