Christmas Cards

Well, here we are, well into December and we finally attempted to get a decent family picture for Christmas cards.

Sure, we have some great pics that our dear friend Dan Ramming took of us, but those were way back in May and since Landon has changed so much since then, I thought we should try for a more current picture.

So this morning, I dressed my family in coordinated-ish outfits (except for Emma because she owns NOTHING neutral), grabbed our camera, the tripod, and headed off to the beach to take some pictures of ourselves. Aaaaaaand that's when the problems started.

Problem 1: We don't live near the beach so we have to drive for over an hour with Emma asking every two minutes, "Are we there yet?" and Landon missing his morning nap because we're in the car and he has way too much fun in the car to fall asleep.

Problem 2: Once we got to the beach, our kids wanted to play in the sand and waves and not sit still for pictures. And we were using the self-timer on the camera so we had a lot of sitting still to do.
Problem 3: We didn't have anyone behind the camera to get Landon's attention so in most of the shots, he's looking/lunging at the sand.
Eventually, we gave up attempting to look like a pulled together, sane, happy family who can sit still for more than .5 seconds.

Fortunately, once we let them loose we got some great shots of them playing so even though our Christmas card pics will be a bit unpolished, we now have some great photos to hang up around the house.
Does anyone with that fancy photo editing software want to edit them for us?

It's that time again.....

click on the picture to make it bigger and better.

and if you're thinking that this would be an awesome party to come to but you're not really sure if the invitation is for you, well, it is. you should come.

Brave and Not So Much

I have a 5-year-old daughter who is very, very brave.

This afternoon she was standing on a stool in front of the window awaiting the arrival of some dear friends when the stool slipped and she flew off with her feet going high into the air and landed on her chin, splitting it open.

Yes, she cried.
Yes, she panicked when she saw blood.
Yes, she cried even harder when Grady ran and brought her some Barbie bandaids and an ice pack to fix the hole in her chin.
Yes, she cried the whole way to the hospital while holding a washcloth to her chin to stop the flow of blood.
Yes, she panicked when she heard she was going to get stitches and asked if they were going to use a sewing machine on her face.

But when those saintly ER nurses started asking her how old she is and if she's in kindergarten and if she has her driver's license yet, the tears stopped flowing and she was able to tell them all about her life. And how she fell. And ask if they had pretty bandaids.

Then the ER doc came in, and with Dylan and me holding her still, he stitched Emma up while she asked him questions about what he was doing and told him if what he was doing hurt her or not and asked how many more minutes it would be until he was all done and what color of thread he was using.

As soon as the doc finished with his 4 stitches and my very brave 5-year-old sat up, Dylan announced that he wasn't feeling so well. Immediately the doctor had him lay down on the bed and a nurse hurried in to ask if he needed some water or anything. Never mind that it wasn't his chin bleeding all over the place or getting sewn back together with ugly black whiskery thread. The nurse explained that it was very common for male patients to get woozy from the sight of blood and that what Dylan was experiencing was totally normal. Whatever. He's seen 3 live births and that was a LOT more graphic than 4 measly little stitches.

Anyway, once Dylan was feeling better, we checked out of the ER and took Emma straight to Yogurt Park, even though she hadn't had dinner yet. She even got to pick out 2 toppings for her pink frozen yogurt, since she was so brave. Dylan didn't get any.

The Happiest Place on Earth

Thank you to Grandpa David for taking all 16 of us to Disneyland!
We had SO much fun!!!!!

Emma's favorite part: Thunder Mountain Railroad and Soaring Over California

Grady's Favorite Part: SPLASH MOUNTAIN!

Landon's Favorite Part: Going on rides with his dad that his mom wouldn't even go on

Dylan's Favorite Part: Having fearless children to go on rides with him

Julie's Favorite Part: Having fearless children to go on rides with Dylan so she didn't have to!

Just another day in paradise...

Some things that happened around here today:

1. Grady woke up at 6:30 am and made everyone else's lives miserable until we let him out of bed at 7. I've felt like a train hit me ever since.

