New Years

John thought it would be fun to keep the kids up until midnight to welcome the new year.

Luckily, common sense prevailed and at 8:30 we let them bang pots and clap lids together so we could put them to bed.

This picture shows Drew getting tired of listening to the noise and telling Alexis to stop.

I was lucky and John let me fall asleep about 10. I guess that's what pregnancy will do to you!

John stayed up until 12:45 am celebrating the new year by cleaning up the house, what a great husband!

For Christmas Grandma Wadley gave the kids a binder with the Articles of Faith with pictures and key words to help them memorize them.

The kids absolutely love it.

They have the first one memorized and Drew is fascinated with The Holy Ghost.

He asked us where the Holy Ghost lived and we told him that it lives inside you. When you feel good or bad about something you're doing, that's the Holy Ghost letting you know if it is right or wrong. I thought that this was a fairly simple explanation but he took it to mean that it lives in his tummy. He likes to poke himself and say: "The Holy Ghost is really hard, see!"

I was watching a movie with the kids yesterday and I mimicked one of the characters thinking that I was being funny. Alexis turned around and quickly said: "Don't EVER do that again mom!"

I guess she doesn't appreciate my trying to be funny.

John rented the new Star Wars from Netflix, which I grudgingly let him do. Funny enough, I actually liked it. I thought for sure that they would make it about as stupid as Transformers 2. I would not buy it, but it was a good show that was worth watching once.

Pregnancy

Is it possible to not feel pregnant but have all the pregnancy symptoms?

I'm nauseated, hungry, don't want to smell food, sore, tired, achy, peeing far more than should ever be allowed and a lot of other things that don't need posted.

However, I don't feel pregnant.

How is this possible?

I'm beginning to think that because I can still see my toes, bend over and move in any direction that I want to, I don't feel pregnant.

Any woman who has ever been pregnant knows what it is that I'm talking about. The last trimester is always a beast so even though I feel like I'm half dead I don't feel truly pregnant yet, isn't it great!

Christmas Day

Alexis and Drew opening their Santa gifts.

Madison decided on Christmas Eve that sleep was a luxury and not a necessity again. She woke up at 4:45 am and I didn't get her back to sleep until nearly 7!! (Drew woke up at about 2 because he was excited for Santa to come. I had to tell him he had to sleep until the sun woke up. I thought I had a couple more years before they started doing this!)

The kids came down the stairs at 8 and this is Madison waking up to the commotion of them opening their gifts.

Madison holding her Santa present up, she was so excited.

Santa brought Alexis and Madison the same exact gift, a my sized baby doll/barbie that was dressed as a fairy. They both love their dolls and they take them all over the place. Alexis was very excited that Santa brought her a doll that was "her age". Her doll is 10 years old according to her, which makes me chuckle.

Drew asked Santa for a barbie for Christmas, every single time he saw Santa and when we asked him what he wanted, without fail.

Christmas Eve Mrs. Claus was very worried that he wouldn't like his Dinosaur mountain, she was very tempted to go and buy him his very own barbie so that there wouldn't be any tears Christmas morning.

Mr. Claus was very definite that that would not be happening under any circumstances, unless Mrs. Claus completely over-ruled him.

As you can see, Mr. Claus gave him the Dinosaur mountain and . . . . Drew loves it.

When he opened it he said: "Mom, you were right, Santa was getting me a dinosaur."

I was worried that he wouldn't like it, but all the kids love it.

It growls when you push the button on his head and there are cool little trails that things fall down and get trapped in, just right for a little boy!!

Alexis gave Drew a Triceratops, he was sooooo excited.

Alexis bought Madison this little kitten. I think it is probably Madison's favorite gift. She loves having babies to carry around and put to bed and fake feed.

Madison bought Drew a Transformer. He had no clue what it was, so here I am showing him how it works!!

Alexis was so excited to open her very own fairy skirt, she ran and gave John and I hugs.

I made these skirts for cousins and friends for Christmas and Alexis wanted one so badly but I told her that they weren't for her.

She was so surprised!

Alexis and Drew in their fairy skirts.

Yes, I made Drew his own skirt. He loves to play with the girls so why leave him out?

He loved his "boy skirt" as he called it. I made it with boy colors so he could be a boy fairy.

John and a few others thought it was silly that I would do this, but I did it anyway.

Madison in her fairy skirt, she loved the bells on it.

Ignore the toilet paper under her nose.

I didn't want to take them to church last Sunday for fear of catching something but we went anyway and Drew and Madison both ended up with nasty colds.

(Is it really that hard to keep your kid at home when they are hacking and have a nasty nose? It annoys me to no end that people go to church sick.)

Drew was so excited to get this ducky game.

When he opened it he said something like, look mom I got duckies, just like Grandma's huh?

Christmas Eve

Doesn't this look unappetizing?

I was upstairs folding laundry and the kids decided that they were hungry.

Alexis is such a good helper and as she says, a good ingredient mixer, that she got them each their own piece of bread with butter on it.

The butter was so thick I'm surprised they didn't all have heart attacks that day.

We decided to act out Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, John was the donkey. Alexis decided that she did not want to be Mary, so she was Joseph and Drew was Mary.

