Jan 4-6

Jan 4

Amber ran to the window barking today when she saw a flock of geese
(who apparently can't find their way South to warmer weather)
landing in our corn field.

Apparently she was looking forward to a snack, judging by the way she is licking her lips.


Jan 5

I had an AWESOME sandwich for lunch.

Jack cheese
honey ham
mayo
spicy mustard
RELISH!!!
freshly milled salt and pepper
on a halfway toasted sandwich with
hot wing flavored Pringles.

YUMMY!!!!

Jan 6

Dancing Princess Leia is now

ROCKIN' PRINCESS LEIA!!!

She's so into her craft that there is no need for clothing. Thankfully I got her before she shed the rest.

The tatoos and shaved head will come later.

Silly little girl

I kid you not, these three pictures were found on my camera, taken in sequence in December.

There's Rex, all bundled up outside with Amber in the first snowfall of the season.

There's Belle, running through the house with as few items of clothing as possible.

And the vast winter wonderland in the field behind our house.

I just don't know where she gets it!

Oh, and yes, I did have flip flops on when I went to the bus stop that day.

Jan 1-3

Jan 1

This is Belle showing off her Lowe's(T) builder apron. She wouldn't stand still or back up to get all of her in the picture.

SOOO Belle!

Jan 2

Rex got this AWESOME Air Force jacket from his Granddaddy-daddy for Christmas. He was excited to have a patch with his name on it, but even more excited to have an American flag.

And it isn't just an ordinary American flag, but one that Granddaddy-daddy had while he was serving in the Air Force.

The third patch in view says Thunderbirds, for the Air Force demonstration squadron. We plan to attend an air show this year, although we won't see Granddaddy-daddy's tanker fly.

By the way, Rex practically refuses to take it off.

Jan 3

My three clean little girls.

We bathed the girls before church and then threw the puppy in as an afterthought. They all dried off, snuggled and warmed up in bed.

The only one not smiling is Amber.

She really wanted to shake while standing on my bed and dry off on the bedskirt of my bed, or my pillow. Poor, poor puppy.

Pictures

I take a lot of pictures.

What?!? I do!

I calculated the average number of pictures taken per month with our cameras (only occasionally used by anyone other than me) and it hit an astonishing 1500 this year.

That is about 50 per day.

Yikes!!!

Unfortunately, many of those come in spurts and we have holes up to a week long during some months.

My sister has inspired me to do better cataloging our lives. Since the scrapbooks will just never get up to date, I will have to go for the ghetto digital kind: folders full of photos on my computer (and three backup external hard drives).

I plan to take at least one picture each day to post (but not promising a post everyday, nor interesting content) and show more little clips of our lives on our blog, which also has large -sometimes month-long- holes in it.

Now that it is in print, I am accountable.

I may have heard that somewhere before.

But I mean it this time.

My latest project

So. Yesterday Prince Charming and I spent all morning installing a fancy closet organizer in the hall closet and were almost done when we decided to take a break and head over to Lonestar Steakhouse for
kids eat free Tuesday!

We loaded the kids in the car.

Belle was screaming about something silly,
Rex was teasing someone
and Leia was being an angel.

I stole the keys from my sweetie, got in the car and he pushed the garage door button.

He had to wait to get in until we were out of the garage because the lawn mower was in the way.
Thinking of the chill he would receive when the door opened,
I promptly started the car and backed up.

Right into the garage door,

which was then about 1/3 of the way open.

There was a loud popping sound followed by a few faster smaller popping sounds, a couple of kid screams, then I realized what had happened. The Charming Prince was screaming obscenities outside the car (thankfully protecting tender ears) and

the back windshield was completely bashed in.

Tinted safety glass is interesting.

We herded the kids back into the house
(Belle had no idea why we weren't going to the restaurant any more)

and downstairs while I sat in the garage feeling like an idiot and Prince Charming went in and called the dealership to see about getting the window replaced. Of course, they don't have the window in stock, it is 18 degrees outside and a storm is coming in.

No car for me.

