Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve, so it's time for our annual Gingerbread House decorating...okay so this is only the second year we've done this but you have to start somewhere, right? LOL

The kids had a great time, here's there house from start to finish...I assembled it and they took over from there...

Vacation Work

How exactly is a vacation work you ask? It's when you spend your entire time off from work revamping your house. It all started because Kenzie convinced us to let her and Bekah share a room. So that entailed moving the twins out of their room and into Kenzie's room (bunk beds got put up in that room) and moving Kenzie and Bekah into the twins old room (they kept the boys captains beds that were in there). And of course, we couldn't just move stuff around...there had to be painting involved...mainly because Kenzie's old room was pink and the boys weren't too keen on that. LOL Here's the result of all our work over the Christmas holiday...

Kenzie and Bekah's new room, a lovely light lavendar shade.


Tay and Ty's new room, a lovely blue green shade...perfect for a fish bowl look. LOL


This will eventually be Keari's new room


And we couldn't just stop at those rooms...had to make sure that every room got in on the act so here's a pic of our spotless playroom. Did some major purging in here and now you can actually see the floor.


And here's a pic of Alex and Connor's room...again notice the floor (it's not often that you can actually see it. LOL)

And after all this work, I need a vacation from my vacation. LOL

Medieval Times Projects

Alex's homework for their current chapter in World History is a huge list of projects. He has to pick from the list the amount of points that he wants to get for his homework grade (if he wants to get an 80%, he picks enough projects to add up to 80 pts) and had 2 weeks to complete them all. He ended up doing 95 pts worth...

The first is a poster and essay on being Lord of a Manor


Second is a map showing the Vikings travels


Third & Fourth on journals on being a Knight and a Peasant


Fifth is a poster on Aristocratic Women


And last but not least a Medieval Castle

Busy Weekend

Between piano recitals, softball and not sleeping well, I'm exhausted right now. And I didn't even do the piano recital running around. Connor, Kenzie and Taylor had a winter themed piano recital in Bowie yesterday. Unfortunately Tay's teacher forgot to give him a piece to play for the recital so he didn't get to play. Talk about being bummed...and to make matters worse, he had to sit through all the other performances. Poor guy! Kenzie played well and made one mistake...he played his scale up one too many times and was going to run out of keys so had to restart that section. LOL

Kenzie had a 3 hr softball practice yesterday afternoon and a 4 hr practice this morning. Both times, I dropped her off and then went Christmas shopping. I don't know what was going on at Best Buy today but that place was packed. There is no way I would have stood in a line to check out that wrapped around the inside of the building. Crazy! I was able to get most of our Christmas shopping done this weekend...not that there was a lot to do since we bought our big family gift of the kayaks back in the summer. Hopefully the kids won't be disappointed come Christmas morning when there is only 1-2 gifts for each of them under the tree.

Starfish

Tyler was being creative yesterday. He loves making these stars and I thought it was very creative of him to turn it into a starfish. =)

Giant Snowflake

I saw Velda's post the other day about making snowflakes, and after she assured me they were super easy to make, I decided to give it a try tonight. Here's the result. What do you think? And since V inspired me , of course I had to make it in her favorite color. =) The kids were totally impressed and they all wanted to know how I did it. Think I should tell them or just let them think is was some complicated magic? LOL

Decorating - Day 2

The Christmas village got put up today thanks to Andy and Kenzie. It gets bigger and bigger every year. If you look closely in the last picture you can see Noah's Ark up by the lighthouse. I love Noah's Ark!

Festival of the Trees

Connor, Kenzie & Taylor performed at the 22nd Annual Festival of the Trees tonight. They always have tons of beautifully decorated trees and the kids playing Christmas music is a great way to put everyone in the holiday spirit. It was a quick performance tonight since the kids only had to play one Christmas song each...usually they do at least 2...although Kenzie and Taylor did play a duet together, in addition to their solo piece. The next two weekends are going to be busy for us as the kids have 2 more piano recitals coming up, plus a short playing stint at the Country Peddler, a country craft store.

