Eight in the Kitchen

My wonderful husband gave me a break so that I could relax and try to get rid of a headache. Meanwhile, J. started making egg kisses with all six kids in the kitchen. He was very patient! I usually try to have one or two kids help me in the kitchen at a time. On occasion I will have them all help, but I have to be in a really patient mood.

After a while, I joined them all in the kitchen and helped them finish the egg kisses. Every time I turned around I was tripping on someone. J. had to help me stay calm.

The Kids Like Their Presents

They like them so much that they kept disappearing upstairs today to play with their Barbies and other toys. Our upstairs phone/intercom needs a new battery and they ignore me when I holler. So, in order to get them to do their chores today, I had to have them all take a potty break and then I locked* them downstairs with me. It's amazing how much can get done when we work together.

*The door that leads to our upstairs has a keyed lock on one side and a turn button on the other side. The kids used to lock each other upstairs so we had to turn the handles so that the turn button is on the stair side and the keyhole is on the other side. That way, if the door gets locked, the kids can unlock it if they are on the stair side. DH and I usually have our keys somewhere downstairs. I just kept mine in my pocket this afternoon.

Rolling Out The Dough

This evening, Baby Bear came marching through the house. He was holding each end of the boys' rocking horse handle (wooden dowel with rounded ends) and pretending to roll the "pin" back and forth. All the while he was singing, "Holling out da dough! Holling out da dough!". My little chef in training. : )

Crazy Picture Problems

I tried putting a picture in my header, but the image didn't always show as it was intended. I fiddled with it and finally found out that there is an ongoing problem related to Blogher that is causing the problems. I'll try again later to see if they have the issues worked out.

Less is More

We had a great Christmas. As we were headed home from my parents' house Christmas Eve, Kitty commented, "Mom, Grandma didn't get us as much this year, but you know, it was kinda nice." My heart swelled with pride.

My husband is wonderful.

J. surprised me by drawing a bath for me last night. He added some special body soak, played some soothing instrumental music, and only disturbed me when I had fallen asleep and snored long enough to make my throat sore. The kids were all asleep. I wasn't disturbed even once by a whining child. I think I slept better last night than I have in a long, long time (or at least since J. went on second shift).

Thank you J. I love you!

I am truly disappointed.

The kids and I have been comparing and contrasting books and the movies based on those books. Two major series we have or are going through are Laura Ingalls Wilder's LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE series and Janette Oke's LOVE COMES SOFTLY series .

The LITTLE HOUSE shows sort of mix everything from the books all together and then add to it. There are enough things that are different that we are able to have some really great discussions. This is especially true because we are still reading through the books. I read the books as a child. I also read the books to the kids several years ago, but they forgot about them or were too young to remember. Baby Bear was a new born baby. The older girls do remember some.

The LOVE COMES SOFTLY movie series is a major disappointment. The first movie was pretty close to the book with some changes such as Missie's age being wrong. The rest of the movies are way off. It's like the person or people who wrote the movie script never read the books for themselves. Perhaps it was like the game "telephone". One person read the book and told someone else about it. That person told another person and so on and so forth until the story was so distorted that it's a wonder they got anything at all right. One daughter asked permission to stop watching one of the movies this afternoon. We tried to watch it as if we had never read the books, but we just couldn't do it.

For those who know me, you probably can understand where my disappointment stems from. I was such a big Janette Oke fan as a teen that I named my pet dwarf hamsters Etta and Okee.

Why oh why didn't they consult me before writing the movie scripts?

I wasn't even a bit melodramatic. Was I?

Did You Know . . .

that I have silly girls?

The four girls had choir practice this morning. They all did really well following directions and listening to their leaders. Then, when practice was almost over, I noticed Birdie* (who was in the front row) reach into her pocket, pull something out, and start messing with it. (Birdie is like I was and always has something in her pockets.) I notice that her hand is going back to her pocket, so I bide my time and watch to see if she will put whatever it is away. The children's directors don't seem to notice that she isn't standing with her arms down to her sides like she is supposed to. She did put it away, but then she took it right back out, took the cap off (at this point I realize she had a Chapstick), applied it to her lips, recapped it, and put it back in her pocket. I was not close enough to her to actually see what she had but I was able to interpret her actions. I couldn't for the life of me figure out where she got the Chapstick from. Then, as I watched her repeat the process, I realized she didn't have a Chapstick. She was only pretending she had a Chapstick. I motioned for her to put it away and put her arms to her sides and she grinned at me and complied.

