I Will Pull This Blog Over!

BW has his surgery today and is home and back on the couch. Everything went well. However, I have strep throat and not one but THREE sick kids at home..........

Many years ago I had the brilliant idea that since the networks don't show Christmas specials anymore that is would be fun to invite our friends (and their kids) over to watch them on video. We'll pop popcorn and decorate cookies and watch the movies. Yeah, right!- the kids ran off to play and the adults hung out in the kitchen, periodically checking to make sure no one had killed themselves. So the movie party morphed, after that first year, into the annual pajama party. (a party, I might add, that some of the "regulars" begin asking me about in August) The kids wear their jammies and we do still frost cookies but other than that it is mostly organized chaos (and the adults still check periodically to make sure no one has killed themselves) This year we had about 30 kids (and their parents) so it was a busy evening.

Since I don't want to post recognizable photos of kids that aren't mine- here are only a few, although they do convey the spirit of the evening pretty well

Jumping on the trampoline


The boys made a fort of pillows in front of the landing down to the guest room. Their intent was to keep out the girls. However, once they made a barricade in front of the three steps down to the landing they realized they couldn't get in or out either- so they just started jumping over the railing....


The table after the cookie decorating frenzy


(and, of course, now you can find a Christmas special on TV at any given moment from Thanksgiving until Christmas)

The kids were pretty evenly split between whether Santa is a bad thing or a good thing.

X and A are both pretty solidly in the "nice" camp (although A is not so sure that Santa exists)





D would not go any where near Santa- so her vote is "naughty" (although she was more than willing to walk over long enough to snatch a candy cane out of Santa's hand)



K votes that not only is Santa "naughty" but he is downright evil- She wins for most extreme reaction to Santa in the history of mankind. The photos do not even begin to show how terrified she was. She freaked out- not the normal "who is this strange guy" reaction baby's have- but complete and total, whole body, almost couldn't breath terror. Needless to say there will be no photos on Santa's lap (or even in Santa's airspace) this year

No it's not what you think (B's leg hasn't healed and the presents still aren't wrapped) but
it's that we got a fairly decent Christmas card photo of all four kids, at the SAME time!!




AND

So B went to the doc today and the bones (yes, plural) he broke won't likely heal on their own so they are going to perform surgery to fuse them (or use screws or something) to the big unbroken bone in his leg. It is an outpatient procedure (although what isn't these days) so next Monday (Dec 29th) B will have the surgery. He won't be able to bear weight for at least 8 weeks. I have no idea how this is all going to work out but I am sure it will result in many funny stories for the blog. (or years of therapy for me) Either way, should be interesting.

That's all for today as I really need to get presents wrapped.

posting of the Santa and Pajama Party photos to bring you these photos of Dr. D and a short science and math lesson.


Where we live it is cold plus it rained yesterday equals a thin layer of ice completely covering everything outside

We have a (slight) incline on our driveway plus gravity equals an easy trip to take the garbage can down the driveway BUT

A slight incline on our driveway plus gravity times a thin layer of ice minus any kind of traction equals a leg broken in 2 places







Yes, D is applying every band aid she can find to B's leg. So he manages to get into the house and says (somewhat nonchalantly all things considered) "I think I broke my leg" I am not a doctor nor do I play one on TV but even I can tell from looking at the weird swelling that it's broken. So I get the kids up, pile them in the car at midnight (and yes there was actually some thought about the best way to get B to the hospital-and in light of the circumstances it was probably the best choice) and we drive to the emergency room. I wait in the car with the kids (why break any more bones on the ice?) We were watching DVD's on the car's system when I get the idea that idling in one spot for an hour might not be the best idea (you hear the stories about carbon monoxide in cars, even outside. At 1am- who knows if they are true) so I decide to run the car off the battery briefly. I figure it's a new car (which means a new battery) which brings us to our next math problem

power available in a car battery divided by the amount of voltage needed to run the heater, DVD player and lights equals about 30 minutes less than you might think

After about 10 minutes, the DVD player stops, the kids yell, I turn the key and.......

NOTHING

So now we have a dead battery, it's 1:15am, I have already used up all my alloted AAA calls for the year (which is a another story), there is ice everywhere and I have four (well technically three, as K slept through all of this) kids freaking out in the car. Luckily, after about 5 minutes the battery was able to start the car.

