And this look explains it all . . .

Meghan has never had problems expressing herself, she does take after her father you know! Well, we celebrated Christmas with Papa & Gigi after New Years, the big boys both got iTouchs for a combined Christmas/Birthday present. Oh what Meghan would do to have her own iTouch! We actually thought that maybe we, ooppss, I mean Santa, should get her an iTouch for Christmas instead of the DS that we got her, some days she spends more time in my iPhone than I do, not to mention the games are .99 instead of 29.99! But somehow I just could not justify getting an iTouch for a 6 year old.

So when it comes time for presents Meghan opens hers and unfortunately the only larger set of Littlest Pet Shops that Meghan doesn't own and that I told Gigi that she would just LOVE, was given to her by the little neighbor girl for her birthday. I was very surprised that she got that from a little girl that we barely know. Needless to say when she opened that gift she wasn't as excited (read: distracted) as I thought she would have been since she already had it. She was a bit disappointed but we assured her that we would take it back and she could pick out something else.

And then came the rest of the boys presents:

Looking more surprised than Trevor! ok maybe this will go over ok ~

I only wish you could hear her screaming at the top of her lungs at this point
"THEY GOT ITOUCHES"
"THEY GOT ITOUCHES"

Feeling better now that we got that screaming out of our system!

But then it went to this look, followed by her socking Trevor in the arm!

It was funny and sad at the same time. Had she been able to open up her gift and play with it like it should have happened I don't think that her reactions would have been so severe! I did feel bad for her, oh what that child would do for her very own iTouch, if she is not playing with my phone she is begging Trevor to play on his Touch . . . I keep reminding her to get her DS, but apparently it's not a cool as the Touch!

Progress Report

Trevor brought home his progress report yesterday . . . how is it that a child can have A's in every subject and a C in PE you ask? Well, let me tell you about how the PE teacher grades.

I thought it was odd a few months ago when the first progress report came home, Trev had all A's and a B in PE, I questioned him as to why he had a B in PE? Well, unlike when I was in PE they have to do 2 additional assignments each trimester, so the teacher will not give any student an A on a progress report because the 2 assignments have not been completed. They have not even been assigned! How can your grade be penalized for an assignment that has not been assigned? Sounded a bit off to me but Trevor guaranteed that by the time report cards came out he would have an A in PE, and he did.

Then comes the 2nd trimester, the 1st assignment was assigned on a Friday and was due the next Friday before Thanksgiving break, this was the week Trevor had the stomach flu, so being the good mom that I am I kept him home from school as to not send him to school throwing up and spreading his germs. He had the assignment completed on Tuesday but hadn't turned it in since it wasn't due until Friday. Well, he got sick on Wednesday and stayed home the rest of the week. Unfortunately, he didn't give it to me to take to school with one other project to turn in and when he tried to turn it in after the Thanksgiving break, the teacher said he could not turn in late assignments.

So that is why he has a C, he has "missing assignments", and the 2nd assignment of the trimester has not been assigned yet. I was going to e-mail the teacher and have a little rant, I won't be happy if this prevents him from having straight A's when it is report card time. But it looks like he can make up the "assignment" by running extra laps everyday.

I'm still annoyed!

Welcome 2010

Wow! 2010 ~ wasn't it just Y2K? Seriously how has it already been 10 years?

We celebrated New Years Eve quietly at home. I was sick on Wednesday and still not feeling great on Thrusday so we had to opt out of our New Years plans and stay home. We watched some movies and barely stayed awake till midnight!


I woke up today feeling great! Yipee!!! I should, I didn't do anything for 2 days. But I made up for lost time today, got all of the laundry done AND folded, finished getting ALL of my coupons organized and into my binder (started that little project while watching movies last night) there are tons of coupons coming on Sunday so I wanted to get what I had cleaned up, made grocery list and went grocery shopping, so much easier to do with organized coupons! Cleaned out the kitchen cupboards, yes, almost all of them, amazing what happens to them when you don't pay attention to what the other people in your house are doing to them for a month or two, did some miscellaneous picking up and now I'm tired. It was nice to get the little stuff done around here without feeling guilty that I should be doing something else, such a great feeling, my head feels so clear and I love that. I should probably take advantage of that before I have to go back to work on Monday, blech . . .

We are looking forward to our 2nd Christmas with Papa and Gigi this weekend, then I will get Christmas put away, I figured we couldn't have Christmas without a Christmas tree, right? So while it's been nice to have an excuse to keep Christmas up, next week I will be wishing I had taken it down already!

