UGH! I am officially my MOTHER!

I made a Thanksgiving FEAST today... for all 5 of us! That's right, just me, Dustin, Sierra, Ruby and Karis! The others that were 'going to stop by' never did...

 

This is not the first time this has happened! Dustin invites Airmen from his work every year, and more often than not, they don't show!  What is up with people saying they'll come for dinner, and then no one shows?!?!?  I remember in Germany one year, Dustin told me that about 20 people were going to be here for dinner... so I cooked, and cooked, and cooked! And you know what... 1 whole person showed up!!!! I ended up taking tons of food to the guards at the gate!

 

So I am officially my mother, cooking for the Army (or Air Force) that never shows up.

 

Here are the AFTER pics - and we haven't even cut into the 4 pies and cookie cake I made!

 

Elf Yourself!!!

Its that time again this year!!! And Elf Yourself now can let you add up to 5 elves!! Enjoy the Disco Wills!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

And for those of you who like your Christmases more country:

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Best $4 I have ever spent!!!

Well... maybe not ever - but it certainly gave me a few hours of peace and quiet! We have been learning about how things change (water to ice back to water, crayons and pencils when used cannot change back, etc) Here are the girls crayons that they documented the change in over the last few weeks:

Brand new crayons - this is not the whole pack, just a few of the main colors.

A week later, oops! Karis got ahold of the crayons and she loves to break them! I don't know if she does it on purpose or if she just presses way to hard.

So that was the experiment on 'change' that we did. However, I decided to take it one step further! The girls and I got up and drove to Joann's in -20 degree weather the other day!!! LOL! Seriously, I think my boogers froze when I had to get gas! Anyway... 40 minutes later we were in Joann's searching for candy molds.

When we got home, I had the girls round up all their broken crayons (and a few unbroken ones that we needed). They spent the next 45 minutes peeling the paper off and breaking into little pieces. This is what we ended up with.

I put the muffin tin in a 350 degree oven for about 6-7 minutes, until the crayons were melted. Then I carefully picked up the paper cups and poured them into the candy molds. I have read online that you can also use paper cups (thicker than cupcake holders) in the microwave for 4-5 minutes. I think next time I'll do that!

About 30 minutes later they were cooled! They just popped out of the molds like ice cubes. And this is what kept my girls busy for the next 2 hours!!!!! Best $4 I've spent in a long time!!!

Volcano Eruption and Santa Clause's House

The girls have been learning about rocks and volcanoes these last few weeks.  Yesterday we made a clay volcano around a plastic cup and then this morning we painted and 'erupted' it.  The girls were really excited to explode their volcano!  Um... yeah... it was more like a gradual overflow... I followed the directions but it didn't quite work.  Oh well, they still had fun.

 

 

And a few weekends back we went to the North Pole to visit Santa and Mrs. Clause. The girls were excited... Karis, not so much. She didn't want to sit on his lap, but she had no problem telling him that she wanted a Bolt Puppy!  Here are the pics.

 

Karis was like, NO NO NO!!! Sierra was trying to get her to go towards Santa, and we said, don't push her, its fine! LOL!

 

Here we got Karis to sit on the steps next to her sisters.

 

But Sierra and Ruby wanted on his lap... so we gradually put them up there...

 

And we finally got Karis to stand next to Sissy and hold her hand, as long as Mrs. Clause sat back and Karis is looking to make sure she's not going to touch or grab her! LOL!

 

And Karis still says 'I wanna go to Ho Ho's House!'  every time we pass it on the freeway. Yeah right!

Girl Parts?

We went for our ultrasound today. Left without really knowing the sex of the baby. The umbilical cord was right in between the legs, and even with me getting up, walking around, going to the bathroom, turning on my side... Baby #4 would not cooperate. The technician stated that the baby was really being difficult. To which I replied 'runs in the family!' LOL!