It's Beginning to Look...

a lot like Christmas. Sheeze, hard to believe it's less than a month away. We drug out all the Christmas decorations out of the attic and between helping Alex with a paper, taking him to football and piano recitals, the tree got up and decorated...somehow. The twins actually did put the ornaments on the tree, much to Kenzie's chagrin, but it was her own fault because she decided to leave to go shopping with Andy. They did a really good job although some of the branches did get a little heavy. ;)

Here's some pics of how our house is starting to look Christmasy. The first pic shows our half tree since we no longer have the room to put up a full tree...we only put up the half a tree now. Can you tell? ;)




That's all for today as Connor, Kenzie & Taylor have to leave to play piano at the Festival of the Trees.

Virus

I really hate pc viruses. It's totally our fault because we forgot to install the virus program on the kids computer when it got hooked back up to the internet...for awhile it was just being used to play pc games on. It took me all day but I was able to get it mostly cleaned up...there is still something on it because it's keeps popping up bogus microsoft windows center virus alerts. I'm not sure where it is though because the two virus programs we are using aren't finding it. I even tried to manually look for the files in the registry and I can't find them. It's a puzzle at the moment but I'm going to let it go for now cause I'm sick of dealing with it.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! We are off to see my in-laws today. It'll be different traveling this year as the past several years we've done Thanksgiving at our house. Depending on how worn out everyone is, we might swing by and see my sister on the way home since they only live a couple miles from Andy's parents. Kenzie is still dieing to see her new cousin.

No More Work

To bad it's only for the rest of the week. One of these days I won't have to worry about going to work but not anytime soon. Of course, if I'd known we were going to spend the whole day cleaning the house, I probably would have reconsidered staying home. I think I would have worked less if I'd gone to work. ;-) We did get alot accomplished with the house, though.

Alex and Connor spent the day in Baltimore with their church youth group helping to feed the hungry. I'm sure how impressed they were since they were relegated to trash duty...but they were there helping and that's what counts.

Do Over Day

You sure can tell that today was a Monday. Started off with me getting up late because someone who shall remain nameless was playing with my alarm and switch it from FM to AM. My alarm went off but played static instead of music so I didn't hear until about 15 minutes after it had started going off. Luckily I heard Alex roaming around upstairs because he also had an alarm clock problem this morning. In his case, somehow the time on his clock got set an hour earlier than it actually was so he ended up getting up at 5 instead of 6 like his clock said. Hmm, that clock fairy was busy. ;)

Then I get to work this morning and discover that a database I was working on last week was missing all the current months data. If I didn't have hard copies of the reports in front of me, I would have thought I'd imagined doing the update. Turns out I wasn't the only one missing data. They did a server update on one of our drives over the weekend and mistakenly loaded an old backup copy of the server. Needless to say that caused some trama this morning but we were able to get it worked out.

Then this afternoon, I finish converting a report into a database...done all the balancing etc, so it's ready to get turned in. I go to rename the database and end up deleting it by mistakes. Ugh! I just couldn't believe I did that. Luckily, I had a back up from Friday but I had to redo all the work I'd done today. Was able to get it recreated by the time I left today.

Needless to say, it wasn't a very good day and I'm really hoping that tomorrow is better.

Happy Happy Birthday Birthday!!

Tay & Ty turn 8 today and they are totally excited about it. Because of schedule changes I actually get to be home today which is unusual. That means I got to see my birthday boys first thing in the morning instead of late in the evening which is how it normally works. One of the perks of being the birthday child is you get to choose that nights dinner...and even those these guys are twins, they have different tastes...so we ended up with macaroni & cheese that Ty chose and beefaroni that Tay chose. Hmm, maybe they aren't so very different in tastes. LOL It ended up being night...dinner, then birthday celebration of cake...no ice cream, we forgot to get any. Oops! Presents that consisted of a rip stick...must be nuts on that one...a mini skateboard and lots of books. They seemed to really like their gifts. Then Andy and I had to leave to go to bible study. When we got back, Keari was totally zonked on the sofa. That's always a bad sign because it was only 8:15 and when she takes a nap that late, she never sleeps through the night. I figured I'd give it a shot, though, and picked her up and put her to bed. Much to our surprise she actually slept the entire night.

In addition to b'day stuff, Bekah had a hearing test today. This was to rule out any fluid in the ear problems that could be attributing to her speech issues...she tends to drop the ending sounds of words during normal talk. Turns out, her hearing is completely normal, in fact she has has pretty sensitive hearing so her speech issue are just development delays which will get worked on during her speech classes. Didn't hurt to rule out any other possible problems.

