Our "New" (Rental) Home for a While

I finally took some pictures of the house now that we have all our stuff situated after our last storage shipment arrived a month ago.  I didn't get picture of the bedrooms though because they always look sloppy.  The master bedroom is just not even set up yet, because it is so big and we've been putting our Christmas stuff in there because it was coming just so quickly and it seemed silly to haul it up to the attic just to pull it back down in less than a month from then.

Dining Room and Bar Area

Another View and Time of Day for the Dining Room

We don't let the kids play in the dining room/area.  It has our nice furniture from Europe in it, it's right off the front door, and it has carpet.  But we do eat in there every night since we are too big for our corner kitchen table.  The worst part of this house is that the dining room is not next to the kitchen.  Who designed this?  Not someone who actually planned to use their dining room.

Living Room

I love the living room as it turns out.  It is plenty big for the kids to wrestle and play, but we have been able to keep toys out of it for the most part.

Entryway and Piano Space

Kitchen

 I love the openness of the kitchen, since I spend so much time in it.  Although there is something to be said for being able to shut the kitchen door and block out the noise, I prefer the open kitchen with the big island.  I love when the kids can sit and work on something while chatting with me as I cook.

Kitchen Looking into the Big Pantry/Laundry Room

Our School Room/Library (Downstairs, off the Living Room)

 The school room is small, but we really use it, and we make it work.  I love that there's a bathroom right off of it, the piano is close by for our Latin song practice, and the living room and kitchen are just a hop away.

Game Room, Upstairs

Dart Board, Foosball Table, Lego Tables

 All our toys are in either the game room or the school room with the exception of our dress up chest and our weapons chest (I like to call it the armory).  So the boys' bedrooms are freed up to have only beds and bookshelves.  For the most part I even fit their dressers into the closets.

The girls' room has their beds, a bookshelf, and their desks.  They have a huge closet and so their dressers and clothes all fit very easily in their closet.

The girls' have two doors to their room, and this is one of them.  Both come off of the game room.  This couch is used for story time for the little guys at bedtime.  I put our Jesse Tree up there and set up a 1000 piece puzzle for during Advent on one of the extra Lego tables.

That's all for now!

"Mom Stuff"

We cut out early on school one morning, the week before Christmas, to do last minute shopping.  I was looking at something in a department store, and we were near the underwear section.  Bob says, "That's a mom."  And I turned to see who he was talking about.  It was a manikin with just a bra and underwear on.

I asked him, "How do you know that's a mom?"

"She has mom stuff."

His brothers and I shared a good laugh over that reasoning and the term.  Oh, the mind of a three year old boy!

Who needs toys? Really!

Our toys get so little use until I try to get rid of them.  I am always caught and then the toys are their favorites.  I pulled out the Little People and bagged them up to send to my mom's because her toys were mostly ruined by a leak from the attic.  Sure enough, even Drew was playing with them the whole day when the bag was discovered.

No really, most days, it's playing with cardboard boxes, balloons, or some other crafty thing they discover.  Most recently, Isaac read about how to make your own window clings with nothing but puff paint and wax paper.  We happened to have both and I let him go to town.  Several days later and all the boys (sans Bobby) were making clings for the sliding glass door.  This took up so much of their time and helped to use up an old craft supply.  It wasn't too messy and I didn't run this craft at all.  So win-win for me!

You have to really look to be able to see them in the photo.  

I was trying to figure out how I could get everyone to just buy the kids craft supplies or books and not get us anymore toys for Christmas!

14! Not possible!

The night we got to Dallas, we had a birthday cake for Hannah that her Mimi had procured for her.  Hannah got to do a quick decorating job with sprinkles and gummy bears.  

Before we left our house,, I had made her a candy bouquet, because there isn't much that gets Hannah more excited than a bunch of candy all for herself.  I put candies in the bottom of the vase mixed with nail and hair items, because she has become quiet the girl since going to a school full of her peers.  I have been awaiting the day when she cares a little about her appearance so she's not always wearing sweats and biting her nails.  She stopped biting her nails and so I also am taking her to get her nails done at a salon.  She typically paints and repaints her nails every single day that she doesn't have school.  However, as I write this, I am noticing that in these pictures she does have on sweats and basketball clothes, so the same ol' Hannah's in there somewhere.

It is a bit hard to see, but her candy bouquet is on the counter with Hershey bar "flowers.