When the kids were dismissed from practice, the girls came over to where I was. Birdie came over and I said, "You know, you're not supposed to put on your Chapstick on during choir practice." Birdie giggled. I then put some of my lip balm (which was warm in my pocket) on each girl's lips. I figured they must need it if Birdie was pretending to use some.

*I named Birdie with her permission.

The Bat

Here is a picture of the bat that terrorizes our home.

"Mommy, hotch me dance!"

The kids are watching GEORGE BALANCHINE'S THE NUTCRACKER on TV. Baby Bear came up to me a little while ago and said, "Mommy, hotch me dance!". He then proceeded to show me his version of ballet. I wish you could have seen him, it was so cute!

We missed getting to carol.

The older two girls and I were supposed to go caroling with a group of girls from church yesterday. J.'s mom was going to watch the other kids. We didn't get to go because all three of us were running low grade fevers. One girl was off balance too, so we pushed fluids and called off. I would have hated to pass on some illness to a person in the elderly home, but we sure were disappointed.
One girl had even slipped the thermometer out of her underarm to make it read lower. She didn't think I would notice. There was something odd about her temperature dropping so rapidly so I caught on right away. J. and I constantly amaze her, she can rarely get away with anything. We must have been pretty sneaky when we were kids.

Oops! I realized that I had named names w/o permission. I have since taken out the names.

Please accept my apologies girls.

Christmas Symbols

This is an image of our tree. J. asked the children if they could tell what certain symbols remind us of. Each child got at least one turn to answer.

We use: a tree - to represent the cross that Jesus died on
an evergreen tree - God's love for us is eternal
white lights - the purity of Jesus and Jesus is the Light of the World
the star topper - the star that guided the wise men
the color red - Jesus' blood and love for us
gold - Jesus is the King of Kings and Prince of Peace




cross - Jesus died on the cross for our sins

heart - the heart is the seat of our emotions and "God so loved the world . . ." John 3:16
angels - the angels who appeared to Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds.

After we talked about these items, Jon talked about how we add other ornaments that mean something to us and remind us that God is interested in our lives (or something like that). He also made sure to mention that we choose to decorate our tree with these colors and others choose other colors, it's just a matter of preference. So if you use colored lights, don't worry our children won't be appalled or shocked. :)

My Babies are Growing Up and Other Tidbits

My Baby Bear turned three Sunday. He had asked for a marching band uniform for his birthday and Christmas, but we substituted a Bengals uniform and he was delighted.




Baby Bear asked my mom to make a Tigger cake for his party.



He asked me to make a Pooh Bear cake for the day of his birthday.


The darker spots on the legs were where the icing was getting too warm and I put off changing it. The eyebrows are yellow because BB wanted them to be "my color" ( read BB's favorite color). This was my first attempt at a shaped cake. Thanks mom for loaning me the pan and tips and making the icing for me. You saved me a lot of time.

Hmm . . . I guess I could have flipped the cake pictures.


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Baby Bear's birthday served as a reminder that my youngest daughter Monkey will be eight next month and my oldest Froggie will be thirteen next month. Tears are coming to my eyes as I type this. Is the fourth week of the month soon? I need my nursery duty baby fix.


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We did some Christmas decorating yesterday. We now have our manger scene cut-out and spotlight in our yard (I'll see about posting a picture later. My mil gave us the cut-out as a gift last year.) We have some of our smaller decorations displayed. Our tree is up and a curtain set that I got to keep the drafts from our back room out coordinates with the colors on our tree. Kitty Kat and the other kids worked together to put the tree together. Jon just had to help put the top section on. Jon and I put on the lights and ribbon garland. Jon then put a few special ornaments on the tree and then took the time to explain the symbolism of our tree to the children. I'll do a new post of the symbols.

Karaoke

J. pulled out his karaoke machine today. We all had a blast singing together. Each of us took a turn singing a solo and /or duet and we all sung a lot of the songs together. Yes, Mom, that is what was going on in the background when we talked on the phone earlier.

Brr. . . It's getting cold.

J. and I started putting plastic over the windows yesterday. We still have a lot of areas to cover to get rid of all the drafts. We're going to have to get more house wrap. We were able to cover the windows in our back porch room with enough left to cover two more windows. We still have eighteen windows in the upstairs to cover. If we cover the rest of the downstairs windows that is an additional twelve windows. Yikes, we have a lot of windows! We should save a lot on energy costs and be warmer if we get them all covered. They are nowhere near airtight.