Too much Turkey

We drove to the hub's parents for Thanksgiving and the girls were SO EXCITED! We had a great week with the fam. Katie, Jason, and Zach drove down, and the kids loved seeing him. They are great entertainment for each other. We missed Abby, Mando, and Bo, but we'll see them in a few weeks for Christmas! My mom and dad stopped in for lunch on Friday, so it was good to see them too. Zach had a birthday party that day too, so it was a jam packed weekend...maybe too much excitement.....

Leaf pile

We are back! I'm too tired to post the Thanksgiving pics, but I thought this was a funny pic! Pappy had a leaf pile in the back yard, and it didn't take long for Allie to find it! More tomorrow...we had a great week.

Daddy's home!

note: those are green beans on Gbaby's face...not boogers

Car Seat Talk

This has been a L O N G weekend and start to the week, but relief is in sight! Garrett and Allie had bad colds last week and into the weekend, so I quarantined them as not to infect the rest of the town and to keep them from getting anything else before we leave for Thanksgiving. I HAD to get out by Sunday afternoon, so we went to where else??? SONIC! When I handed Allie her drink, she said, "hmmm.....Mom it's Happy Hour!!!, and then asked, "what does that mean?" I said, well it means we got your drink a little cheaper. After taking a sip, she said, "hmm...it tastes cheaper...it's REALLY good!!" Ahh...the concept of money to a 5 year old.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. We are outta here tomorrow. The hubs has not had more than one day off at a time since Nov 1, so we are BOTH so EXCITED that he is off 4 full days!!!

Look there's Land!

That was Allie's big line in the kindergarten Thanksgiving play at her school. She told me before that she was "a little nervous,", but who ever knew Allie to be afraid of an audience. When it came her time, she said her line, and then she grinned from ear to ear at her accomplishment with pilgrim pride. Check out the "bow" at the end of the play! It was pretty long, so I just posted a few clips.

Is it Friday yet?

It is only Wednesday, and I'm not counting this as one of our more stellar weeks. I took Garrett for his 6 month well child visit yesterday, and he wasn't so well. He's just got a nice little cold, with more wheezing than what makes me comfortable. The Dr gave him an inhaler which is giving him relief, but he's having fevers still and awake much of the night. Oh, and did I mention that as I'm trying to type this, my backspace function is not working. You try typing a blog post without using the backspace button! So here's what happend to top off my morning ('I'm not correcting the word happened because I'm afraid it'll freeze up again!), one of the girls locked the dog in the bedroom unbeknown st to me. When I came home from dropping Allie off, I heard banging from the bedroom. It was Hannibal trying to get out, and he literally almost dug a whole through the carpet. Fabulous! Oh and now I cannot even see the words I'm tyiping.! Tyme to reboot...everything!

Tagged

Mandy tagged me a while back, and I'm so behind the blogging times that I wasn't "up to speed" on this fun little blogging game. When you are tagged, you are supposed to retrieve the fourth picture from the fourth album on your computer. So here it is......the hubs and Allie. He was in his 3rd year of training in NY, and Allie was 9 months old. I tag mamma lion, kelly, beth ann, melissa, amber, emmy, katie, amy, kristin, jannette, jaime, jenn, bec, and gretchen.

Here's to Halfway!

Garrett has hit the halfway mark for his first year! This has been the fastest and slowest 6 months of my life! I don't know if you can tell in pictures, but he is no small fry weighing in at 21 pounds (95%) and measuring 29 inches (off the charts) in length. In the past few weeks, he's started eating in a high chair, sitting unassisted (if you can get him to be still), scooching on the floor to get toys, and holding his bottle on his own. He's QUITE the extreme opposite in every way of Mary but alot similar to the way Allie was in his determination to get what he wants! I may be in big trouble soon. His favorite thing right now is jumping in his bouncer, and that's pretty much where he spends most of his time. He loves to watch the girls and pretty much laughs at everything they do. Check out the video below of his developing commando crawl.