Speech Class

Bekah had another speech class today...I think this makes her third since she transitioned to the new program and new teacher. I'm very thankful that she likes this teacher much, much better than her previous. She actually talks to this one so that is a huge improvement since she was like a little clam with her other one. She's excited because she has her own book into which the teacher puts her homework. She thinks she's such a big girl....going to school with a backpack and a book. LOL

Today is my first of three days working from home this week. Had to switch Bekah's speech class from her normal day on Friday to today because her teacher is going to a conference tomorrow Friday. Tomorrow Bekah has a hearing test at 12:30 to which Andy can't bring any of the other kids. And Friday, I have a conference with Alex's algebra teacher. He ended up with a 79 for his first marking period grade but I'm concerned that his last several test grades have been declining below the C mark. Interested to see if she has any thoughts on how to correct this.

Another Busy Day

Started with Sunday school for the kids. I then went to 9am mass by myself as I opted to stay home with Bekah and Kearsyn last night...after being in the car the majority of the day yesterday, I knew there was no way they would be able to make it through mass quietly last night. By the time I got home, Andy had breakfast ready. Alex then headed off to school to help with the open house. While he was there, Andy went shopping for the twins birthday presents. I headed to the fields...first stop was to drop of Connor, Kenzie and Taylor for select soccer tryouts...second was to take Tyler to his last football game. Boy was it chilly by the time we left the field. They ended up losing but Ty had a good time. It was then time to head back to the other field to collect the rest of the kiddos. Now I'm home and tired and not at all ready to start the work week. Blech!

This week is going to be all out of sync cause Bekah's speech class is moved to Wednesday again due to her teacher being at a conference Thursday & Friday. Bekah then has a hearing test in the middle of the day Thursday. Then I'm meeting Alex's math teacher Friday afternoon to discuss what we can do to help improve his math test grades. Guess I'll get some work done in there sometime.

And then the following week is Thanksgiving. How in the world did that happen?

Veterns Day

Two More Losses

Taylor had his last soccer game of the season this morning. I offered to take him and boy what a mistake that was as it was freezing out on the field @ 8:30. Brr! They didn't play too badly but ended up losing the game in the last 20 secs. Bummer!

We left the field, ran home to pick up everyone else and then headed to Westminster to watch Kenzie play a select soccer game...everyone except Connor & Alex, Connor was going with friends to watch the high school soccer game and Alex stayed home to do some schoolwork. It was another chilly game and the girls ended up losing 3 - 0. Kenzie ended up letting 1 ball go by her to score...but it did take a funny bounce so it was hard to save. And she didn't have any opportunity to get near the goal to make any scores. Next week is their last select game and then the season is over til spring. Yay!

Oh So Close...

Alex received his very first report card for high school today and after a rocky start to the semester, he ended up with 4 A's (Honors World History, Honors Biology, Catholic Christianity and Computer Science), 2 B's (English and Spanish) and 1 C (Honors Algebra II). He just missed being on the Second Honors Honor Roll...he had the overall % needed but he couldn't have any classes with a % lower than 80% and he had a 79% in his Algebra II class. Oh so close and yet so far. I can't even begin to express how proud I am of him. He worked really hard this semester, balancing sports with his schoolwork, and it really shows. Congratulations Alex! Keep up the good work...and we'll get that math grade up yet. ;)

Sports Banquet

Alex is off to his first sports banquet tonigh. Hopefully he and Andy will have a good time. Here they are all dressed up and ready to go.

Pea in a Pod

or in this case, Baby in a Basket. Keari loves to climb in/on/under things. We can constantly find her sitting on the bottom shelf of our bookcase. We also have a small end table that she likes to climb inside. Tonight this is where I found her...she's such a cutie. =)

Cake or Football Anyone?

We had my family over to celebrate all the October & November birthdays. This was supposed to be our free weekend but the rain the previous weekend pushed everything back to this weekend. Kenzie is upset because it meant that she had miss seeing her new cousin because she had to be in Virginia for her softball tournament. I told her I'd take her over to see another weekend but she wasn't thrilled about it. So while Andy, Kenzie and Connor headed to Virginia, I tried to get the house in some semblance of order to have people over. When everyone arrived, we had to celebrate quickly as Tyler had a football game to go to.

Here's a picture of our combined cake and one of Keari trying out her own special cake. She wasn't too thrilled with getting all messy but she did get into at the end.


