Working on numbers

I've been trying to teach Anna-Kate tricks for counting in her head. She is very much a concrete thinker, so today I brought out fruit loops (that I bought with a super coupon for the occasion). The kids did a two part project 1) writing (Anna-Kate) or tracing (Ryan) numbers and then 2) putting the correct number of fruit loops by the number and glueing them on the paper. They thought they were hot stuff!

Just some eye candy of my precious little one for you:



I think they'd do anything when given a promise of fruit loops. Quite the special treat here.





Ryan, with his completed paper



Finishing up her glueing.

My heart is full and overflowing

We've had a lovely jammie Monday so far. My kids and I have been dancing (arms interlinked "cowboy ho-down style") to Christmas music, the kids are doing a craft and have been playing well all morning. I snuck away to check my email and found this from Chris:

"We are a team, and I love having you on my team. In Sunday school we read
about Abigail, Nabal's wife, and I just thought about how she interceded for
her husband and how many times you have done that for me. A wife that helps
and cares for her husband as much as you do for me is truly one of the most
precious gifts God has given me.
I love you dearly and hope you and the kids have a wonderful jammy day."

What a precious way to start the week! Thank you, Jesus, for my family!

On being a grown up

Every year, on the first Friday night of December, the kids' preschool offers free babysitting. They provide pizza, cookie decorating, crafts and Christmas shows for the kids from 6-9. You can bet that I emailed the director from my car the day I received that piece of paper in Ryan's backpack (only 12 kids per age group--and, they took Jack too!). Chris and I went to a nice steak place we'd been wanting to go to. I found a deal on restaraunt.com (if you've never used them, check it out--I got one for "spend $100, get $50 off the ticket". We had a glass of wine, salads, bread, filet mignon (me), lamb (Chris), mashed potatoes, green beans (me), asparagus (Chris) had great conversation, ran into some friends and just had an overall lovely evening. We had plans to go to Macy's to get Jack's first Christmas ornament, but we lingered too long over dinner (and our cappuccino's that the waitress brought us on the house! Yum). As we talked (and couldn't remember the last time we'd been out!) and then waited to get our van from the valet, I felt old. The valet couldn't have been older than 25 and I asked him if it was the thrill of his life to drive my van (I was laughing, feeling kinda funny). He just said, "uh no, but it's fine." Ya, I felt like I was a million years old (but, that goes along with my theory that every kid you have adds 10 years to your age. Think about it.).

Anna-Kate and I ran errands Saturday morning and I was struck by what a little lady she is! We had a special lunch and went into a million stores (she has been doing chores to earn extra money to buy her brothers and Chris special Christmas presents) and she was so sweet and great company! She got in and out of the car alone, knew what she wanted to get for "her boys"...she's growing up, and I'm feeling old.

Last night we went to an adults only dinner party. I remember my parents going to those when I was a kid. Now, I'm the adult. Anna-Kate sat on my vanity chair watching me get ready and told Ryan that mommy and daddy were going to dinner with mommy and daddy friends and they were staying home with aunt Ann. When did I become old enough to do adult dinners and have kids who are OK with me leaving?

When did I become a grown up? {I'm not sure how I feel about this.}

(iphone) Photo dump

(thus making it allowable for me to have a random group of pictures in one post.)

So, the wittiness never occurred yesterday. It was between the blog and bed last night and bed won. {shrugs} Sorry to dissappoint.

I know it's grainy, but it's the first time he waved. He crawled from his room to the rail, looked down at me, I waved and then he waved back. Precious.




Boy in a box:



Anna-Kate (obligingly) wears turtlenecks and tights when she goes to school. First thing she does when she gets home? Dresses for summer (with some extra accessories, socks and shoes). It was about 40 degrees outside when this picture was taken (and 65 in our house as Chris decided that was a warm enough day time temperature. Eviently, feeling in fingers and toes is optional here).





He's pretending to be Mary (you know, mother of Jesus. Clearly, he copies and wants to be like Anna-Kate!).



