Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Grace has started to understand Christmas. When we told her it was Jesus' birthday, that was enough to make it "click" for her. Brian even made baby Jesus a "happy cake" (a.k.a a birthday cake) that we shared with my family on Christmas day.

I had a hard choice right before Christmas but decided to go ahead and have my gallbladder taken out on December 23rd. I had already missed all of the Christmas cookies and goodies and only had a taste of Sophie's birthday cake. When I was presented with the chance to have the surgery then and enjoy Christmas dinner, I felt I had to take that chance. I am soooo glad I did. I have been feeling MUCH better. It was hard to be sore around Christmas but the kids really helped in that area!


Christmas with little kids is like a tornado. They don't understand yet that presents are for different people and wanted to open them all. After watching the girls RIP open their presents, we let them open ours too because it was pure joy to watch them have at it! Grace still discards clothes when she finds them in boxes. There was an exception this year and that is her "Princess" coat that my mom got her. Sophie wants everything open all of the way. She unwrapped bars of soap in one of my gifts before I noticed what she had. oops! Matthew was just happy to be held so long. He is such a cuddle bug right now.

Sophie didn't catch that Christmas was over and kept asking for the "Santa Claus" song at bedtime. Brian gave in for an extra week or so before he started pushing for another song. The girls thought the Christmas clearance shopping at Walmart was the best thing, well until they realized they didn't keep out what they picked out. Hopefully they will still like those decorations next year!

After this Christmas, I am almost ready for next Christmas. Almost. I can't wait to see how excited they are next year. I can tell you right now that I do plan on enjoying Christmas cookies next year and will probably be a baking machine to make up for my lack of baking this year. So watch out!;)

And most importantly ... Happy Birthday, Jesus!

An Angel, A Baby, and A Two Year Old

A red angel - Grace had her Christmas play at preschool recently. I missed it due to my pesky gallbladder but Brian was able to record it. Of course in typical Grace fashion, she refused to put on her costume. She was to be an angel and wear a white robe. I guess I told her too much before they left how pretty her red dress was that she was wearing. She didn't want to cover up her dress with the costume so Grace was the red angel in the middle of the pack of angels. That's my Grace! (At least, she wasn't the one who shouted out they needed to go potty in the middle of the play! Take what you can get, right?=P)

A baby moment - With three kids, we had to hit the odds, right? Matthew has become our pacifier baby. This is probably good for his sake as he was really hurting his hand by sucking on it. At first, I only found pink and purple pacifiers but I did scrounge up a green one finally! He is happy sucking it but gets upset when he spits it out. I am not liking this spit it out, get upset game much. The girls are thumb suckers and the ONLY good thing about that is they don't lose their thumb. I am hoping this is a short lived habit for him but I guess time will tell.

Two at last - Sophie turned 2 on December 11th. At times, it was hard for us to remember she wasn't even two yet. She did so much so early because of her big sister leading the way for her. Sophie can run really fast. She completely runs like a girl but that is OK because she is a girl!;) She talks in complete sentences. She eats just about thing you give her. She listens really well and tries her best to help when you ask her to do something like throw something away or get a tissue. At the same time, we now have another two year old. No matter how far along she is in everything else, she is two and it is starting to show! Happy Birthday, my Sophie!