Deciding on my word for 2010, I never did settle on one for 2009, but I've got a couple in mind so I just need to decide which it will be. I also decided to continue with Project 365 - even though I got behind in my layouts and sometimes a little bit in my picture taking, I've got a picture to represent all 365 days of 2009 and that feels like a huge accomplishment. Unfortunately I feel like I'm starting out behind since I need to finish up the 2009 layouts, I will get it done.

Here is my first picture of 2010, Meghan put her baby to bed tonight before she went to bed, was very cute, she held her and patted her back and then laid her down and covered her up, such a good little mommy (who was not to amused that I was taking this picture). She did take good care of me when I was sick, she is a good little mommy!!!


Here is to an awesome 2010, I can't wait to see how it unfolds!

I bet there's an App for that . . .

My iPhone - $199.99
Monthly Data Fee - $30.00
Santa Tracker App - $0.99
A 6 year old texting Santa and Santa texting her back - Priceless


Have I mentioned lately how much I love my iPhone?

Merry Christmas (and an attempt at a little recap of our month!)

Wow! I can't believe that Christmas has already come and gone, time seems to go so fast, I had such a great start on the Christmas shopping yet I still went out on Christmas Eve for just "one more thing", why is that? December is always such a busy month, I thought I was more prepared this year, but I don't feel that I was, I was doing my baking and peanut butter ball dipping Christmas Eve morning . . . but at least the baked goods were fresh, right? I guess all in all you get done what you get done and it all works out in the end, but next year, I will have a little better plan!!!!

December started out with with cooking painting on Saturday with our friends the Howes, we have been doing this since Trevor was a baby, now the boys will paint a cookie or two to eat and that's about it, the girls on the other hand, love love love cookie painting!

Cookie in one hand, paint brush in the other!

This is what I usually get from Trev when I try and take his picture!

Sunday was my birthday, I was recovering from a cold the week before and had stayed up until after 2:00 am trying to get the house finally decorated the night before, so we skipped out on church and headed straight to bagels and coffee! Spent the afternoon finishing up decorating the tree with Meghan, she had been waiting so patiently all week to decorate the tree!

Mom fixed me an awesome Mexican dinner and fixed one of my favorite cakes, it was a great day!

The next weekend started out just as busy, Meghan, Mom and I went to the hospital for the "Gingerbread Run". Meghan had a great time doing crafts and seeing Santa!


My birthday is quickly followed by Hayden's and Meghan's birthdays, on the 16th and 17th. We celebrated Hayden on Saturday after we went to the Gingerbread Run. We met them in Sacramento and had dinner at this very yummy Italian place called Hot Italian, it was the best pizza I've had since I was in Italy. After that it was back to his house for cake and presents. I can't believe that Hayden is officially a teenager, that means Trevor is not far behind! yikes . . .

Meghan was cracking up her Uncle here, I believe this was the conversation about boyfriends and kissing boys!

The next week brought Meghan's 6th birthday!!! She was so excited to turn 6. We made cookies to take to school, she wanted the kind that you can make shapes out of and put frosting on. Is she my kid or what, cut out cookies are my most favorite cookie ever!


Mimi and Grampie came over to celebrate on her birthday and have cake with us, I think she had a great day!


Then on Saturday was Meghan's party with her friends, I'm always pulling my hair out trying to figure out what to do for these winter babies birthday parties. She kept saying that she wanted a Littlest Pet Shops party. Not knowing exactly what she meant by that and also knowing that you can not readily get a lot of supplies for this kind of party, I thought we'd give it a try anyway. I think it turned out great and she had a great time with her friends. They did some crafts, some coloring, they played with all of Meghan's LPS stuff and then all the kids got to "adopt" a LPS of their own to take home.


Well, I think that wraps most of the major things we celebrated this month, still editing a few Christmas pictures to post in the next few days. Only 2 days of work next week and then 5 days off, I can't wait!!!

Pictures

Today we went out for our 2nd annual photo shoot with the Tidwells. I'm pretty happy with the results.









And yesterday we had our annual Thanksgiving Day family photo! This one was a little more difficult because there are so many if us, and we could not go outside because of the tornado like winds. But on the plus side this year I have a remote for the camera, which means that Anth didn't have to run up and down the ladder 25 times trying to get the perfect picture!


All in all a productive photo weekend!

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from my iPhone

Testing

So, I'm such a bad blogger! I'm hoping that having this little app on my iPhone will help me be a better blogger! No promises, but we'll see! Now if I can figure out how to get a picture in here too!



Ok, looks simple enough! This is from our baking day, I mixed up 20 batches of peanut butter balls!!!! Yummmmy!!!!