Helping me shop. He kept loudly saying (while holding up the bra and granny panties) "look mama, these are big like you, I love these, let's get them!"



Child labor. Sweet girl giving her brother a bottle (she begged to do it!).



Blesses my heart. She loves her brothers so much!

December good-ness

Just be forwarned...in celebration of the Christmas season, and to highlight my bloggy facelift, daily blogs are coming your way! As we look forward to Christmas, and everything this special month holds, you can now look forward to hearing from me once a day (and bonus, if you check back later, I might even have something witty and or humorous for you). Merry Christmas! :)

180 days

**If you aren't a "Disney person" you might not want to read this. You will simply roll your eyes and not get why this is such a big deal to me.**

In 180 days we will be at Disneyworld. You want to know why I know that? Because Disney opens their reservation for food 180 days in advance, and as such, I've had November 30 circled on my calendar for a couple of months now. Every year I take great pleasure in planning our week (and meals!) for our trip--it makes the anticipation for our trip even greater! This year I was ready early, had my spreadsheet of where we were going and eating up and just looked at it daily, dreaming of the fun to come. I tried to sneak in early and called a day ahead--no dice. Then I called on Tuesday, at 6:55 am (yes, I've read about those "crazy" people who start calling at 7 am to get reservations. What can I say? If you don't do it too, all the good reservations will be gone!). I got through my entire itinerary and she went to process the reservations (a couple of which required a credit card to hold the spot) and nothing happened. She tried again, and a third time. I, meanwhile, was watching the minutes tick by and imagining all of the precious tables slipping away from me (most specifically, breakfast with Cinderella and the princesses--evidently the hottest ticket around.). She said, "well, the good news is that if I can't book it for you no one else can book it either. Our system [the entire Disney reservation system] is being turned off and revamped from 5pm-1 pm [Wednesday] so call back in the morning, but it might not be up until 1 tomorrow."

You know how it is when you have a huge final, or a plane to catch and you wake up every hour in a panic thinking you overslept? That was me. For two nights, because, of course, I called yesterday afternoon, {no luck} then again this morning, at 6:55 {no luck}. I started calling around 11:45 today to see if the phone system was up {it wasn't}. Finally, at 12:57 I got through. I was ecstatic thinking I had really accomplished it beating yesterday and today's reservation people in (no wait time on the phone). We completed all of my reservation numbers--then nothing. Yep, system still messed up. She {in typical Disney fashion, very kindly} suggested that I call back tomorrow morning. I said I was doing no such thing because what if the system came up in 1 hour, or 2 hours (etc) then everything would be booked by tomorrow morning.

{Should side bar here and say it's been a really rough week discipline wise--Ryan decided it would be fun to repeat this past summer and try not obeying again...I'm pretty tired and so am not running at full capacity. Anyway.}

She and I went back and forth for a while as I insisted upon speaking to someone else. She finally gave in, though forewarning me no one would be able to do more than her {challenge accepted, thank you}. I spoke with a "guest services manager" (is that who the difficult people get?) I explained my situation (and the fact that, at that point, I had already spent over 3 hours on the phone this week) and said that I knew that concierge level were able to put in their reservations early and, while I get that they are paying extra for that service, it was frustrating to me since people coming later than me were getting to book before me. She put me on a hold for a while. When she finally came back she said that she had good news and bad news. The good news was that somehow my breakfast with Cinderella (hardest reservation to get because you get into the park an hour early!) had somehow booked (she had no explanation why. I say God did that for me!). The bad news was that the system was still locked down and she couldn't force it to take the other 2 reservations needing a credit card hold. But, as she had looked through my records and saw how many times I had tried to book and appreciated the way I had kindly approached her (I guess she gets yelled at a lot?) she decided to do me a special favor and took my cell phone number and promised to call me as soon as the system went live again to confirm all of my reservations. This is huge! I feel so relieved.

Now, if Ryan would star obeying...

180 days