Drew has his teddy bear in his shirt because he was pregnant.

Here they are around the manger, which was the piano bench turned upside down.

They didn't like that there was only a blanket for him so they went and found a pillow to put underneath him so he would be comfortable.

Alexis was a shepherd looking for baby Jesus.

Madison was the bright shining start leading the way to baby Jesus.

And here she is being one of the wisemen that went looking for baby Jesus.

We stayed in Logan this year for Christmas and it was so nice to be able to sit back and relax.

We did what I've wanted to be our family tradition of reading The Night Before Christmas finally. We've never accomplished this goal because we've always had family things going on that would go too late to do it. It was nice to not have the running and shuffling this year, we enjoyed just being together.

Drew's exciting night

Can you see his smile?

We put the kids to bed at 7, after giving Drew all the medication we could.

About 9 Drew woke up crying that his arm hurt. We weren't surprised, the doctor actually gave us a prescription for liquid Lortab just in case he couldn't sleep. We hadn't picked it up and we really didn't want to give it to him unless necessary. So, I gave him more medication and then John came up to give him a Fathers Blessing.

He told Drew what a Fathers Blessing was and he told him that it would help his arm to feel better. The grin Drew got was priceless. His little eyes were sparkling and he was just about as giddy as could be. After John gave him the blessing, we brought the small DVD player upstairs and turned on his favorite Scooby Doo. About an hour and a half later we put in The Jungle Book. John erroneously thought that he would fall asleep while watching his show. At midnight I took the DVD player away, redrugged him and he went to sleep.

At 4:30 John and I heard little footsteps coming into our room.

Drew came in a ever so quietly and said: "I need more medicine mom."

I put him back to bed after redrugging him and he didn't wake up until 8 when we had to get ready for Madison's 18 month doctor appointment.

The doctor appointment was at 9 am. What was I thinking?

I was not thinking that we would have a little guy with a bum arm, that's what.

Madison is doing great! Not only is she only having 1 - 2 accidents a day, but she has 3 nights of not peeing her diaper under her belt.

She is almost 25 pounds (59th percentile) and 33 inches long (86th percentile).

Her head is in the 81st percentile! Don't worry, it matches her body.

She got FOUR shots today. She was so unhappy, but she got over it.

She was such a happy little girl today, you would never have guessed she got her shots today.

Drew only asked once for medication today, which was a shock.

Madison didn't seem to need any medication today once shots were over, so she only got a half dose for bed time just to help her sleep.

Overall, today was much better than I anticipated it would be!! Hooray for small miracles.

I'm telling mom . . .

I was upstairs flip-flopping (John says that this is not common slang for changing the washer/dryer over) laundry upstairs and Drew and Alexis were downstairs playing. I heard Drew start crying and I decided that I was just going to ignore it until I was ready to go downstairs. Soon I heard him saying: "I'm going to tell Mom that you hurt me!" followed by his little footsteps trudging up the stairs. I met him at the top of the stairs and I could tell that something wasn't right. I had him try to move his arms and then I took his shirt off and examined his right arm. It was apparent that he had broken his clavicle aka collarbone.

I called John to leave work early because I couldn't take all three kids by myself and I also couldn't go into x-ray with Drew because of our impending bundle. I loaded them all up and then took Drew to insta-care because the regular doctor office didn't have any openings for at least three hours and then they weren't going to have an x-ray machine available. His fracture was not a complete fracture, she called it a green fracture. When you bend a green stick the top breaks but the bottom stays put, which is what his did, look at the x-ray closely.

They told Drew that he was a great patient while he was there and as we were leaving he said: "I got a ball and a sticker because I was good and patient!"

According to Alexis, she didn't want Drew on the blanket so she pulled it really quickly to get him off. Her punishment for being mean and hurting someone? She has to help him with whatever he wants or needs while his arm hurts because she caused it. She's been a great helper to him so far!!

Drew in his sling. He's doing just fine with having it on, to the point that he's head banging to Scooby Doo music (see below).

* A quick side note - Madison has not had one accident today!! We're getting so close!!

Demo on gingerbread ville

This is what it looked like outside at 10:30 AM. It looked just the same when we got back at 10:30 that night. I'm looking forward to one day living where it is warm and you don't see stuff like this, except in pictures!!

John's work party was supposed to have ice-skating on the roof of a building, but we found out at the last minute that the water pipe had broken and there would be no ice skating. Alexis was excited because she didn't want to ice skate anyway. Overall the kids had a lot of fun and we enjoyed the good food!!

Drew's finished product. The right wall was later demolished so he could put candy inside.

John was so excited to be decorating his very own gingerbread house.

Alexis' finished house. There is a hole in the middle that she kept putting candy in with some licorice ropes so that the gingerbread man could climb out of the house just in case the door was locked. We obviously didn't explain what a gingerbread house was well enough!!

This is John's finished product. He was very excited that he was able to finish without the kids knocking it down or trying to "help" him.

This is the finished product of all three kids' gingerbread houses.
Drew did some demo so he could get to the inside of his house and Alexis followed suit to get to the candy inside of hers. They didn't get the idea but they had fun.