Happy Birthday Samuel

Today is Sammy's (excuse me, Samuel's) birthday. He'll be 7 today...but not until 11:30pm. One of our birthday traditions is to let him stay up for his birthday and then the New Year. So, that's exactly what we are doing tonight.

We've invited some friends of ours (with four kids) to join us for pizza, cake and ice cream, playing, playing on the Wii, and staying up for his birthday and the New Year. Then the kids...all of them...will spend the night, camped out on our living room floor. We'll celebrate New Year's Day with homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast. He's looking forward to it.

And I have a request for YOU. My husband started this on his blog. Sammy likes maps. Could you, would you, leave him a birthday wish with your city and state so we can map out where you all are from? Pretty please!?

Wii Victory

My Wii age my be 63 but I can still kick b*tt.

Scott and I squared off at bowling today. The first game I won 156 to 129. He wanted a grudge match. When I started winning the second game, I heard some interesting remarks coming from Scott including:

"You suck!"

"Cheater!"

The second game ended with me in the lead again: 168 to 146. He wanted yet another grudge match. This time my "age" got the better of me. This exhausted 63 year old finally lost 173 to 183.

Then we moved on to baseball. I won the first game 1 to 4. I also won the grudge match 2 to 3.

For an old fart like me, I did pretty good today. LOL

P.S. Scott wants me to be sure to tell you that he isn't feeling well today.

Our Christmas in Pictures

We had a great Christmas. The kids were happy. The parents were happy. We had fun together as a family.


When Sammy opened his traditional Christmas Eve present and found an extra large Hulk T-shirt and Hulk pj pants but no robe, he was worried. He was really hoping for a robe. Well, the robe was the first gift we had him open on Christmas morning. He was very happy to get one....finally...as he's been asking for one for quite some time now. He even noticed that I picked one that matched Daddy's. He wore it all day.


Here's Sammy and Mika, both pretty excited about the Star Wars action figures Papa (grandpa) got him. They were especially impressed that this set had General Grievous in it. Even Daddy had fun with them.

Mika was thrilled to get High School Musical 1 and 2 on DVD from Papa. She's been wanting them for a while now and can often be heard singing various songs from the movies even though she's only seen them each once (maybe twice).


Josh had no trouble figuring out what he was suppose to do with his gifts. Once he was shown the first one on Christmas Eve (he's wearing his Christmas Eve pjs in the photo), he had it down. He started bringing random presents to me demanding, "Open!"


Josh's gift from Papa turned out to be a Fisher Price Noah's Ark set and extra animals. He loves the "ay-ee-phaw" the best.


Sammy can be so easy to please sometimes. He was thrilled to find a Spiderman spinbrush in his stocking. He's been begging for one for about a year now. He also found Spiderman toothpaste and a bottle of kids Agent Blue mouthwash (which he loves using). He couldn't wait to brush his teeth.

Mika also found a toothbrush in her stocking. Her's was one of those ones that plays music for 2 minutes while you brush and you can hear it through the vibrations on your teeth. It plays a High School Musical brush and has decided that she thinks she likes brushing her teeth now. "It must work," she said, "My teeth were less blue today."


The hit of the day was the Wii. If it weren't for Scott earning it while at his previous employer (vendor incentive thing for selling and training), we wouldn't have it. The kids were so excited! Can you tell?


Here's a sight that any homeschooling mom would love. Two kids reading their new books on Christmas day. Mika read through her entire book (A Giant Problem) by the end of the day and Sammy made it through several chapters (a Star Wars Clone Wars novel). They were waiting for Daddy to hook up the Wii.


We tried out Wii Sports, which comes with the console, first. Here's Scott boxing Sammy. They got into it.


Here's Sammy and Mika duking it out while Josh looks on.


Then Mika and Scott took each other on. Mika's trying to block Daddy's punches.


And what do you do when you get tired of those physically demanding games? You lie down and play Lego Star Wars.

We ended up taking turns playing various Wii games (purchased with free gift cards Scott earned through another work/vendor incentive program) for a total of 9 hours on Christmas. It was on again for several hours yesterday and today. We're slowly reducing the time down to our normal daily limits. The kids are having to get use to sharing the video games with Mom and Dad who really enjoy the sports games the best.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you are having a great day with your families.