Then I had to leave everyone to get Tyler to his football game on time. He is really enjoying playing flag football this year. And what a lovely day to be outside for a while. Not nearly as cold as it was yesterday.

Champions!!

They won! They won! Kenzie called me after the game to tell me that she made the winning run...apparently there is a 15 run slaughter rule in the Championship game and Kenzie's run was that 15th run. I'm so thrilled for her, especially since she had struck out twice during the semi finals game, to have her, in the Championship game, rip a ball through the infield that 3 players missed...and score the game ending run. How exciting for her! Yay Lightning!!

35 - 3

That is the total of the runs scored during the first three games of the Halloween softball tournament that Kenzie is playing in. And, unlike last year, her team had the 35 runs. Woohoo!! The kids played awesome! And I was so proud of Kenzie...her first time up to bat she smacks it to center field for a basehit. In addition to that, she had a walk, a perfect bunt, a strike out and a complete flub up that started with a dropped third strike and ended up with her on first on a run scoring. It was crazy! They are top cede so they skip right to the semi finals tomorrow.

Ice Skating

Alex came home stating that his school was having a free skate at the ice rink. Of course free skate doesn't mean that it was free. ;) LOL So we ended up making the trek to Easton to drop him off so he could spend a couple of hours with his friends. A handful of kids showed up and he seemed to have a good time. Meanwhile, Connor and Kenzie had their last soccer training class til next year although I think there is still one more makeup game for Kenzie's soccer team on 11/17.

Trick or Treat

The kids had a great time trick or treating last night. We dropped Connor off with friends and then headed over to another friends house. I'd forgotten how dark their neighborhood is but it was a lovely night to be out. When we were done, we sat around a fire, staying toasty warm while eating some delicious spagetti. Yum!

Here's some pics of the kiddos...

Happy Halloween!

Another Year Older

Yup, today is my b'day. Hasn't been a bad day so far. Got a beautiful homemade cake from one of my coworkers. It was almost too pretty to eat...almost. LOL

I also had a cake waiting for me when I got home that Andy and the kiddos made me. Haven't had time to celebrate yet as Kenzie has a soccer game tonight and then Andy and I have a bible study class. We'll celebrate when we get home from that. And for once, Alex doesn't have a ton of homework so he'll be able to keep and eye on the kiddos while we're gone without losing time that should be spent studying.

Okay, now back from bible study and have done cake and ice cream and got this lovely bracelet for a present. I love it!

Sick Day

One of these days I'll learn not to drive into work when I wait up feeling off because it makes for an extremely long drive home. I decided after being at work for 2 hrs that I really needed to go home cause I wasn't feeling well. Found out after getting home that Bekah had also been sick that morning so it looks like there is some bug going through the house. Let's hope it doesn't get everybody.

Homecoming Dance

Alex's school had their homecoming dance tonight...and he took a date, Sarah. Gosh, he doesn't seem old enough to be doing that yet. The evening started off with a prehomecoming party at one of his classmates house. Parents were invited to stay for the party, I believe, so they could be used as sources of transporation from the party to the dance. ;-) Andy then took Alex and Sarah to the school where the dance was being held where he was able to meet Sarah's mom since she had forgotten to bring her dance ticket with her. At the end of the dance I went down to pick them up and to take Sarah home. They seemed to have a great time as Alex said they danced the entire 3 hrs.

Surgery

Andy had gallbladder surgery done this morning. He ended up getting the first surgery of the day which meant that we needed to be there at the crack of dawn. It's bad enough I have to get up early to go to work but it's even worse when you have to get up early to head to the hospital. Surgery ended up taking about 1 1/2hrs...then took another hour to get him into an observation room. From there things went downhill as trying to get anything out of the nurses was like pulling teeth. Started with him being given the wrong control to use for the nurses call button...good thing nothing serious happened cause we sure wouldn't have gotten any nurses with the control he had...and ended with it taking almost two hours to get discharged because of lack of communication on the different nurses part. Good thing is that the surgery went smoothly and dr indicated that it was good that the gallbladder had been removed as it was inflamed. Andy came home with 4 bandaids on his belly...pretty amazing when you think he had an organ removed through one of those tiny cuts. He has some good pain meds so so far he's doing okay. I'll be off for the next two days...took vacation for today and tomorrow...and will work from home on Friday assuming Andy is up to handling the kids some.