The Prince vacuumed the glass out of the car and on the garage floor while I sat in the living room with Rex hugging me and patting my back.

He said "at least no body got hurt."

Sweet little boy.

Then, to my surprise, the Prince loaded all the kids in the car and

we went to the restaurant anyway.

It was a nice lunch.

Later, the dealership called to tell us that the window would be delivered late afternoon the next day and offered for us to drop off the car and keep it inside at the dealership so we wouldn't have to drive it in stormy weather
(which still has not arrived).

I will probably get my car back by the weekend.

The moral of this story is that rear windshield wipers create enough pressure on the window to shatter it, if enough force is applied by a rising garage door and a reversing car.

I'm just saying...

**just a little update...The new windshield came in, but has a chip in it. They'll try again tomorrow.**

SNOW!!!

We had our HUGE snowstorm this weekend. We had about five inches of snow in our yard. We went out while it was falling in the early stages (about 2 inches) that night and then had a blast out in the front yard every day since then.

(The pictures are in a random order, so sorry if it bugs you as much as it does me)

Rex built a sledding city in the front yard with intersections and everything.

Our pretty outdoor Christmas tree with freshly fallen snow. Aww!

Puppy-puppy LOVES the snow and quickly went back to her habit of chasing thrown snowballs and biting at the snow shovel.

Rex was a helpful big brother as he pulled Belle along on the *new* sled.

Belle fit in one snow angel after her ride on the sled before she got too cold and went back inside to put her sun dress and flip flops back on. Related anyone?

For some reason, shovelling was the most popular activity- with the kids, not the grownups.

The photographer got in the spirit of sledding also.

Poor daddy ran a red light and wrapped his sled around a tree.

RUN! RUN! RUN! Leia is armed and ready!

Leia took herself (and the *new* sled) on a walk to the edge of the cornfield in the tracks of someone's 4x4.

The biggest, scariest, hairiest bug EVER!!!

My girls were upstairs playing with their friends when all four little girls came running down the stairs screaming. Quite the cacophony.

They all said, in their own special ways, that there was a HUGE bug in Belle's room. They said they closed the door so wouldn't get out.

Of course, being the brave and fearless mom that I am, I went upstairs to save the day. But I found no bug.

They went on playing for the rest of the afternoon with no problems, but did not go back in Belle's room.

That night after the girlfriends went home and we were straightening rooms before bed, I saw it!

Right there on the wall.

Upstairs in our house!

The biggest, scariest, hairiest bug EVER!!!

But it was not in Belle's room anymore!

It was in Dancing Princess Leia's room!

I fearlessly caught it in a cup and took it downstairs to photograph (who wouldn't'). Then I realized that there was no way to show

JUST HOW BIG

this big was. So I added a penny to the cup.

After the penny was in there the bug was even more determined to escape, so I didn't get a real good size comparison, but take my word for it, those antennae and

FIVE HUNDRED BA-MILLION

legs were at least a foot long!@!

We kept it in a jar on the counter for a few days, although it had died overnight, with the intention of showing our little girlfriends, but it molded and stunk, so gave it a proper

NASTY BUG BURIAL

in the garbage can.

Seriously, doesn't it seem that it is doling out the evil eye? I hope none of its friends decide to

go CSI on our house

to figure out what happened.

As Belle stated so well:

ECKAH!!!

Halloween Hauntings

This Halloween we had a black cat, a princess (shocker!) and a Bionicle.

Holiday decorations are a big deal around here with many houses going ALL OUT. The kids got really excited and kept asking about when we would put up our lights and decorations. Oops. I got rid of all our decorations when we cleansed before moving to Florida.
So, I hit Big Lots (scary trip) and we decorated our front porch. The kids had a great time using the remote control switch to "decorate" all over again every night.

Halloween night, we took off through the neighborhood with some neighbors. There was a fine mist when we started, but the kids were not daunted. Until it started POURING. We called daddy and he picked us up in the car after only two blocks. Any more houses and we would have had too much (soggy) candy.