2. I took Landon in to get his ears checked, again, and he has double infections, again. So, the doc finally referred him for ear tubes surgery. Bummer about the surgery. Good about (hopefully) not having infections anymore.

3. I tried to take a nap. But, UPS, FedEx, OnTrac and Lucy's least favorite of Grandma's caretakers came. Which meant a lot of barking. Which meant me getting out of bed to come quiet her down so that she wouldn't wake up the kids. 4 times.

4. My daughter bought me flowers (with Grandma Jackie's help) because she said that her mommy smiles when her daddy brings her flowers. She wanted to make me smile :)
She also made scalloped potatoes (one of my favorites) with Grandma Jackie today and brought some home for dinner so Dylan didn't have to cook!

5. I left (an hour late) for my weekly-ish blissful evening off. Dylan left with the kids because he doesn't like to be home alone with 3 kids. Grandma Phyllis escaped and was found by a neighbor who didn't have our phone number. She tracked Dylan's sister down through a friend who had an old church directory. The neighbor brought Grandma in and waited with her until Dylan could get home with the three kids. Thankfully we had Bible study here last night so the house wasn't totally destroyed and there were some unhidden chairs for them to sit on while they waited.

6. 13 hours after this morning's wake up call, the kiddos (and grandma) are all in bed fast asleep. And now we can go watch last night's episode of "The Middle" and eat a carton of Ben & Jerry's new flavor, Mission to Marzipan which I found at Grocery Outlet for only $1.50.

Good Night.

Happy Halloween!

or as Grady would say, "Happy birthday! Trick or treating!"

I hate spiders

Grady is very, very afraid of ants. He flips out whenever he sees one. And he's always talking about how beetles are bad guys and bite people. And oh, how he panics when he finds a fly in the house (a behavior for which i completely blame my father). And don't even get him started on bees!!! After being stung twice himself and seeing his little brother get stung he. does. not. like. bees. at. all.

But he doesn't seem to mind spiders (a behavior for which i completely blame my mother). Nope, for some reason he isn't bothered by those horrid creatures with eight legs that creep around looking for helpless victims to annihilate and little people to bite.

So, for the sake of keeping our child happy, and because we're homeschooling so we have to do this kind of stuff, and because my cousin who hates spiders as much as I do invited us, we went up Mt. Diablo the other night for a tarantula hunt.

Grady was the first to spot one, and let me tell you, the shriek out of his mouth was priceless! I guess he wasn't expecting something so large!

(a male)

October is peak tarantula mating season, so these guys are crawling around all over the place.

We were even lucky (?) enough to find a female, which are very hard to find since they mostly just hide in their little holes all the time. Did you know that female tarantulas can live up to 20 years? 20 years!!!! That's just crazy.
(a female)

Tarantulas don't really bite, but rather inject poison via fangs and then dismember their victims. So I guess this means that they're totally safe to let crawl all over you. At least that's what the guides were saying. Being the responsible parents that we are, we took their word for it and allowed our children to touch and play with these arachnids to their hearts' content.

(this image is hard to see but it's a tarantula climbing up grady's pant leg).

We saw 5 or 6 tarantulas on our hike and I'm pretty sure that Emma loved them so much that she wanted to bring one home with her. Seriously, her and Elijah were fighting over who got to hold them the most. The other kids (and adults) on the hunt couldn't even get near the tarantulas until we told those two to step back.

I was certain that when we got home and the kids settled down and went to bed that they would have nightmares about being attacked by giant spiders. I was fully prepared to be awoken in the night by their terrified screams, in which case I would go into their room and comfort them by telling them to not worry because mommy won't let tarantulas into the house. I was NOT fully prepared to be awoken in the night by my husband jumping up and violently ripping off all of the covers and throwing them to the floor to get away from "the spiders, the spiders!" Unfortunately for him, I didn't have compassion on him as I would have had with my children. I just started yelling at him to go back to bed because I'm freezing. Poor Dylan.