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Fall Fun

I drug the kids, well, Trevor, Meghan still willingly goes, and Mimi to the Pumpkin Patch on Saturday. I have a feeling that this will be the last year I get Trevor to go with us, he was not to thrilled with me this year! But it's a tradition and I want my fall pumpkin patch pictures! I guess I'm going to have to find a different way to get my fall photos! Meghan as usual loved the animals and the barn show. She was so anxious to get her pumpkin that she was around the corner and on the trailer before we got there. We got there early which was great for getting some pictures because I didn't have people in the background or walking in front of me!

You'll never guess what I found in the right ear . . .

Sunday night as I'm cleaning Meghan's ear I flip her right ear lobe up to see how the back is looking, and I see something shiny . . . I should not see anything shiny, blood and scabs are NOT shiny. According to the x-ray there was not a back in the right ear. Well, the x-ray was incorrect, there was indeed a back in the right ear. I was so not happy about this, I didn't want to take another trip to see Dr. Jennifer and I wasn't sure Dr. Khonsari and his big hands would be the best option either, so, that left Daryl and I. I was dreading it all day Monday, so I got home from work and had her soak in the bath tub to get it all cleaned warm and opened up, all to add ice to it to numb it. The easy part was she let me put the earring in the left ear, which went in nice and easy. So I started in on the right, couldn't really get a good hold of it from the back, then I tried to push it through using the earring, that didn't work either, the earring went all the way through. Daryl came to help, he got the ear turned enough that a little more of the back was showing, enough that I could use the earring and pull it out. whew, thank goodness . . . by Wednesday evening I got the right earring back in!!!! Finally I think this whole mess is DONE!!! She is now back to 2 earrings in her ears and we are cleaning and twisting twice daily.


On Wednesday we went to the dentist, it was long overdue for both of them, Meghan has no cavities and Trev has 2 surface ones, looks like he was lucky enough to get my "deep grooved" teeth, darn. He will have them filled next week and some sealants put on to help prevent future ones.


Today we did a little bit of this ~


Isn't quite riding on her own yet, but a little more practice and she will be gone!

Welcome Fall

I love the fall . . . I love the colors, I love the coolness, and I can't believe that it's already officially Fall! Something happened to September, not sure what, but it somehow got away much to fast. I'm sure most of it is figuring out our new schedule, which for the most part seems to be working ok.

The kidos are on Fall Break last week and next week, I'm taking a few days off so Meghan doesn't have to go to her old pre-school everyday! Trev ended up going up to Oregon with Mimi & Grampie at the very last minute last week Monday, so it's been a very quiet week around here, we all really miss him. They are on their way home now, should be hitting Redding anytime now, can't wait to give him hugs (which he will just love I'm sure), since they took him at the last minute I was already at work on Monday so I didn't get to hug him goodbye!

We also got the earring problem solved, thank goodness for great friends who are physicians! I really did not want to have Meghan have to have surgery to remove the earrings, but I was not having any luck getting them to budge, so I called Jenn to get her opinion and she agreed it was crazy to be put under for that. So on Friday Meg and I headed up to Rocklin and Jennifer got them out. Not without a little bit of a struggle, even though we gave Meg a little medication to "relax" her. Seems that most medications do not react as they should with her, and while she didn't go to sleep or even relax as we had hoped, it was almost as if she was agitated, and suddenly didn't want anything to do with getting those darn things out. Surprisingly the one with the back stuck inside came out much easier than the one that was just the post. Hard to tell from the picture but the one on the right, which was in the right ear, is very bent, not sure how that happened, but figure it might be why it was so hard to get out.

Once they were out Meghan was fine, we went and picked up Jennifer's daughter Tyler, her and Meg are only 4 months apart, but have never really gotten to play together. It was so fun watching them, they are 2 peas in a pod, 2 little giggle boxes, I'm now realizing what I must have put my parents through! They had a ball playing with the Littlest Pets Shops and with Tylers baby dolls, they even packed them up along with a diaper bag and brought them to dinner. It was so cute, I even got a picture of it, but someone must have deleted it while taking her self portraits with my iPhone. Should have taken more than one shot.

I also did a terrible job at my daily photos in September, so with a new month I'm motivated to get back on track. I have about 12 weeks of layouts to do, starting on those today and hope to finish them up this week. I have Tuesday and Wednesday off this week, so hopefully I can get some things checked off of the "to-do" list. I can't believe that the holidays are right around the corner, I really want to stay ahead of the game so that I can enjoy the crazy month of December and not be to crazy. All right, off to get a layout done before dinner!