This and that

I think it is an old wives tale or something about "Busy is as busy does." Well, we have been busy! December gives Mom a double whammy for birthdays. RaeAnne's is four days before Christmas and Daddy's is four days after! Trying not to roll Birthday's and Christmas into the same gifts is sometimes tough....and expensive! RaeAnne was pretty easy...she has been wanting and upgrade to a DSi for a l-o-n-g time. Daddy was harder. (Why is it the older we get sometimes the things that we want have so many zeros behind them?)

So the day before Daddy's birthday, the Geek Squad arrived bearing gifts and had work to do. We have had a projection TV for over 9 years now. It still works great, but the thing is a monstrosity! So Daddy has a new controller and a 46 inch flat screen LCD TV. Mom is the lucky one as it is mounted on the wall and takes up so much less space! And the girls...well they scored too, because their Bubby "loaned" them his Wii and their Aunt and Uncle gave them a Wii fit....wow! We have a real "play" room in the basement!



Jordis had an appointment in Kansas City at Children's Mercy Hospital today. All the girls went along for the ride and posed with the statue children in front of the hospital.

Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!!!

From our five lovely princesses!!

RaeAnne is 11 years old!!

Happy Birthday RaeAnne! Still not a teen, but with just enough attitude to get herself in trouble sometimes! As is our tradition, it was her choice for dinner tonight. Red Robin was the pick and afterwards we celebrated with cake and her present at home. I think she liked the present!



We love you all the way to the moon and back!! XOXO!!

School program X's two

On December 15th we headed out to eat an early supper in town so we could then go to Kendalan's school music program. Someone forgot to tell Mother Nature! We literally slid out of the restaurant! It then took us 45 minutes to drive home on the extremely icy roads. Half way home we decided that trying to drive to the school for a program was a risk that we didn't feel like taking! We arrived home, cautiously tip-toed into the house and found a message on the phone from the school that the program was postponed!

So last night they combined the Kindergarten and 1st grade programs into one night of entertainment. Kendalan's program was first. Our normally outgoing girl wasn't too excited about singing in the program, but she did a great job. The music teacher gave them an opportunity to wave and "smile" at family and friends. Our girl gave us the "grinch" look!?!



Next up was Tessa's program. She also had a case of "stage fright" and was hiding behind another classmate when walking in and on to the stage. She did a wonderful job singing and doing all the motions with the songs and she actually would sneak a peek at us from time to time to see if we were watching her!



Tessa is so excited for her hair to grow long that she will not let me trim her bangs right now. She will wet down her hair and and put clips or a headband on at times, but last night I guess she wanted to "hide" under her bangs!




Personally I think we had the two most beautiful girls there!!

Many Blessings & Christmas is in the air!!

We have been on the run this month! School projects, programs, tumbling, dancing, cold..you name it we have been doing it! Right after Thanksgiving we had a water leak in our basement. Poor Zora has been displaced from her bedroom ever since. Today we finally put the baseboards back on and tomorrow we will have the furniture moved back where it belongs! There is still a hold in the wall in Zora's room, but we want to make sure that the water issue is gone before we have the hole patched. Sounds kind of crazy, but since it is too cold to use the outside faucet where we think the water came from...we want to wait until we can test it out. Hopefully, this will prevent us from having to have the wall tore down for a third time!

Because of all the water in our basement, it was going to be an adventure to get our big Christmas tree out of storage. Plus, part of the lights on it had quit working last year. So I brought out our little fiber optic tree. The lights are so much prettier on it anyway!



Zora had a project for school to decorate a paper Christmas tree. We came up with a few objects to use and I think it turned out pretty cute!



Tessa will be having a sedated MRI of her heart in January. Once they have that report, her pediatric cardiologist and her team will decide if she needs open heart surgery to repair the aneurysm that was discovered. It is really hard to look at her and think that she has a potential time bomb in her chest that could be ruptured at any time. She has been doing absolutely Fantastic! She is learning so much English that it is hard to believe that she has only been with us since August! The only area she has problems in is reading and she is doing pretty good with that too. As for having another in the house, she has fit in so well, it is almost like she has always been here!

Our "Elf on a Shelf" came to live with us on December 5th. Everyone had a suggestion for his name, we decided to put all the names in a bowl and then His name was drawn randomly. So Dasher has been taking information back to the North Pole and Santa Claus each evening and then reappearing in our house. The girls actually look forward to getting up to see where Dasher is sitting each day. The count down to Christmas is coming soon. Everyone is excited to see what Santa brings.

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!