A Happy Ending

"Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" shouted our poor Mrs. Frostbite.

Her hero arrives to save the day!

Oh no! She's lost her head!

Heave!
"Hey lady! Does the word 'diet' mean anything do you?" mumbled Scott.

Mrs. Frostbite was so thankful, she forgave the diet comment
and proposed marriage.
"Sorry lady! I don't think my wife would approve."

Meet Mrs. Frostbite

Remember the giant snowball from yesterday....

We REALLY Love the Snow

We really do love the snow! Can you tell?



We have an old house that has one of those dormers upstairs. Well, we had icicles hanging from he dormer roof so I reached out the window and grabbed the biggest icicle for Mika. She loves icicles. She pretended this one was a unicorn horn.


This afternoon MIka, Josh, and I started walking around the block. Halfway down the adjacent street, I started talking to a neighbor. Meanwhile, Mika started rolling a snowball. She wanted to roll it all the way around the block. Josh decided to fall apart so we ended up leaving the snowball there so we could take him home. Then she and I returned for the snowball. We managed to get it all the way to our neighbor's house where we had to leave it because it was time to leave for my doctor's appointment. We were hoping it would still be there, taking up half of the sidewalk, when we got home. It was! Scott rolled it the rest of the way to our yard for us. He was our knight in shining armor today. I don't think the kids and I could have done it.

It was starting to get cold so we couldn't get any snow to stick for another snowball. We are hoping people leave it along overnight so we can make the rest of a snowman tomorrow. If we are successful, it will be our biggest snowman ever.

It already beats this pathetic attempt a few years ago...

The Scene Outside My House

I've been living here 16 years and have never seen this much snow unless I headed up to the mountains. We've been making 3-4 trips outside each day to enjoy it. We just love it.



This is the view of my neighbor's house. The lilac bush (front) is right next door and the house is two doors over. You can see how heavy the snow is on the trees. We never see this kind of build up. It's very pretty though.


Here are our cars before I cleared the snow off the windows. There was about 4 inches of snow with an 1/8th inch layer of ice on top of that and then another 5 inches on top of the ice layer. I broke our brand new ice scraper in the process of scraping it all off. On the driver's side there's about 18 inches of snow from the plows.


Here's the view of our back yard and neighbor's back yard beyond the fence.



And our poor bamboo which used to stand pretty tall. It's so heavy with snow that the largest bunch (in the back corner) is bent over all the way to the ground.

Strange Day

Yesterday, I didn't feel or look pregnant. In fact, I had lost a few pounds in the last week or so. So imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning to a whole day.

First, I was exhausted. It was so bad, I didn't even feel that I could think really. I ended up falling asleep when Josh nursed.

Finally, I got up around 1:30pm, took a shower, and got dressed. I was shocked to see that my tummy seemed to have fell out overnight. I suddenly look pregnant. I suddenly feel like I'm waddling. I suddenly have that pregnant feeling.

It was odd to have it happen so suddenly like that.

At 10 1/2 weeks I don't think it is that feeling is going to suddenly go back away.

A Few Christmas Photos

This is the snowman cake that I just finished putting together for tomorrow's party. We are having a small, simple Christmas party for the kids and a few families we know. There will be chips, apple juice, and cake for the kids. The grown-ups get New York cheesecake and chocolate pie (Pioneer Woman's recipe but with an Oreo crust). The grown-ups will get to chat while the kids do some simple paper crafts and play. It should be lots of fun although I'm pretty sure half the guests may be stranded by snow and unable to make it.


This is our garland. It's my favorite Christmas decoration and the last thing I finally got up today. The bows are made from 2-inch wide red satin ribbon with gold borders on both sides. There are also small, red, glass ornaments along it giving it a berry look. I have another longer one on another trim in the room too.

Creative Discipline

One of the rules in our house is "No running, playing, or goofing off on the stairs." This is because our stairs are carpeted, steep, narrow, and kind of dangerous. Each of us have tumbled down the stairs at least once. One of the stairs is broken because of one of those falls but we can't fix it without ripping up the carpet. We think it is a reasonable rule.

Unfortunately, this seems to be a rule that the kids have a hard time remembering despite having been talked to about it several times. While I don't want to punish harshly for this, I also don't want them to learn the hard way.

