Mom On the Mend

Very early Sunday morning I woke up sick.  I've lost count this winter.  I spent the day on the couch, which really confused poor E.  She kept pulling the blankets off of me and trying to push me into sitting position.  Hoping I would actually get up.  I didn't.  As my friend Rachel said this morning, she was wondering why I wasn't running my vacuum or something.  Rachel knows me too well :)  My dear, dear Hubby took very good care of me and the girls.  Who weren't feeling very good either.  That guy was busy!    He even did all the laundry and, trust me, we had some laundry.  Thank you again, Hubby.  Yesterday I was feeling much better, and today life is pretty much back to normal.  Today my goal is to get all the Christmas stuff taken down and put away, and maybe help G do a butterfly craft that she got from her Grandma Genie for Christmas.  I was going to wait until New Year's to de-Christmas the house, but why put off until tomorrow what you can do today right?  Well, we'll see how far I get.  I'm thinking maybe it's payday 

today because of the holiday...so I'm off to pay bills.  Fun, fun, fun.

Peanut, Sugar Plum and their baby cousin Sweet Pea at Uncle Paul and Aunt Marlene's last Saturday morning.

All's Well After a Good Night's Sleep!

All's well this morning after a good night's sleep.  The girls both slept all night.  E in her cousin's crib and G with me in bed.  Woooohoooo!  Now we're going to indulge in Uncle Paul's pancakes.  Then off to do some stuff before our lunch meeting.    

Hanging Out With The Family

I'm sitting at my sister-in-law, Marlene's, house in Sioux Falls just hanging out.  We're getting ready to watch The Dark Knight, but I thought I could update the blog while I'm watching it. Multi-tasking right ;)  The girls are getting some much needed sleep.  Oh, how they needed sleep, you know what I'm sayin'.  They are coming down off a Christmas frenzy.  Crazy hours, crazy people (no, not really), and crazy amounts of sugar baby.  Sugar cookies with frosting, chocolate silk pie, peanut butter balls, I could go on and on.  So I'm hoping to get some sleep tonight, because the last few nights haven't been so great.  Don't you hate it when your kids are out of their normal routine.  But despite tired kids, we've had a wonderful Christmas with family.  My Mom, Step-dad, and Grandma all came to our house this year instead of us traveling to their house.  It made for fewer nights away from home; which is always nice when you have small ones.  Then today we came up to Sioux Falls to visit Mark's side.  There's a story worth sharing...maybe.....I guess it might fall under the category of TMI.  But I'll share anyway.  So we got on the road late this morning because E slept in....LATE.  I finally went in and woke her up at 10:30.  She hadn't slept good last night.  Probably from all the junk food.  So we finally get on the road and about 45 minutes into our journey, shortly after finishing her breakfast of milk, she threw up all over the van.  All over herself, her car seat, the van seat, the carpet, her toys in the toy bucket below her, all of our coats, and of course, my purse.  So we'll pulled over and started cleaning.  Thankfully it was warm today.  Temps in the 40s feels like a little heat wave when you've had wind chills of -45, you know what I'm sayin'.  The smell was just too much for me so Hubby took the lead in clean-up.  Usually I'm okay with poop and throw-up but this was bad friends.  So I put clean clothes on E and Hubby did the best he could with everything else.  Two packages of wipes and one package of anti-bacterial wipes later we were back on the road.  We managed to only be a few minutes late to lunch, but when we got here we had a couple of loads of laundry to do :)  This evening Marlene cleaned the seat in our van, then her and G and I took it to the car wash to get the mats cleaned.  It needed a bath inside and out.  Besides the puke, Hubby had spilled coffee all over this morning too.  The funny thing is that a few minutes before the puke incident I was talking about how much we needed to hit up a car wash.  We figured the coffee and puke just confirmed it.  Tomorrow we are meeting my Aunt and Uncle, cousins and their significant others, Mom, Art and Grandma for lunch before we go home.  I'd like to hit a few stores too before leaving civilization...I have some Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket!  Can you say "new purse?"  

Christmas Eve

G in her Christmas dress from Grandma Sandy. She looked beautiful in brown and iridescent teal. We even had time to curl her hair before church.


E in her Christmas dress from Grandma Sandy. She was looking lovely in royal purple. How appropriate for celebrating the birth of our King.


Mom and G were in charge of passing out presents after the candle-light Christmas Eve church service. Mom was Santa and G was my elf helper.


Our mess.

Christmas Day.
The newest member of our family. Meet Spike the dinosaur. He's ultra-real life.

Our other new addition, a 2008 pink Cadillac Escalade! It was in the thirties today so we bundled the kids up and let them go for a drive. That thing did better in the snow than I thought it would.

See you later Mom and Dad!

A Very Merry Christmas

This morning G and E had their daycare Christmas party.

E wasn't the picture of compliance this morning as you can see by the look on her face.

One of my candy cane cuties.

My other candy cane cutie.

My candy cane cuties so happy together.


What can I say?


Lovin' the Leapster.


My little peanut face.

E's favorite book...Physics for the Utterly Confused. We think this bodes well for her future.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

This and That and More Cold

Well, it's still freezing cold outside. It's kind of chilly inside too. You're probably just as sick of hearing me talk about how cold it is as I am of being cold. This morning I decided I needed to clean out my kitchen...or at least the very disorganized parts of it, i.e. the junk drawer, the sippy cup/bottle/nukie cupboard, and the silverware drawer. Now it's as tidy as it can get and I'm a happy woman. I had to run to Wagner this afternoon to pick up a refill of E's antibiotic. She's doing better with swallowing it now, and her nose is looking much better. She won't have boogers all over her face in Christmas pictures which is nice! I also ran to Alco and picked up a plastic tub. I must have been in an organizing mood today because I decided it was also a good time to remove clothes from the girls room that didn't fit them anymore. This is a job I REALLY don't like to do. So I've been known to put it off until I just can't stand it anymore. There's nothing more annoying than not being able to put laundry away because you can't find a drawer it will fit in. You know what I'm talking about? So that's done for a few months. Another gift that keeps on giving. Just when you think..."oh, how nice, that's done," they grow a size or the season changes and you get to start all over. Oh, Joy! Well, I'm off to A-1 Gas' n' Go to see if there are any movies worth renting.

It's Freezing Cold!

Just thought we should talk about how ridiculously cold it is outside. Our outdoor thermometer reads 0.3 F. but with the wind chill it feels like -45 F. We made the poor choice to drive to Yankton this morning to church. There isn't THAT much snow on the ground....although there are some good drifts in places...but what we have is really blowing around with the wind gusts. But once again...I needed milk for E. We got home and I still couldn't get warm. I had to resort to wearing my grown-up footie pajamas that I got at Wal-Mart many years ago. It's working, but I look like a twelve year old. Hubby is making fun of me, but I don't care, he's still cold and I'm toastie (sp).

Hubby says, "You're wearing footie pajamas, and you're concerned about whether or not toastie is a word???"

Good point Hubby. But it really is THAT COLD! And no, I won't be posing a picture of myself in my footie pajamas. I've already said too much :)

P.S. G just asked me if she could go to the park with her dad to exercise....ummmmm, no G, you'd come back a popsicle.