At 2am B calls me from his cell to tell me that they haven't even seen him yet and I should take the kids home and he will catch a cab to get home. We drive home slooooowly (did I mention the ice???) and the kids decide that if 2:30 pm is a good time for a snack then 2:30 AM must be an even better time. By the time snacks were over and I corralled them in their rooms it was almost 3am. Luckily the ice caused A to have a 2 hour delay at school the next day so he got to sleep in.

B got home around 5:30 am, leg in a splint. We go to the doc on Thursday to see how they plan to fix it.

Some days are like that

I will post the Santa photos in the next day or two (or so- by New Years for sure) and photos from last nights crazy Pajama Party but in the meantime- despite the fact I have presents to wrap, work to do and a house to put back together following the aforementioned pajama party- I did this instead

On November 22, K turned one. It is hard to believe that she is one already. She has grown so much since she came home- she has gained about 4.5 pounds and 3 sizes of clothing. She has enough hair to put into 4 "poofs" and she can sit up alone, roll from her back to her front (which makes diaper changes much more interesting) and crawl (although I use the word loosely) backward. She is starting to be able to go from sitting to on her belly- but she hates that cause then she is stuck. She has no idea how to reverse the process. Now I know many of these things are things younger babies can do- but they represent how much she really is growing. Of course, what you really want to see is photos so....





This is MY paper! (someone should really tell her that the wrapping paper is NOT the best part of the present. Of course, her defending her paper stash made it much easier for D to get away with taking the actual present to play with)



I know something good is about to happen....




Oh pretty flame- let me touch it. And what are you all singing about???



Well- maybe this will be fun...







It's all fun and games till somebody gets cake in their mouth
(have we mentioned that we are working on some huge feeding issues....)

The kids worked hard to get the "guts" out of the pumpkins so we can carve them- but I am not sure they look like they are having much fun.









It's not every year our pumpkins make a political statement- but B was pretty proud of his Obama pumpkin


How cute are these little trick or treaters. We tried to get A to be a zoo keeper or vet since we had a mouse, cat and monkey- but Stars Wars won out and he was Anakin Skywalker.









D really loved the "gimme candy" aspect of trick or treating but really didn't like the "older kids in scary masks whose parents didn't teach them that it isn't okay to scare toddlers" aspect of the evening. At one point they were across the street when an older kid came by in one of those "scream" masks that bleeds and he scared her (he also had just tried to scare X on purpose so he was kind of lucky he wasn't bleeding for real) You could hear her screams of terror across the street. But the desire for candy won out over abject terror and back off they went.

Finally they returned to spend the rest of the evening trick or treating out of our own candy buckets

How do people do these fancy styles on these little tiny heads. Heads that, I might add, don't stop moving the whole time you are trying to work. Add to that the screaming as if I am tearing her hair out and I think I have a lot to learn. But between the screaming and wiggling and my total cluelessness- I think it turned out kind of cute







Coming soon (maybe tomorrow???) Photos from Halloween.
Yeah Yeah- better late than never

We have witnessed the election of the first African American president. And while two of my kids can't (at least now) become president, they can see that a person who is brown like they are can be President of the United States. That positions of power are no longer held exclusively by White men. It gives me hope that eventually all people will be judged, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr, not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. What an amazing day yesterday was. We rejoiced at every state that "turned blue" and watched as the American people chose a leader, not based on the color of his skin, but on the content of his character. People from all walks of life came together to change the course of our nation, Time will tell what that course will be, but I am optimistic that this is the beginning of something remarkable and that Barack Obama will be the one leading our country back to becoming the amazing country we can (and should) be.

In the words of an anonymous man who was a preacher and a slave

"Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be; but thank God we ain’t what we was.”

Today we are one step closer to being what we ought to be and today I am truly proud to be an American

It is apple picking time around here so we took the kids to the local orchard. They had a blast snacking in the orchard. We aren't sure that K really appreciated it, but next year we figure she'll be munching away with the other kids. The weather was perfect- cool and sunny. I am not sure why X wanted to wear the mittens for apple picking though







The kids then went pumpkin hunting in the field.





The three little kids also got to attend two field trips with my preschool class so they got another visit to the orchard and a different pumpkin patch- we had much cooler weather though so it was time to break out the winter coats. But how cute is K in her coat?? It is too big right now for her (it used to be A's back in the day). K spent the trip riding in the backpack carrier. The week before she discovered that a fun game to play while in the backpack carrier is "pull Mommy's hair" In the winter coat though she couldn't get her fingers out of the mittens on the sleeves so we had a pain free field trip.