They were running and goofying off up the stairs again this afternoon. After calling them back down and talking to them about it, I brought down some creative punishment....

Walk, nicely, up and down the stairs 20 times so you can practice WALKING on the stairs

Speaking of learning the hard way, Sammy decided to touch the burner (set on medium high heat) just seconds after he watched/helped me make hot chocolate on said burner. He doesn't want to touch it again.

Lesson Learned

Now that I have an ultrasound proving there's a baby hanging out in my lower abdomen, I guess I should get serious about getting excited about it. Up until this point, I've been kind of trying to ignore it, I guess. It's hard to put words to it but I'm just not interested in knowing, feeling, acting...pregnant. I'm sure it's a result of losing Ethan.

So, with the trying to ignore it, I kind of didn't get my act in gear to tell my midwife early on that I was pregnant. I kind of figured it didn't matter because they don't see you until you are 10-12 weeks anyway. Well, I can tell you today...DON'T WAIT TO CALL YOUR MIDWIFE!

Why?

Because you might end up with the problem I am currently faced with. Here's a list of all the midwives I've either had a child with or is listed as being providers for the birth center I want to deliver at....

Suellen Jeffrey, my midwife for Mika and Sammy (and the best one out there), lost her license when a baby was stillborn under her care. She'd be my first choice.

Amy Gordon, my midwife for both Sammy and Josh, is full for my due month.

Susan Sherwood, who's been in some small way involved with the births of all three of my kids, is full for my due month.

Dawn Wadleigh, who I was using with Ethan, is full for my due month.

Collette Lescantz's website and phone number are disconnected.

Nancy Spencer is out of the question. I won't even consider her.

Ann Olson is an hour away from my house.

Toni Jackson is an hour away from my house.

Gretchen Jones is an hour and a half from my house.

Peggy Thurston is over an hour away and across a toll bridge from my house.

Audrey Levine is 30 miles from my house and just called this morning to cancel my consultation. Two returning clients just called her and it is her policy to always see returning clients so she is now full and can't take me.

Constance Frey and Carolee Hall are also 30 miles away. I have a consultation with them. They've been very nice and helpful on the phone so far. I'm not thrilled with the idea of driving 30 minutes down the freeway, with three kids, especially in the latter stages of pregnancy, but it looks like I don't really have much choice in the matter. Scott usually attends all/most of my prenatal appointments but it is unlikely he'll be able to if I have to go so far away.

Pearl Place Midwives are CPMs affiliated with the birth center and hospital. They are full but another midwife got them to agree to take me. They are the ones that did my ultrasound yesterday. I'm not sure if I can stomach using them. They wouldn't allow me to bring my kids with me to the ultrasound; an experience the older two would have loved (they were at Josh's ultrasound). They want me to come to a paperwork appointment tomorrow but, again, I can't bring my children. They also wanted me to schedule my 12 week appointment which will be the first one where we can hear the baby's heart. Again, no children to that one either. You also have to meet all of their 6-7 midwives because you don't know which you'll end up getting at your birth. (What if you don't like one of them?) I can't imagine my children not being part of the prenatal experience; they've always been involved in the past. In fact, Mika even manned the doptone a few times for Sammy and Josh's prenatal appointments. As a homeschooling family, we do everything together. We have no regular babysitters. Josh has never been in the care of anyone other than Scott or I. And we aren't in a position where Scott can refuse work so I can go to prenatal appointments alone.

So I have four choices...

1. Drive 30 minutes each way for every appointment to see a midwife I've never heard of before this weekend.

2. Risk losing income while I go to the child and family UNfriendly large midwifery practice alone.

3. Go to someone over an hour away.

4. Plan a hospital birth with a midwife or OB.

At this point, we're going with choice number 1.

I Guess I Really Am Pregnant

...Because this little bugger is sittin' in my uterus.



I had to have an early ultrasound because my dates weren't all that trustworthy.

My last menstrual period says I'm due July 11.
My guess for various reasons was July 20.
Ultrasound says July 15.

Because I tend to deliver late (3 days, 3 days, and 15 days), I didn't really want to rely the LMP date.

