Better Late Than Never

Still nursing my flu here, but I wanted to post some Christmas pics before I forget.
Painting bird houses for Gma and Gpa's gift. We are trying to make more presents this year.

Christmas eve at Grammy's house

Kids with their Great Great Grandma

The kid table

Tracking santa on Aunt Laurie's iPad

Santa came! Or so we thought it would appear. I forgot the fake snow at my mom's and improvised with flour in front of the fireplace. Tate and Benny were inclined to believe they were Santa's footprints in snow, but Gracie was like "wow! Santa got into our flour and made a mess! Why did he do that?" *sigh*

Christmas morning:

Gracie's new microphone (why did Santa think that was a good idea?!) led to many morning announcements.

Tate holding Sammy, my sister's new puppy.

Christmas chaos!

We had dinner at Grammy's that night and stayed overnight. It's a lot of driving going back and forth Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We like to take the day off after Christmas and be lazy in our pj's all day. We finally headed back and the kids passed out. Three days of no naps and late bedtimes were wearing on us all. The kids and I had until Jan 3rd for break and daddy went back to work the 27th. That was when Benny got his first stitches, but that's for another time. Christmas was a crazy time, but really fun. Who knows how many more years we'll have before the magic is gone!

Sick

We're sick. Ranging from stuffy noses to hacking coughs and high temperatures. We've put ourselves on quarantine which makes cabin fever eminent. The kids are fighting over new toys and old toys. We are trying to clean up Christmas stuff everywhere and wiping noses, when all I really want to do is take 3 Tylenol PM and wake up in a week. 3 more days until the end of Christmas break for me and I think I will need every last minute to pull it together for my first graders. Oh, and did I mention Benny got stitches? He was wrestling with Tate and hit his head by the wood stove. I got to take everyone to the doctor's office by myself in bloody pajamas. At least that was before I got sick and became such a whiner. Going out with a bang, 2012!

Our Christmas Card

A little late, but just wanted to post for fun since we worked on it forever! The theme was A Charlie Brown Christmas! The front of the card was Lucy

Then on the inside was Charlie talking with Linus, saying "doesn't anyone know what Christmas is all about?"

Then Linus says, "Sure Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about..."

Then on the back is the kids singing around the Charlie Brown tree!

Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!

Angels

Gracie and Tate got to be in the high schoolo play "the Best Christmas Pageant Ever" and don their costumes again for their Pre-K Christmas concert at school with the "big kids" (kindergarteners and 1st graders). It was sort of exhausting shutting them to rehearsals and all that, but so worth it. Gracie made it clear nobody was allowed to cheer for her or smile at her, but Tate gladly takes her portion. He blew kisses to us and waved between songs.

Another Milestone

I came to pick Tate and Gracie up from school and noticed he was wearing different pants than what I sent him in. His teacher told me that he had a little incident in the bathroom. I sighed and said ok, then she mumbles under her breath "and he walked into class naked."

Open mouthed shock.

Whaaaaaa? She said she thinks he got confused and just came back to class. "But don't worry, as soon as we saw him we scooped him up and took him to another room!" It doesn't help that his merciless and chatty twin sister saw him as well as 14 other four year olds who giggle and squeal just hearing the word underwear.
Thankfully, he really seemed unaffected. Like I was talking about him leaving his coat on the playground, "oh THAT incident". I got the full-ish story out of him though and it seems he went to the stall and there was no toilet paper, so he thought this meant he would have to hold it. So he went to the sink and grabbed a wad of paper towels and "put them on his privates and then couldn't stop it." So then his pants and everything were all wet and he couldn't go back to class with wet pants. That would be yucky and embarassing. So he stripped fully from the waist down and strolled through the hallway past 3 kindergarten classrooms(!) back to class. He walked in the door and they scopped him up. Unfortunately, we used his emergency clothes last month when he went down a wet slide, so he had to use another boys pants and Gracie's underwear for the rest of the day. You would think he'd have enough sense not to admit that detail to anyone, but alas. Gracie was quite chatty about that too.
Fortunately, we ARE talking about 4 year olds and their memories and short and fleeting. If this happened in 2nd grade, you'd better believe he'd be assigned a painful nickname for the next 5 years. A Pre-k kid can get away with a little streaking at school. But I had to write it down, for my memories and of course, to delight his sister.

Santa Letters

We've tried to write letters before, but it never really got through. This was the first time that we sat down and I wrote down exactly what they wanted to say to Santa. I thought I should post them here for posterity.
Gracie, Age 4

Tate, Age 4

Benny, Age 3

I love that Benny said I love you to Santa and Gracie cracked us up with the whole "this Haney is named Gracie" thing. I'm realizing that this whole believing in Santa window could be very short. We've been waiting for them to be old enough to get it, and I know many 5 and 6 year olds who are already over it. I am praying we get a few more years. There is nothing like it. We left our letter with Ernie (our elf) last night to take to Santa for us. Why would we waste a stamp when he goes every night? In a couple of days we'll see if Santa answers.

Picture Post

It's been a pretty good weekend.

My favorite quote is the new verse to Frosty the Snowman tyhat Gracie made up "Frosty the snowman was as big as he could be. The windows shine and the children mind because nobody wants to sneeze!" Um...catchy.