So here is our baby! Here is the profile pic:

I'm going to attempt to explain this to you all who don't know what you are looking at - lol. The baby is laying on her left side, facing the 'camera.' On the left you can see her legs crossed at the ankles (and her little toes are those tiny dots). If you look REALLY closely, you can see a dark stripe between the legs and into her belly - that would be the umbilical cord (its more prominent in the actual pic):

And this is what the ultrasound tech is basing her semi-prediction of 'It may be a girl - but I can't say for sure' on:

Its hard to explain... but in that circle she thinks are 'swollen lips.' However, like I said earlier, the umbilical cord is wrapped between the baby's legs. Ultrasound is kinda like an x-ray though, so when she got it to go 'through' the umbilical cord, she could have very well made it go through any parts. In another version of this pic she said she thought she saw 'boy parts' but wasn't sure if it was the umbilical cord or not.

Her final prediction was she couldn't really say for sure, 'but you might want to plan for a girl since I can't find any parts.'

So we are planning on another baby girl and told the girls they are getting another little sister! Now we just have to come up with a name - that's the hardest part for us!

Ugly Babies

So like I said, I was playing with the baby maker... my goodness, I couldn't get a cute baby to save my life!!! Take a look at these, and then pray that Baby #4 is as cute as his/her three older sisters!

This one isn't too bad... but none of our babies have had blonde hair yet, so we will see...

Again... not THAT bad, this one kinda looks like it could be related to Dustin

OH NO!!! Oh, don't even get me started on this one - what is wrong with this child!?!

Awww... this one is kinda cute, but maybe my problem is these all look like boys!

LOL! This looks like an evil baby! What's up with the eyebrow???

UM... I think if I have a baby looking like this I'm in trouble!!! LOL!

Another thing I think is wrong with these (besides the fact that they are all BOYS!) is they all have brown/black eyes! Once again, I have to have a blue eyed baby or I'm in trouble - lol! Well, at least we might find out the sex on Thursday. I have my ultrasound Thur afternoon - so pray that Dustin and the girls get that boy they've been praying for!

The internet is a cesspool!

Wow - so even the littlest things suck me in! I have a huge TO DO list today. Vote, grocery shopping, library book, not to mention homeschooling! So I get up early today (hey, 8:30 is early for me!) and feed the girls. Sit down at the computer desk to plan my menu for the next week and a half to make a grocery list. Trying to think up of dinners... so I get on my favorite recipe site All Recipes. Find a yummy recipe for chicken noodle soup. Oooh, wait, what's that???

On the sidebar, oh, its an advertisement for Volkswagon... wait, its a baby maker... CLICK!

So then I spend the next 40 minutes searching for pics of me and Dustin (no hair, straight on, no shadows, no GLASSES!) to upload and 'make our baby.' So what do you think? I changed the pictures a couple of times, and 'remade the baby' to get different babies. Believe or not, this one is the cutest they came up with!!! WHAT!! My children are WAY cuter than that! LOL!

So yeah... the internet is a cesspool! Off to start my TO DO list an hour late!!!

OH, and VOTE today!!!

Halloween and... Snow?

Okay, I know that those two things are not usually in the same sentence in most parts of the world.  But here, they definitely are!!!  There is probably a good foot and a half of snow outside so I was searching online for WARM Halloween costumes!  Sierra wanted to be a fairy princess. I told her fine, but you have to wear thermal underwear and sweat pants underneath your costume.  Wouldn't you know, she turned up her nose, so we looked for sweatsuit type costumes.

 

Here are the girls costumes this year! They are too cute and definitely will be warm! We are only planning on trick or treating a few blocks and then heading over to the chapel for their Fall Harvest Party - inside!

 

Karis wanted to be a Care Bear - so all her sisters wanted to be Care Bears too. No problem, right? WRONG! They only make Care Bear costumes up to 3T - unless you want the 'Sexy Adult Care Bear'  Think Playboy bunny with a Care Bear on it! Um, no, not for my 5 year old!!  So I just got her this cute little lady bug!

 

Ruby wanted to be a bunny. Um, yeah, what is with Halloween costume makers!!! I type in Bunny costume on ebay and a huge list of PLAYBOY bunnies pop up!!! AGGGHHHH!!!  So I added '5T' hoping to get more 'kid friendly' costumes.  There were a bunch, this one was pink, so of course she loved it!