Anyway, they printed pictures. I'm surprised with how clear they were as my others weren't even close to this good. It's easy it pick out both feets, legs, arms, tummy, and head.

Now if I can just find a midwife...that's another story though.

More Snow Pictures

Snow Day 2008

We're so excited! We don't get snow very often but when we do we love it.

So, our whole family bundled up and took a walk. We didn't get very far. We ended up stopping by some friends' house, unannounced, and kidnapped their kids for a while. So, Scott and I got to experience having 7 kids.

We all had a late spaghetti lunch and some cookies...peanut butter with a Hershey's kiss in the middle. Then the kids played for a while before we all bundled up to play outside in the snow.

Here's the group outside in the snow.



Once we were all good and cold, we tracked half of the snow into our house for more indoor fun. Half the group watched Veggie Tales while the other half got busy creating with our craft supplies.

What fun!

Elf Yourself

You know you wanna...

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

The New Grammar

"After all, a set of action figures is funner than one," said Sammy.

Said statement was followed promptly by Mommy explaining, "For future knowledge, 'funner' is not a word. You need to use 'more fun'."

Said explanation was followed promptly by Daddy asking, "So, if it's in Merriam-Webster, does that make it a word?"

I couldn't believe that Merriam-Webster would have "funner" in their dictionary. How many times growing up were we told by English teachers that "funner" is not a word? It was hammered into us until we quit using it. Is that not your experience as well? So, I did a little checking around online, looking for an explanation as to why this non-word would be in the dictionary. Here's the gist of what I found:

The word "fun" was traditionally used solely as a noun and, being a noun, it could not be changed into a comparative word. After all, a book can 't become booker or bookest, can it? However, over time fun began to be used as an adjective and adjectives can be changed into comparatives. This use of the word gained in popularity, especially over the past 50 years. In fact, a scan of newspapers over the past ten years found over a thousand instances of the word funner. The bottom line is that English is an evolving language and it is now acceptable to use the words funner and funnest in spoken and written English. However, you may want to refrain from using these words in formal works for the time being.

Source: World Wide Words

Howdy

Ok, I couple of people have noticed my absence from the blog and twitter so I figure I should say...something.

In general, things have been ok. We've been a little bit busy:

December 4th, we went to see A Christmas Carol at the Lakewood Playhouse. While it was fun to go out to a play, as always, this was not the most exciting play to see. It had a strange, long, and boring beginning, a few really odd parts, and some incredibly bad acting on at least one person's part. But, it was the beginning of a new literature unit for us. As I think I posted before, we watched a movie version of the story and are now reading the book.

December 6th, we had a delightful dinner and visit with some old friends. The kids have never met each other and got along well despite a slight age difference. Their kids are older than ours. Our kids asked to go back soon. They definitely enjoyed the visit.

December 10th, the kids and I went to see a play called Dear Santa at the Tacoma Little Theater. The kids enjoyed it. It was definitely designed for kids with silly jokes and deliberately messed up cliches. I usually enjoy most plays I see but found this one a little boring.

Tonight, the older kids and I are going out to a fancy dinner and then to The Coats' Christmas concert with a friend. This is an annual tradition for us which we missed last year. Our friend gifted us half the cost of our tickets so that we could go this year. We love her! We are looking forward to their usual Christmas fare, which usually includes some kind of fun opening (like wrapping themselves in colored Christmas tree lights), a break dancing Santa, running circles around some unsuspecting male volunteer (the crowd is laughing at the beginning because they know what's coming), and the Grinch.

If you've never heard of this local a cappela group, whom we enjoy so much, you should head over to their website and check it out. They are playing samples of their Christmas songs on the main page, have several samples from each of their CD on the "music" page (link at top of the page), and have a promo video at their site. You can also see Sammy singing on stage with them here and here when he was four, I think. They are four local boys who got their start on the street corners at Pike Place Market. They harmonize well and their CDs just don't do them justice, as their on-stage bantering adds so much to the show.

Tomorrow, we are hoping to head down to the Stadium district for a Dicken's Christmas festival. Local businesses will be hosting opening houses with treats and activities. Dicken's era carolers and characters will be strolling about interacting with visitors. Various family friendly performances will be taking place at three indoor stages. There will be other activities as well. Proceeds for some of the activities are all going to a local charity.