Keari's 1st Birthday

Hard to believe it's been a year ago that I brought home a new little baby. How things have changed during that year. She's gone from being a helpless newborn to an independant toddler. There's is no keeping her still...she's constantly on the move which I'm sure is one of the reasons that she is so small. She burns everything off. She also has a bit of a temper. Hmm, wonder where she gets that from...can't be from me. LOL She loves her brothers and sister...and they simply adore her. She's sprouted 3 teeth in the last month so needless to say she's been a bit cranky but now that they are through she's doing much better. And she loves real food...will eat just about anything you put in front of her.

Time to go Home

Josh has finally been released from the hospital. Yay! Although I'm a little sad that I won't get to see him as much now. He was in a hospital right down road from where I work so I've been able spend some time with him every couple of days. But I'm glad he's finally home and is doing well.

Happy Birthday, Bekah!

We now have a big 3 year old in the house and she's very proud of herself for accomplishing that feat. LOL She's such a person and has no qualms about expressing her opinions...and she loves bossing her brothers around.

A New Baby

and for once it's not mine. LOL My sister had her baby today...Joshua Logan, 8:41 am, 7 lbs 3 oz...born a month early...he wasn't due til Halloween...guess he was anxious to get here. She ended up having a c-section due to placenta previa and then had some trouble with bleeding afterwards but they were able to get that under control. He's having some issues with breathing and is in NICU but doing well. Congratulations Von and Richard!! You guys did good!

18

That's how long Andy and I have been married. Hard to believe we started as a family of 2 and are now a family of 9. Since getting married we've moved 5 times (not counting the 2 times we moved before that), bought 3 houses...one of which we had built. I still work for the same company that I did when we get married...makes it easy to remember how many years I've been working there as I started there the year we got married.

Andy has some before and after pics if you'd like to check them out. You can see them here.

We went out to dinner tonight to celebrate at a place right in our own neighborhood...we were a little worried because the last two years the places we have picked have been terrible. Tonight, though, was a totally different story. The food was great! And the service was quick. We both had crab brisque to start...then Andy got NY strip w/garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus while I got a crab cake sandwich & fries. For dessert, we had chocolate cake and strawberry shortcake. Yummy!

The only problem was that they were too quick...we were back home again an hour later...not nearly long enough away. LOL

Happy Anniversary Sweetie!!

Reunited

After a week apart, the entire family is finally all back together. The 3 older kids had a great time at the beach with their aunt and uncle. They all seemed to have grown some in the time they were gone and all have gotten nice suntans. Kenzie was so overcome with emotions that she burst into tears upon seeing me. I guess she missed me. ;) Connor, on the other hand, burst into tears because he wanted to go to vacation. LOL

While they were gone, the twins participated in a VBS where they got to play games...Ty picked basketball and Tay picked soccer and they both loved their individual sports. With them at school, that left Andy with just Bekah and Keari so it was a relaxing time for him. And the first 3 days of the week I was gone to Cape May with my mom. That was nice relaxing time. Mom's already planning on when to go next year.

A Tooth

Keari has her first tooth...bottom right one. Yay! Of course, she decided to get it while I was away but I'll just pretend that it broke through on that day I got back. ; ) She hasn't figured out yet that she can chomp with it so lets hope that takes her a while to figure that out. LOL

Vacation Time

Whew, it's about time. I was more than ready to get away for a few days...just my mom and I...no kiddies to worry about. Although that's going to be weird because I'm definitely not used to being away from them for any length of time.

It was a foggy morning to take a trip on the ferry but we were able to see a few dolphins playing around in the water. Wasn't about to get any pics of then because of the fog, though, but I did get a foggy pic of the water. Kind of eerie looking.

Before heading to the bed & breakfast, we took a detour to see a lighthouse and a bunker, walked around on the sand a little and looked at their exploration center.

We stayed at a place called the Linda Lee in Cape May, NJ. It was a lovely room which had a private balcony off the back. Bathroom was super tiny, though. And the parking was atrocious...definately can't park a decent size car in their lot.

We spent the days walking around Cape May and eating way too much. We did take one excursion to Atlantic City to go to the Tropicana to watch a magic show and play the slots a little.

All in all, it was a lovely trip and I'd love to be able to go again next year. Maybe my sister will be able to join us next year.