Rex's costume was inspired by his LEGO Bionicle creations (and a sale on a costume website). Unfortunately, he was sent home from school Friday morning with a fever (and stayed home for about a week recovering) and wasn't able to participate in the school party. But he was excited to get into his costume and go trolling for candy. The rain probably wasn't good for his condition, but mom was glad that the (custom altered) costume was worn for at least a little while and he sure was glad to have his own candy.
There was no question what costume Belle would use. As soon as she heard that Halloween was coming (and understood the concept) she put the Snow White dress on and wore it everywhere. Who knew that $10 we spent on a dress in December last year would to so far? At the end of the night we had a soggy princess eating soggy candy.

Leia's costume was inspired by a black kitty mask that we found in the dollar bins at Target. Mommy sewed a feather boa around the neckline and bottom of a black shirt and wrapped more feather boa around a wire for the tail and attached it to her velvet pants. Mom also found some feather-cuffed gloves at Big Lots (totally scary and a whole nother story) that were only slightly too big. Add all that to her new black fur-lined boots and you have a totally cute little black kitty.
Who, coincidentally, refused to wear the mask.

What is a blog post without the cutest princess in the world in her favorite pose?
We called and Skyped with grandma, grandpa and Uncle Michael when we got back and dried off. They had sent us a Halloween box that we opened while they were watching.
Now that is the reaction grandma was hoping for when she sent the Halloween LEGOs!

We all went to work creating our masterpieces by following the pictures and working on our own.

Mom's favorite was her Jack-O-Lantern.

Belle was great at sorting the pieces into piles of like colors. Rex made a great ghostie. Leia insisted on making the black kitty.

Great fun and (thank goodness) the candy is almost gone.

Pumpkin Seeds

I am so far behind. It's not even funny.

For the first time in forever, at least since Leia was born, we carved pumpkins for Halloween.

We had each kid draw out what they wanted their pumpking to look like. Then we took off the tops and gutted those gourds. (aren't they gourds?)

Then we skyped grandma and grand-daddy-daddy to see if they wanted to watch.
Of course they did.

Rex was surprised that there were so many seeds.

And that his pumpkin was not as slimy as his sisters' pumpkins.

The girls refused to use their hands and found the spoons to be less than useful.

A peek inside Belle's pumpkin.

So many seeds. Shake, Belle! Shake!

Daddy was helpful, too.

Mommy cut the face in the pattern that Leia drew.

Except for the eyes changed to hexagons instead of flowers.

And Belle's had triangle eyes, a square nose and five teeth.

The fangs in Rex's design were difficult, but mommy's skilled hands were able to pull it off without a hitch.

The finished products.

SPOOKY!!

Yummy bathing pumpkin seeds that stayed in the oven too long and did not end so yummy.

We'll do better next time.

LEGO Update

The online promotions at ToysRUs.com are also available in-store!

Free tractor and lego piece? Oh my!

There is no limit on the number of coupons you can print. I went back a few times. I might go one more time.

NO WAY!!!

AND...

If you purchase $50 worth of LEGO electronics (radio, CD player, MP3 player, digital camera) you get a free set of LEGO walkie talkies ($19.99).

**HINT** The digital camera is priced at 49.99 and I was angry it was one cent below $50, but they gave me the walkies anyway.

SCORE!!!

I think I feel a LEGO themed Christmas/birthday coming on. What else is new?

Happy LEGOing to all!

LEGO Sale! No Way!

Check it out!

A Toys R Us coupon for 15% off a LEGO City Construction set!


It is good through 10/17 only at a Toys"R"Us store. Please note that this coupon is valid in-stores only! I looked online and they have other promotions going (like a free tractor when you spend $30 on a single LEGO set, or a commemorative brick with any LEGO purchase and free shipping if you spend $75) so I don't know if the in-store prices are the same as online.

But, the sets look pretty reasonably priced already (I checked the LEGO website), so a coupon that gets you a discount more than the price of tax is pretty awesome!

Go here for the details (pretty straightforward)

Or go here to go straight to the coupon.

Happy Building!