Plus, there's the usual...kids, cleaning, laundry, cooking, a little school, Christmas stuff...etc.

A Christmas Carol

One of my kids' (and mine) favorite part of school is our read alouds. We end each day reading from our current selection with them tucked into their beds. They look forward to bedtime and, if the book is particularly exciting to them, beg me to go to bed.

How I choice our book selection varies. Some go along with our science or history studies. Some are chosen just because they are fun. Others are selected because they go along with a movie or play that we wish to see. Still others go along with the time of year or holiday. Our next selection fits the latter two.

Tomorrow we start Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol, reading from a version that has lots of beautify full color illustrations (I linked to the same version we are reading from). I chose it, initially, because the Lakewood Playhouse is showing an adaptation of it this month. We went last Thursday to see the final dress rehearsal/free preview. Tonight we are watching the 1984 film starring George C. Scott as Scrooge. I'm hoping to fit in a few other fun movie adaptations of the story as well. Perhaps the modernized tale Scrooged would be fun or the Muppets Christmas Carol.

I love attacking a story from several angles. It's always fun.

Do you have a favorite version of A Christmas Carol?

Our Life in Christmas Ornaments

It was Christmas 1995. I was feeling pretty down. I was 21 years old and feeling alone in the world. I was not speaking to my family, I had lost my apartment, and I was living in the basement bedroom of a friend/co-worker. One day the Mountain Man candy lady came into my workplace like she did periodically and saw this cute Frosy ornament. I bought it, deciding right then and there to start my own Christmas tradition of buying myself a special ornament every year. And I have... This was my first ornament. Frosty. Because he is cute and I like snowmen. 1995.

The year 1996 was the year I met my husband. We broke up for a few weeks right before Christmas (we got back together on Christmas day) so I wasn't in the mood to buy an ornament. Luckily, a friend gave me this cute little doll. She's now missing a black button foot.

My husband bought me this cute Precious Moments ornament for our first Christmas together in 1997. We had a Precious Moments cake topper on our wedding cake too.

We spent Christmas 1998 surrounded by boxes as we waited for our first house to close. It finally closed two weeks late in 1999 but we thought that this house ornament was still appropriate for 1998 since we were up to our ears in closing stress and boxes.

I was pregnant with our first child in 1999. That summer we went to a big, outdoor boating event in a nearby city. Not only could you look at tons of cool, wooden boats but they had tons of vendors and food. I saw this salt dough pregnant woman and had to have her for Christmas that year. She lost her foot a few years ago. Last year, she lost her head...it falls off so she can't hang on the tree. I want to either find the lady who made her and get a new one or try to remake her myself.

Our first child celebrated her first Christmas in 2000. I just love these teeny Precious Moments shoes. They have her name and birthday written on the bottoms.

In 2001 we chose to commentorate September 11, 2001 with this ornament.

The year 2002 was our second child's first christmas. We chose this cute ornament for his first Christmas.

In 2003, the wife of a former coworker of my dad sent us this hand made ornament. This spider is so pretty and came with a story about how the spider covered a tree with its webbing and how Santa turned her web into tinsel. Cute story. We have no tinsel on our tree though.

A family friend gave each person in our family an ornament for 2004. Here's mine: a cute fabric bag with a snowman. Its begging to be filled but I don't know what to put in it.

This little puppy ornament reminds us of the year my husband's boxer suddenly became ill and had to be put down because she had advanced cancer in her liver and gall bladder. She never showed any signs until it was too late.

In 2006, my husband's boss took everyone to Disneyland. The kids loved it, I found this ornament in a shop on Main Street because I knew a Disney ornament would be perfect for our tree.
One month after Disneyland, I became pregnant. The kids had been wanting another sibling so everyone was very excited making a second ornament for 2006 necessary.

Our third child is celebrated his first Christmas in 2007 so my daughter picked out this ornament for him.

One year I realized that I wasn't going to give up my yearly ornaments as long as I live. My kids would have to come home for Christmas if they ever wanted to see them again after they move out. This led me to decide to start them a collection as well. I start each child's collection when they are about 4 or 5 so we can tailor them to their activities or likes. This year my daugher has a gymnastics bear and my son has a black Spiderman.