Merry Christmas Eve!

Winter Break

The kids are on winter break and so far it's been a lot of fun to have the girls around every day! We've mostly just been relaxing and being together. Here's a few pictures of what we've been up to:

Sophie loves helping with Wesley.

Nora dressed up like this and told me she was Bugs Bunny and kept saying "What's up Doc?"

Nora loves holding Wesley, too.

Oops! I was downstairs with the other 3 kids and came up to see Miles doing this. I'm pretty sure the pitcher wasn't that full...

Miles likes little brother and always says "Weswee, Wesser, We-es!" in a cute baby-talk voice.

He's just so darn cute!

Brian surprised us all and stayed home ALL day on Saturday! It was so fun and the kids couldn't get enough of him.

I was cleaning up the kitchen table and found this picture that Nora did for Miles. She is at such a fun stage in her reading/writing. If you can't read it it says this:

Fo (from) Nora
To Miles
LINEMMOCWEN (Lightning McQueen)

Blessed.

Brian blessed Wesley this month. We were going to do it last month but the kids were sick. My mom made his little outfit and luckily it still fit since the boy is growing like a weed! Miles ran in to a pew at church right before the blessing and had a bruise on his forehead for a few days. Nora was throwing a fit because she hadn't got to hold him yet so I missed part of it. But it was a special day nevertheless. So blessed to have him in our family. Babies bring such a sweet spirit with them into this world and it's pure joy to watch them and feel their closeness to our Heavenly Father. I never tire of having a baby around (especially one as sweet as this one.)

Poor baby

Sometimes life with three older siblings can be tough! Wesley fell asleep in the kitchen in the midst of one of those crazy afternoons full of teasing, laughing, crying and bouncing -off- the-walls kind of energy. I love how he fell asleep with his little hand on his face. He must have been thinking, "What did I get myself into?"

Mwahahaha!!!

As I was cleaning up some papers today I found a note Sophie wrote to her teacher.

Dear Mrs. ______,
I think you are a ausome No faboulos teacher!


P.S. I know how you feel when you get anoyd.

Your ausome student,
Sophie

It's had me laughing all afternoon.

Snow and other fun stuff...

We got our first snowfall this week and it is finally feeling like winter around here. Nora was in heaven and couldn't get out in it fast enough. She ran out the door yelling, "This is paradise!" and immediately started licking the snow off the hood of the van and then made a snow angel in the little bit of snow we had. She loooves playing in the snow!

And instead of bundling Miles and Wesley up to go outside to play for the 10 minutes they would last - I bring the snow to him! We are both happy this way - and much warmer. The rule I go by when it comes to letting my kids do things like this is: If they play with it longer than it takes to clean it up then it's totally worth it! Miles played with this for about 25 minutes and it took me about one minute to wipe up the water when he was done. Awesome. Not so awesome would be when he "plays" with our board games for about 5 minutes and dumps all the pieces and cards all over the place - and it takes me about 30 minutes to gather and organize them back together again. So not worth it.

And some baby love. Wesley is growing so big and is already fitting nicely into 3-6 month clothes. At his two month check up he weighed in at 12 pounds 12 ounces. He's in the 70 percentile for weight, 90th for height and 50th for head. And we still can't get enough of him he's the sweetest thing.

Here is our living room with our tree... Wesley loves being right there on the couch. Can't see him good enough?

Here's a closer look. So cute. Don't worry, I make sure he doesn't smother himself.

One reason I love parenting...

Last night Sophie and Nora were playing/pestering each other and Sophie kept pretending to kick Nora. I had asked her a few times to stop and she kept doing it. I finally said, "Sophie! Why are you disobeying me?" She stopped what she was doing and with her hands clasped together and her head hanging she said, "Ummmm, temptation got the best of me."