On her birthday, she had her very first basketball practice.  After a week of tryouts, Hannah and Genevieve both made the Primary Team (A Team) which made them both super happy.  However, first day of practice, and Hannah broke her pinky finger on her left hand.  She told me it was just jammed on the phone (as we were still in Indiana,) but I knew it might be broken by the way she described it.  I broke my finger in the last game of the season in 8th grade, and Hannah broke hers in the first practice of the season.  I had better timing, I think.

The Amazing Bob!

 We got into the van one night to head home and a couple minutes into the drive he tells me, "Mommy, when we got in the car, I forgot to tell you that I love you."  

Over Thanksgiving break, in his usual fashion, Bobby had another first while I was not present.  I was in the shower while he was making a picture for the Christmas tree.  When asked if he needed help putting his name on his finished product, he replied that he could do it by himself.

The first B was backwards and there was an extra B in there, but my son who's never written a single letter or been shown how to write a letter wrote his whole name all by himself.

I actually kind of forgot to teach him to write his name.  He's been spelling it for a long time and he can recognize all his letters, especially the ones in his name.  He even criticized my fancy Y on his shelf that I fixed up for his duck collection.

He didn't seem to mind the other letters, but he thought the Y didn't look right.

Anyway, when I came downstairs and was showed his art and name.  I made a big deal out of how good it was, but Bobby said, "No, Judah said it was messed up and wrote it better at the top."

Here's the beautiful first time that my baby boy wrote any letter ever.  I'm a little proud of my boy, can you tell?

First Thanksgiving Back in the USA

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my uncle's house in Dallas.  It was a little lower key than I had been expecting.  My kids were the only ones there and I had been hoping for a Thanksgiving with cousins and second cousins, but for a myriad of reasons that was not in the cards.

Everyone's looking, smiling, and no one has a blurry body part, but, oh, the stick!!!

The very next day after Thanksgiving, we got up at 4:45am and got on the road to go visit Brian's family in Indiana.  He had stored some things up there and so we needed to pick up our stuff anyway.  We couldn't squeeze everything in the days that the girls had off from school.  We talked to Hannah and she said it was okay with her for us to miss her birthday if her Mimi stayed with her and Genna to take them to school and such.  Genevieve was actually far more bothered by the fact that we were going to miss the actual day of Hannah's birthday.  I thought I was okay with it, but as the day approached I began to regret my decision. It was very hard to leave my baby girls for six days.

Drawing with Mark Kistler!

Scary!!!

We drove 15 hours straight to Indiana.  The boys did amazing!  As usual, I barely had any issues to deal with at all and was able to read and take a few naps.  Brian got tired eventually and had me drive the last three hours.

The trip was fun and very relaxing, maybe too much so.  I felt like a lazy bum.  The boys had so much fun with their cousin!  We even had another Thanksgiving meal, and Brian's aunt and uncle were able to come.

What does a promise mean?

I have been putting it off for months longer than I should have.  Our three year old privilege is to move to a big bed.  Bobby is approaching three and a half and was still totally content to be in his crib and rocked like a baby every night.  What's the rush?  After all, there's no one waiting on his crib this time.  Nobody to push that little bird from his nest!   So I reluctantly started the conversation with him about the end game of moving to a big boy bed, but first we could take out some of the rails in his crib to make sure he was ready.  What I didn't say (out loud) was, "Those can be put right back in, if it's a huge mistake."  He talked about it with me, but didn't seem particularly interested in it at the time.

We had three nights in a row where he wet the bed.  He's been dry for months and out of night time diapers.  I had the sheets still off when naptime came around and so just started putting him in Isaac's bed for naptime.  He was fine with that and was still going right to sleep and staying put.  After three days of that I asked him, as we were walking up the stairs for bedtime, if he wanted me to just take the rails off his crib tonight since he had been sleeping in a big boy bed at naptime.  His response was so very precious.  His face lit up, and he exclaimed, "Tonight?  Yes, oh yes!"

I reminded him that he had to stay in his bed though and followed it up with, "Promise to stay in your bed?"

He said still very excitedly, "Yes, I pwomise!  Pwomise means you weally will."  Gotta love those w's replacing the r's!

Melt my heart.  I don't even know where he learned that definition, but I love it.

He is doing great and never ever gets out of bed without Isaac or I telling him it's okay.  He loves to remind me that he can get out of bed all by himself.