Say Baaaa!

Always a poser.

Look I'm sitting!

Handsfree...for me that is. Yeah for helping me get out the door by 730 on school days!

Peas please!

The plague is back

Certain family members refer to Allie as "the plague". Probably with good reason...she sure sounds that way. We've been dealing with her asthma since she was an infant, so it's nothing new. She definitely hasn't been sick so far this year as she was last season, so I'm thankful for that. However, you can hear her characteristic "bark" just about anywhere in town right now and it's been going on for days and days. Today, she actually asked to go to the dr, which she NEVER does. She said she didn't want a shot, but that if it would make her quit coughing she would get one. Wow that is a new one! So here we go again!

Ta Dah!!!!

Bet you thought this was going to be something big like Garrett taking his first steps at the ripe old age of 6 months. Well nope....actually it may seem like no big thing to you. TO ME, it is a significant milestone. You see, my girls did not get hair on their head for a LONG LONG TIME. My theory is that they became very tenderheaded (Mary doesn't seem to be this way) because I was not able to brush and pull on their hair when they were too young to care. Some would say I was just too gentle...at any rate, My Allie is THE PITS when it comes to fixing her hair. She whines and screams and carries on. Now that her hair is finally long due to a very unfortunate hair cutting mishap at the age of 4, I have started pulling her hair back. Today when she wasn't really paying too much attention, I FINALLY braided it! She even liked it and wanted me to do it again!

Allie at 9 months.....she was a balding beauty for a long time after that too.

At the car wash

Some of you may think this is just plain mean to make fun of my sweet Mary in this way. I am mainly posting this for my sibs who made fun of me my whole childhood for being a flincher. I was afraid of mostly anything...even our own dog. Well, it seems I may have passed some of this fearfulness to Mary. She's been potty trained for several months, but is JUST now able to climb on and off the potty. (she often times climbs up and says...be careful mary..don't fall down!) She's afraid to peddle her tricycle presumably because she will reach some pretty high speeds. She's been through the car wash a number of times, and every time, the same reaction. She flinches!! You can't see it quite as well in the video, and her response is not quite as dramatic as it used to be. So Mary, while you are not old enough to defend yourself, I'm poking a little fun, simply because I know how you feel.

Poker Face

Em told me as a birthday gift that she would keep the kids for a weekend, and even insisted on nailing it down back in August. (I bet she'll settle for a pair of earrings next year:) There was only about one weekend the whole fall that would coordinate with the hub's schedule and theirs, so we set it! I asked him to plan something out of town. It is not his style to blab about anything, and the hubs has quite the "poker face"so except for his parents and my sister, no one knew where we are off too. With only 2.5 days to burn, I did not expect to drive to the airport, but that's where we went. He kept it from me until we actually reached the gate, and that's when I saw LAS VEGAS! I was pretty shocked. We headed west! I wish I would have taken some pics of the costumes we saw there on Halloween. YIKES! We had a great time eating, catching a show, and just walking around. The best part of it was just uninterrupted thoughts! I thought and spoke in complete sentences all weekend. I read a book, took a nap, and slept in until I wanted to get up. Now that is worth all the chips in Vegas. Thanks to the hubs and the sister and brother-in-law for a great weekend. Don't forget to check out the post below on what the kids did all weekend!

Halloweekend

For starters, this is Uncle Adam writing this post. Meredith got surprised with a weekend in Vegas so Em and I took over the house and the kids for a few days and Mer wanted me to post about this weekend's events. I think the entire "experience" can best be summarized by a statement that Em made yesterday morning as we were waking up at an unusually early hour on a Saturday to some rather unusually perky children. And by perky I mean screaming, laughing, crying, running, and jumping, or any combination thereof. Emily looked at me and said, "I have a newfound respect for my sister." I know we don't have kids yet, but we've been around nieces and nephews for 8 years now so taking care of children is not completely foreign to us. What we haven't had a real grasp for is the whole "full-time job" part of it! Once we got the routine down, we were in pretty good shape!

