Ben discovered this trick all on his own, but Wade and I haven’t laughed so hard in ages.
Grafton – Oak
I found the sweetest note on my pillow from Alex. We are all feeling the hole Madison left behind.
I feel like every year it takes me a little longer to get Christmas decorations taken down. Today I finally got everything taken down and the house put back to “normal.” I always leave Christmas up through New Year but I never intend for Christmas to make it through half of January…
Ben has before him all the keys to his happiness – milk, noise makers, and the vacuum (he loves to clean). I should be good to go for about 5 minutes. (Actually Ben is pretty awesome and entertains himself for significant periods of time.)
Winter is long and cold here in Boston. It gets dark about 4:30 and there is little motivation to go outside – unless of course there is snow. The latest obsession in our household is pillow forts. They love to build forts and then bounce on the couch or the cushions. I’m generally good with the noise and the mess as long as its all cleaned up before moving onto the next activity or bedtime. Wade would much prefer it not happen at all in our main room so sometimes we try to clean it up before he gets home but he’s a pretty good sport when we don’t quite manage it.
These two were determined to shovel. It didn’t matter that there was barely a dusting of snow. They bundled up and wanted to be out ready for the bus extra early. They were adorable so I was okay with it.
This is a very typical Ben story. He is crazy independent and so sure of himself.
Ben was gifted a bike by one of my friends over the summer. When we got it, she let me know it could use two new tires. We put the tires on Ben’s Christmas list. He got the tires for Christmas and loved them when he opened the presents. He was a little confused however. We tried to explain they were for his bike, but he kept asking for his bike. We told him his bike was in the barn and we would put the tires on later. To minimize the distraction, we even put the tires by the backdoor. Then we all went back to the craziness of Christmas and presents. At some point, I looked around and realized Ben was missing. After calling his name a few times, I did think to look and sure enough, the tires were missing too. I opened the back door, and my child is walking through the snow, in his socks, towards the barn with his tires…
If you notice only one tire is shiny and new, we had to order some missing hardware before we can switch out the second new tire.
We tried something new with Kaitlyn’s hair and we all kind of love it. We put her hair up in sponge curlers (not the kind you had as a kid) last night while it was wet. It came out with these amazing curls and lasted all day long.
Judy and Jerry are awesome about spending time with each grandchild. (I am still annoyed that somehow I missed taking a picture of anyone with Teague today.). The youngest two demand a lot of attention and the older two are pretty good about being patient. But everybody gets their own special time and we all their visits!
So here’s a little secret (and one day I will tell Alex). When we moved into this house, I was going through lots of closets and boxes and drawers to move everything to this house. I came across the boys’ old Pokemon binder. I hated Pokemon cards. They were always everywhere – backpacks, the kitchen counter, under the bed, in the closet, and sometimes in the binder. Initially, I would gather them up and give them back to the boys, but they rarely seemed to care about individual cards. I got where I would just throw them away when I found them. No one every came to me looking for a lost card. When I found the binder in our move to the new house, I tossed it. Nobody missed it for almost a year. Then suddenly Pokemon became popular again and the boys started asking about their old cards. I played dumb and let them look all around the house, the attic, the barn, their rooms, etc. Then we all agreed the cards must have gotten lost somewhere in the move. Alex in particular was caught up in the trend and bought some cards with his money and added a bunch to his list for Christmas. Now we are back on the Pokemon bandwagon and trading at school…
I knew I wanted four kids. I saved all of my kids’ clothes hoping we would have a fourth child. I didn’t plan on them being so far apart so some of the saving of clothes didn’t work out so well. (Turns out jeans have actually changed styles quite a bit – the legs used to be much wider when Alex was a baby!). Sweaters, tops, shorts, shoes, etc have help up fairly well and most have made it to the third boy. I have even found handfuls of socks in the clothing bins. At first that seemed great. Then I realized that the socks weren’t lasting very long… Poor Ben. Most of his socks end up looking like this very quickly. Sometimes being the third in a hand-me-down line is a little rough.
