Next up on our list

Two certain small ones will be celebrating birthdays next month.

Brendan likes to tell me often how close January 30th is coming.  As soon as we flipped the calendar to December he exclaimed,

"The next month is January and it's my birthday month!"

No wonder our little energizer bunny was born 10 weeks early.

Lila is not sure what a birthday is yet.  If she sees a present I'm pretty sure she will exclaim,

"Door-duh! Door-duh! Door-duh!"

Which is exactly what she did with each and every present Christmas day. 

She arrived exactly when she was supposed to come.  Her due date of January 25th.

So we have two birthdays 5 days apart and one month after Christmas.  Makes for a crazy couple months!

My favorite photo

My daughter Lila and her most precious possession.  Her stuffed seal named Dee.

Merry Christmas Eve (The difference a year makes)

Christmas 2010

Christmas 2011

Whirlwind December

This month has been full of festivities, celebrations, baking, crafting, wrapping, and I cannot believe it has just flown by!  Wasn't it just Thanksgiving?  Now we are at Christmas Eve Eve.  It happens every year.  You think you have all the time in the world and it gets busy and before you know it.  Christmas!

The kids have been doing two countdowns to Christmas.  The first is an advent calendar I found at Michael's.  They open the little window each morning with the number for that day and there is a little chocolate on the inside (which we cut in half and they share) and now there is only one left to open!

The second is each night they unwrap a book for us to read until Christmas day.  They are all Christmas or winter-themed books and we only have three left of these (open at night and I have one for Christmas day as well).

We thought we were in the clear after Brendan's little stomach bug...

Not so much.  It hit my family full-force and in total 9 of us got sick.  All within a day of each other.  I thought being up all night sick was bad.  It is even worse when your one year old calls "Mommy!" at 2:30am and you go in to find her covered in her own throw up:(  Luckily Jason wasn't hit and he was able to handle her.  It left as quickly has it came (just 8 hours later) and Lila bounced back while I was left feeling like a bus ran me over.

If only we all looked this cute after a night of being sick

Brendan lost his second tooth yesterday (12-21-2011) while eating his morning Lucky Charms.  He took one bite and out it fell.

Lila has been testing her limits lately and Brendan keeps telling her that Santa won't bring her presents and he'll get them all.  She had two timeouts this morning by 8:10am.  She's fun:)

Lila also climbed/fell/jumped out of her crib again just 30 minutes ago.  We should probably move her to a toddler bed...(Brendan NEVER escaped out of his crib once.  Guess that is why he slept there until he was 3)

We just have some wrapping left to do and down time until Christmas day.  Since moving all of the family parties to earlier in the month, we spend Christmas Eve just being lazy and going to mass.  Brendan's two favorite football teams play tomorrow (Chargers vs Lions) so someone is pretty excited about that!  On Christmas we will open gifts at home and then go to my in-laws for breakfast/present opening and then home and my sister's family and mom will come over in the late afternoon.

Merry Christmas (mom)!

Sad tears at 2:30am

Brendan was SO excited for school today.  It was the day of the Christmas sing a long and his classroom party.  He was happy because I was going to come to his class and help his teacher out and we were going to decorate a gingerbread house together.  His class had saved milk cartons from their school lunches to use for their house.  We sent in frosting and candy to use for decorations.

I was excited too.  I love going to his class and seeing how he loves school and how he interacts with his friends.  Kindergarten is such a fun age because they learn and grow so much in this year.

So when it was bedtime last night and he said his prayers and then said, "Tomorrow is my party and mommy is coming to my school!" with a big grin, it was even more heartbreaking...

He came into our room at 1:30am and complained of his tummy hurting and asked if he could sleep with me.  Thankfully Jason had fallen asleep on the couch so Brendan could lay on his side of the bed.  About an hour later he woke up and started vomiting all over our comforter.  I turned the light on and ran to get him a towel while yelling "Crisis!!!" to Jason.  He ran in with Brendan and waited for him to stop and took him to the bathroom and cleaned him up.  I started a load of laundry to wash it and Brendan wanted to snuggle on the couch with me.  Oh joy:)

We settled on the couch and talked about how he would have to stay home from school.  His little eyes welled up with big tears and he just hugged me.  It was so sad.  He wanted me to ask his teacher if she would keep his stuff so he could still make his house (which I did and she promised to let him work on it tomorrow if he feels better) and I told him I would find out for him.

We spent the rest of the night/morning cuddling on the couch and he got sick a couple more times.  He woke up around 7:30 and asked to turn the Christmas tree on and had a small breakfast.  Around 9 he asked for a cold treat.  He said an "icicle" would help him feel better (a popsicle).  He has taken two naps today and has gotten a lot of rest and has not gotten sick since 5:30am so I hope he feels better for school tomorrow.  He will be even more sad if he can't see all of his friends before winter break.

Now here's to hoping Jason, Lila, and I don't get this before or during Christmas!

Christmas card 2011

Every year I always look forward to giving/receiving Christmas cards.  It is fun to get mail that is not a bill or junk!  I entered a giveaway that my friend was hosting and forgot about it.  I enter giveaways on blogs all the time and have never won anything.  So I was excited to learn that I won my friend's giveaway which was 15 personalized invitations or picture cards. 

Janelle is also a stay at home mom with two kids and her business, Pink Hippo Boutique, has all sorts of fun and whimsical party decor.  I love seeing all the new pictures she posts of her items.  She was so easy to work with and sent me a questionnaire to find out our design style for our card and she promptly sent me two examples.  They were both adorable and I loved how she incorporated my ideas to create adorable cards.  Once I had some pictures of the kids, I emailed those to her and she had another example for me in no time.  She gave me the option of changing and tweaking the card.  I found it to be perfect just the way it was.

The whole process from start to finish was only 4 days and then I had my cards two days after they shipped!  They were beautiful and in hindsight I wished I would have ordered extra so we could have sent them out to everyone on our Christmas card list.

Our 2011 Christmas Card

Empty boxes

Brendan's principal included this in last week's school newsletter.  It is a small reminder to focus on the true meaning of Christmas.

Sometime ago a man punished his five-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of expensive wrapping paper. Money was tight and he became even more upset when the child pasted the gold paper so as to decorate a box to put under the Christmas Tree.

Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift box to her father the next morning and said, “This is for you Daddy.” The father was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found the box was empty.  He spoke to her in a harsh manner. “Don’t you know young lady when you give someone a present there’s supposed to be something inside the package?”

The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and said, “Oh Daddy, it’s not empty. I blew kisses into it until it was full.” The father was crushed. He fell on his knees and put his arms around his little girl and begged her to forgive him for his unnecessary anger.