It's almost Christmas

We are enjoying our time at home for the holidays. The kids have seen Santa, as you can see, no one cried. Makana does look concerned, but you would have too, the cameraman's hat started singing and dancing on his head. It was weird. I half expected a "ho, ho, ho," and a kick down a slide!

The kids have been very excited each morning to come down and see what the Elf on the Shelf has left them in the advent calendar and to see where he is sitting for the day. They are normal kids, one day they are running around making every Christmas musical thing sing and the dogs bark and generally driving mom crazy and the next they are perfect angels. No, really, I had a 24 hour bug and could barely move from bed, they played nicely all day, took a nap when I asked them to and did not argue with me. Of course today they have been hitting each other with those little air filled packing pillows and claiming that they have nothing to do, so I told them to clean their rooms. Hmmm, sounds like my mom speaking! Which is great because she was a perfect mom! Another thing, I always wondered why mom took so much time to look through every pocket on every pair of pants, seemed like a waste of time to me, but this week I learned differently. In one load of kid laundry I found one lightening McQueen car, two silver dollars, 3 pennies, 2 dimes, 3 rocks, and a small plastic shovel. I'll be checking pockets now too. I should have known, we have to search Noa every time we leave day care because he puts things in his pockets! I have a toy phone that no one knows where it came from and I think I found a pendant from a store we were shopping in that I did not pay for! Little clepto! I need to catch him in the act so I can teach him a lesson, but he is too fast for me so far! I don't think he means to be bad, he doesn't understand yet.

Gotcha Day 2010 and beyond!

I can't believe it has been 5 years since we became a family! Makana is such a beautiful girl, inside and out and we are so lucky to have her in our lives! We celebrated with Daddy and Cody with dinner and cake, then I took Makana for her first mani/pedi at a little salon for kids, she loved it. This month at school Makana got an award for Personal Integrity, which was very sweet and the assembly was very nice. Noa is loving his school and is talking more, he is putting together longer and longer sentences, though he is still difficult to understand. I know the first step is that he tries to say the words and that we can work on how he says them now, but sometimes it is hard on all of us when he wants to say something and we can't understand him. He LOVES jeeps like his Uncle E has and says he wants one too. His favorite toys are his cars and trucks, like most boys, but he also plays house with his sister, which is really cute. He finally can reach the pedals on the trike that we bought him for Christmas last year, down hill is no problem, except for the steering part, up hill is another matter all together. Halloween is approaching and Noa is still unsure of all the spooky stuff. Gil loves Halloween and has been making ghosts with the kids, and other decorations. Our trees are now hung with plastic ghosts and coloring on construction paper. I bought costumes for them both, a princess and a dragon, very cute, I found them when the kids weren't with me, so I was very happy that they liked them. Fall break is wonderful, I love being home with the kids, we haven't done much, but just being together is great. Leaves are changing colors, it is beautiful, I am not ready for the snow that I know must be coming! Gil has finished the deck project for this year, it looks great! we have so much more usable space now, he has worked so hard since June, it will be good to have him to just hang out with now!

Some new pictures!

I don't have much to say, we are all well. Makana's conferences are tomorrow. Gil has worked on the deck every spare minute since June, it is finally finished, or at least finished for now. We get Daddy back! Pictures are of first day of school, time with Dean Dean, and just everyday stuff around here.

September 2010

I really can't believe that it has been almost a year since my last post, I guess that just proves that life with two is much busier than life with one child! My school life was pretty darn busy too, in addition to my normal school duties I took on the first school musical and took 8th graders to Washington DC, both in March!

The kids are doing just great, they are growing like crazy and love each other so much. I am very lucky to have such healthy happy children. At Noa's 3 year old check up he had gone from the 20th percentile in weight and height when we got him to the 50th percentile, in just one year! He is almost as tall as Makana ad she only outwieghs him by 2 pounds on most days. Mostly they get along well, but she is a bit bossy at times and he is growing up and beginning to resent that a bit. We spent a month in Arkansas with my mom, Dean Dean to the kids. We were so lucky to have so much time with her. The kids got to ride in the golf cart, check the bluebird houses, swim, meet cousins, and visit the beach in Texas. The car trips were not much fun, we drove there and then drove on down to the Texas coast with a stop in Ft. Worth. Makana was car sick much of the time and I did not discover how well a little children's Dramamine worked until the last day on the way home. I was not aware that it was safe for little kids. Noa's speech continues to improve, he is still hard to understand, but is trying more and more words, his newest is "Why?" to everything, which is a bit annoying! He is quite a tease, sometimes that is not good, he seems to think I am teasing when he is in trouble and he just smiles and laughs at me.

Both kids started public school this year, Makana is in Kindergarten and Noa is in pre-school. They are at different schools because the elementary that M attends is too full to house the pre-school program. They both ride the bus to school and then to the sitters house. Noa has the bus to himself both ways and loves his driver, Mr. Gideon. Both kids love going to school and love Leslie even more, some days they don't want to leave when I come to get them. Makana can read most anything, and just forget about spelling something in front of her if you don't want her to understand it you have to resort to pig latin. Please, no one teach her that! She writes stories about princesses and letters to her grandmothers. She is pretty amazingly smart, the other day she was writing something and telling her brother, "now this is the mall, don't forget." It was a map! As a social studies teacher that makes me proud! Gil is building a deck, has been working on it since June! Anyway, Noa loves to "help" and dad is so good about letting him do so. He bought him a Lowes apron and Noa puts that on with his sunglasses and hat and goes to work hammering with his plastic golf club even when dad is at work. Yesterday he wore his sister's pink bejewelled flip flops to top off the ensemble, cute! Of course yesterday he also swung said golf club into his sister's head. Oops, glad it is plastic. Oh and on another note, yesterday he also stuck cereal up his nose, pulled it out and then while I was telling him not to do that laughed at me and ate the cheerio! As Makana said, "I told you he was gross!" Happy Labor Day!