Christmas is here. The kids are so good about gathering at the top of the stairs and waiting to go down together to see what Santa left for them. It’s always a crazy Christmas morning but so fun to watch.
After everyone has enjoyed their Santa gifts, their stocking goodies, and possibly some breakfast, we then got ready for the day. That of course meant more gifts and more squeals and lots of paper and craziness. Christmas!
Although we love making cookies on Christmas Eve, we also have other activities. We take family pictures, go to the Christmas Eve service at church, and dress in matching PJs! Pastor John asked if Ben would agree to be baby Jesus for the second year in a row and although he seemed a little old we agreed. So hello 2 year old baby Jesus. Amazingly our wild child sat still for the entire time he was in front of the congregation (whew!).
My mom continues to do basket presents to count down Christmas for all the kids and grandkids. That’s 70 presents that she procures and wraps every year before she even starts her Christmas shopping. My kids are always so excited for the day they get to open the first present. Today was the day. Everyone got dressed in their matching pajamas, posed for a picture, and then tore open a present!
We spent the evening decorating the tree – which is getting harder every year with all the “help” from little hands. We did manage to break only 1-2 ornaments this year which is a vast improvement over last year. The kids had a blast which is what is truly important and the tree is decorated so we can enjoy it for the next month!
Painting with kids is hard. Really hard. I have been trying to put the last coat of paint on Kaitlyn’s drawers for..forever. I am passed the point of painting outside so now I need enough time to paint them inside that they will also be able to dry without anyone “accidentally” touching them. Obviously I could do this most nights, but honestly, most nights I don’t want to! I keep thinking I’ll get motivated soon so that I can move everything out of my office, but it hasn’t happened yet. Ben, however, is thoroughly enjoying the drawers, rubber mallet, paint stick, and other things he finds laying around.
Somehow summer has officially ended, and today school officially started. The kids were good sports about taking their first day of school pictures. (The boys even took them twice because the first ones were blurry.) Kaitlyn has been waiting so long to ride the school bus like her brothers. She would have started kindergarten years ago if they would have let her!
Because we weren’t sure exactly when Kaitlyn’s bus would be back yesterday, we mostly played outside while we waited for her to return. It’s rare that I have all the kids outside for an extended period of time – especially when I have my camera.
Don’t the big boys look excited when we were trying to take a picture comparing their heights? I do that periodically because some day, I think Teague is going to be taller. The joke is probably on me and Alex will always be taller!
I knew the weather looked iffy, but we needed an activity for the day. We headed to the lake. Due to the weather, we didn’t see many friends. Of course that didn’t stop my kids. Alex decided to go fishing and caught a fish! Teague made some new friends. Kaitlyn just ate snacks all afternoon. Then it poured! Thankfully it was a quick shower and we waited it out. A little rain never hurt.
Scheduling Kaitlyn’s birthday party is always a little tricky. Do we do it early so that we can send invites through the school? Do we do it after the Fourth of July holiday? This year we purposely did it quite late so that her cousins could join in the fun! We planned on a bouncy house and my only fear was rain. I did not even think that it would be the hottest day of the year. The heat index was almost 100. The poor kids wanted to bounce and jump so badly and could only stand the heat for a few minutes at a time. Thankfully we had plenty of drinks and snacks in the air conditioned inside. The kids would play outside and then run inside. I should have done a waterslide blowup!
My nieces have family in New York and were visiting this summer. It only made since for them to come see us for the weekend! My kids were so excited to have their cousins visit and I was curious to see if I could handle all 6 for an entire weekend. The girls arrived today and immediately we pulled out the water slide.
Kaitlyn and Laila have the cutest friendship. Heena bought them matching dresses this summer so of course they wanted to wear them on their playdate today. I had two giggling girls all day. There was a princess sleepover. There was lots of playing in the market. These two would be happy all day together.