Friday, January 16, 2009

BFF 4ever

Gracie got the best Christmas present ever from her cousin Emma, a best friends necklace.  Don't you love their matching HSM pjs too.  Every night that Gracie wears hers now she says "I bet Emma is wearing hers tonight too"

And what's the first thing best friends must do together?  Get a pedicure
Emma's toes Gracie's toes

Have you see two girls enjoying a pedi more than these two?  The rest of us got quite a kick out of watching them.  I only wish I had a video camera. 

Frosty

As promised here is Crew's finished work.  We were totally sad when his little guy melted. 

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Sometimes I Really Love My Kids

and sometimes they love me too!
  I came downstairs one day and this is what Crew had written for me.  I had to take a picture to document it.  Gracie decided to leave me a message later that day too.  I wish I could remember what I had done to get such great love notes.

A White Christmas ... Almost


It snowed in Vegas.  It's kind of funny because just a few days previous we had taken the kids to Town Center mall to see "snow".  They do a fake snow so kids can come and see some snow and then the real thing came.  I was so excited.  Right away we had to bundle up and get out and play because who knew how long it would last.  Crew undertook building a snow man all by himself and when I find my camera you'll actually see the completed work.  We even actually had a snow day.  It was fabulous.  

Our Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney with Care...

except for Gracie's.  She kept playing with hers and of course lost it and we still haven't found it.  These were a last minute rather intense Christmas project I took on this year.  My sister-in-law Katie found this website with these amazing stocking kits.  It comes with everything you need except for polyfill, all you have to do is hand-sew everything.  I thought that they were adorable and couldn't pass up the chance to make something really special for my kids.  However they were more work than I realized and with one major setback (Layla cut Crew's stocking up with scissors so I had to redo it)  I barely got them done in time for the BIG night.  
Layla's stocking



Gracie's stocking

                                                        Crew's stocking
I really wanted to get cute pictures with each kid holding their stocking but since I couldn't get all three (seriously Gracie where is your stocking?)  I guess I will have to wait 'till next year, hopefully we will have found the missing one by then.  I really don't want to have to sew a whole new one.  And in case you're wondering I did embroider the proper names for each child's stocking so you don't have to worry that Crew's stocking says Brad.  Layla's stocking isn't labeled Buddy either.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Dear Bloggers

Instead of a Dear Abby in the newspaper, I am asking all you fellow bloggers for advice.  Gracie has a serious hair twirling problem.  I can't find a solution to help her quit.  As you can tell her hair is suffering.  She has major hair loss on the twirling side.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  (Disregard the crazy bangs.  That is from a unrelated hair cutting incident)

What happens when your 1st grader is mad at you?



Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Christmas Shopping

I had to take a picture of my boys looking through the Lego catalog working on their Christmas  wish lists.  

Sharing

I cut up some apples for the kids to snack on while we were playing outside.  After running around together a bit we came back for more and a bird was sitting on the apple eating it.  Layla said look mom we are sharing our apples with the birdies, birdies like apples too.  

Monday, December 1, 2008

My kids....

I wonder what they are thinking ........
On our way home from preschool, Gracie told me that she had corn stuck up her nose.  In class they did a project where they took corn cobs and rolled them in paint and then rolled them on paper.  Anything involving paint Gracie totally loves but apparently some of the dried kernels fell off her ear and they just needed to be in her nose instead.  I was worried because they were dry and I didn't want them expanding in her moist nose.  After a lot of hard blowing and serious praying they came out. 
Crew was complaining of pain and Gracie said"maybe it's hurting because of the silver thing you ate" Don't swallow things that you aren't supposed to and your stomach won't hurt.  I tried to figure out what it was that he had swallowed.  When Aaron came home from work Crew was still complaining.  Aaron thought maybe it could be a battery.  After looking at lots of pictures online of button batteries we found one that Crew identified as what he had swallowed.  Aaron called poison control to see what they had to say.  I had no idea swallowing a battery was so dangerous.  We had to take him to the ER immediately.  After two hours batteries start to corrode and start burning the esophagus either by the acid leaking out causing chemical burns or the electrical current causing electrical burns.  The plan was to knock him out and go down with a scope and tongs and pull out the battery.  The anesthesiologist had finished explaining to Crew what was going on and Aaron was finishing up all the paper work.  Just before the Dr. put the needle into Crew's IV  he told the Dr he felt like he was going to throw up.  The Dr. said that is a common feeling when you have something stuck inside.  Crew started throwing up and miraculously puked out the battery.  The Dr. didn't even know what to do.  He said this has never happened before I guess we will do an x-ray again.  We were so relieved that he didn't need surgery.  They still had to keep him over night for observation and insure there were no complications or infection.  
Here's the battery on the right.  It was lodged behind his heart in his esophagus. In the x-ray he looked like Iron Man.  So now Crew has a new nick name to add to the list.  When he swallowed the battery it was shiny and you could even see the words on it.  After about 4 hours inside it was almost completely black.  He was sore for awhile and couldn't eat much but thankfully he was fully recovered in time to enjoy a fabulous Thanksgiving feast.  

Aviation Nation


For Veterans Day we celebrated by going to Aviation Nation.  It's the biggest air show in the world (ok maybe not).  It was so awesome that Crew couldn't even take his eyes off the action long enough to get his picture taken. What would an air show be without the Thunderbirds, which were completely unbelievable! 



Our Air Force is Amazing

I just have to say that I am totally impressed with our military and am sure proud of them.
The things these pilots can do is astonishing.  Most of the things I saw I would have never believed planes could do or pilots.  I really can't figure out why I have never been to an air show before.
My favorite plane in the air show.  It was so awesome!

C 5 Galaxy

I don't know what this little expression means but it sure is cute
Here we are inside this huge airplane.  Crew was totally fascinated to learn that tanks and hummers are flown around in these
Of course this one is from Wright-Patt  where my dad happens to work.  

Pumpkin toss


We had to play pumpkin toss on Halloween.  With no school for Nevada Day, we had fun doing lots of Halloween activities.  This was one of the kids favorite.  We made little ghost and threw them in the pumpkin.  Crew happened to get his ghosts to go through both eyes on his first and second toss.  I couldn't believe it!  He was pretty excited too.  

The Harvest Carnival

Crew's school had a fun little carnival and he was so excited to go.  We had a fun time playing the games and running around on the playground too.  Crew and Gracie went through the haunted house with Aaron and maybe that wasn't the best idea.  Both the kids were pretty spooked afterward.  Gracie was really scared for several days and kept saying "Haunted houses are just people playing dress up and pretending huh mom" 
Layla didn't want to stop playing and let me get a picture of her


Gracie won the cake walk and this is the cake she picked.  I wasn't expecting her to pick this one.  We had so many Halloween treats that we ended up just throwing the cake away after taking the spiders and bugs off of course.