 

 

And Sierra has really been into Monkeys lately.  She wanted Monkey sheets and pillows for her new bed, she wants Monkey shirts she sees, anything Monkey she loves.  So this is Sierra:

 

And of course they'll be wearing thermal underwear and clothes underneath!!! Don't worry, they won't be too hot!

 

Because this is what our DRIVEWAY looked like last night before Dustin shoveled it! Yep, that would be about 1.5 feet of snow!

The girls were all bundled up - and Karis was so funny. She reminded me of Ralphy's brother on A Christmas Story.  She fell down and just layed there yelling because she couldn't get back up! LOL!

 

And this is them all bundled up before they went outside. They were complaining they were hot!! LOL! I told them JUST WAIT until you get outside (it was 10 degrees).  So Karis lasted all of about 10 min outside, Ruby came in about 5 minutes after Karis and Sierra actually stayed out there until Daddy was done shoveling the driveway.

Taking a Break

Well, I didn't get anything house wise done today.  And I'm sure the Grandma's are tired of seeing pictures of the house... its been awhile since I posted pics of the girls.  Its been snowing a little bit the last few days, leaving an inch or so behind. The last week we've gotten about 5 inches.  And today its been a light snow pretty much all day long... supposed to get 3 inches by tonight.  So we went outside to play in the snow (the girls were driving me nuts!!)  We'll see how fast they get tired of the snow! LOL! 

The dreaded toy room

So we got the bookcases together and the books on it. I'm going to put the scrapbooks on the empty shelves as soon as I dig them out of a box in my scraproom.

And next - I did it! I went downstairs and after much flipping out (because I hadn't been down there in a few days and you seriously could not see the floor because they had dumped every toy, crayon, bead, etc) - I started sorting through the mess... and I sorted, and sorted, and sorted some more.

The girls had taken every Little People set they own out of the box, so I made them find all the pieces (except two... but they've gotta be around somewhere!) and put them back in the respective boxes and they got to choose two to keep out. Then I put the shelves together, sorted out the toy drawers, put the books on the bookshelf, barbie stuff in the barbie house, etc...

And three hours later, this is what it looks like

Now... I guess I'm going to have to start going through the boxes in my scraproom!

Day... whatever!

AGGGGHHHH!!!! I'm so tired of the mess!!!! It seems like I get one room done, and the girls have trashed another, so then I straighten up that one, and then we fill it up with stuff again!

We spent about $400 in Fairbanks yesterday on bookshelves, computer chairs, a carpet for the playroom, and shelving for the girls closets. Which means instead of spending the weekend putting our stuff away, we spent it putting together the storage so we can put our stuff on it. Needless to say, we haven't been able to clean because we've made a bigger mess putting the stuff up! ACK!

And I'm tired, and my back hurts, and I'm tired... so we got the shelves up in the closets (but I'm not taking pictures because we've already put junk on the shelves!) We got both the computer chairs put together (one for the scraproom) and one of the bookshelves... Dustin is putting the other one together as I blog... hehehehe!

And look what my lovely husband did today as I was totally unmotivated to do anything but cook! LOL! Seriously, we had breakfast and lunch and I did the dishes, but I didn't want to leave the kitchen today!

Here is our master bedroom. Now, I know the before picture doesn't really look that bad, but TRUST ME!! Over the last few days it was a 'catch all' room and you couldn't see the floor, much less get into the closet. I crawled over clothes and linens to get to bed and have been wearing jamas out of my dresser as I couldn't get to my closet to find real clothes!

And now...

My closet... seriously, you couldn't even get in here before! And the clothes were on the floor in the bedroom, not hung all nice. The only thing I had to listen to from my husband was "You have way too many clothes, and look at all these shoes!!! You cannot possibly need this many shoes!! Why don't we get rid of some!" LOL! You'd think he'd learn after how many moves... and I've actually downsized my clothes and shoes!

And the master bath - which has been done since we got in the house, but this is what it looks like :)