So we got here Friday just in time to eat and take the kids trick-or-treating. So Em and I, the Little Mermaid, and Mary and her Little Lamb set out on an adventure to the end of the neighborhood and back. Candy bags were filled and kids were exhausted in no time and we were back home before dark! It was all Garrett could do to keep his eyes open. Then Allie and Mary divided and organized their candy very precisely and Allie handed out candy to the trick-or-treaters. On Saturday we got up and I took Allie to her soccer game which was really fun. I was amazed at how much actual soccer playing was going on. I was expecting more chaos but apparently 5 year olds can do more than just run around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. The highlight was the constant reminding from both coaches and parents for the kids to "run the other way, the other way!" After the game we went home and the rest of the day was nice and relaxing. We watched movies, the girls played and Em took them to get snow cones, Garrett ate, pooped, and slept, and we just had a great time. It has been very helpful having 2 girls that are so self-reliant. Allie and Mary entertain themselves very well and Allie was a really big help when we, or I, had no clue what I was doing. Many times did I hear her say, "no, you have to do this" or "my mom does it like this". She's a big help with Mary and a great big sister. Emily really did all the hard work, all the Mer stuff. I was on bottle duty with Garrett and I shifted him from one place to another if he got fussy. Other than that, I pretty much just reported for duty when Emily needed me. Something that really impressed me this weekend was bedtime. Whether it was naptime or bedtime, the girls just went to bed. No questions, no arguing, no complaining... they've got it down. It's part of their routine and they follow it whether mom and dad are home or not.

This morning was particularly exciting, you know, with the time change and all because today all the fun sounds from yesterday came at 6 instead of 7. I came out of the bedroom at 6:05 and walked into the living room. It was still dark and the first thing I saw was Allie sliding down the stairs head first on her stomach. Seriously? Who is that happy and energetic at 6am?! So we all got up and had breakfast and today has pretty much been more of the same. Actually, I take that back. Today was actually one for the history books. For those of you that don't know me very well... I don't do diaper changes. I have an extremely sensitive gag reflex with "smells", particularly when there is a visual aid. I've held a strict policy that until the kid is mine... happen not gonna! So this morning Em took the girls to our house to get The Emperor's New Groove (Allie's favorite... mine too!) and to run through Sonic. Garrett and I were just chilling, doing guy stuff, and he was great. Laughing, smiling, bouncing. Then he started getting fussy, so I moved him here and he was better for a minute. Then he fussed again so I moved him there and he was good. The fussing persisted; however, and then I thought I smelled something. Uh-oh! I considered waiting until Emily got back, but she's busted her tail all weekend and I felt bad letting the little guy be uncomfortable. All right buddy, here goes nothing. We go to the designated changing area and I lay him down. I get the onesy off and everything looks good so I pull the tape tabs, open the diaper, and HOLY MOLY did I immediately regret the decision I had made! But it was too late to turn back, I was committed. I don't think I need to elaborate too much, but I'll just say it was really green, and really everywhere! As best as I can tell, Garrett is made just like the rest of us, so can someone please explain to me how it's even possible for it to get in the front?! It was incredible! There was poop in places I didn't even know were possible! Amazingly enough, I cleaned him up with relative ease and applied the clean diaper without error... and I did it all without so much as one gag! I should also point out that Garrett found the entire episode extremely hilarious. He was giggling and laughing the whole time and, I know he's only 6 months old, but he seriously had a look on his face like he was enjoying my misery. I'll have to talk to him about that in a few years. Until then, Garrett and I will forever share a unique bond. The rest of the day has been relatively quiet and uneventful. Mom and dad are on their way home and we are just winding things down.

I don't think I left anything too important out. The girls were great. The kids are all sweet and precious and we had an absolute blast. It was a good "practice session" for us and we'd do it again in a heartbeat. Here are some pictures from the weekend.