Merry Christmas

 

What?

 



 

I'm not sure about this....

 

 

 

 

I decline to comment...Humph.

 

 

I think I'll snuggle my alpaca teddy bear instead, thank you very much!

 

 

 

Mighty Mouse perhaps did not appreciate the beauty of this holiday season as much as the rest of us, but he certainly has been a beautiful addition to our season. Being now the mommy of a baby boy has turned me into a puddle everytime I think about what we are really celebrating tonight - Jesus being born into our world as a baby....to die as a young man on a cross....so that we may not perish.  Yikes. In answer to the song's lyrics, "Mary, did you know?", I will say that I hope she did not.  There has been another song playing on our Christian station talking about Jesus' "tiny heart whose blood will save us", and it just undoes me everytime I hear it. Usually I have a tiny little boy's heart nestled close to mine at the time, and I cannot imagine.

 

Last week at Mike's work Christmas party, they showed a video. It was great. A really ridiculous man was trying to get totally "into" his role as Joseph in the live nativity. It was hilarious. He made a complete fool out of himself and was just generally goofy. At the end, though, just as he was going to go out to fulfill his "role", he glanced at his wife and young son and said, "I couldn't do it."  His confused wife asked him what he was talking about, thinking that surely he could "do" the part of Joseph after "practicing" for weeks! He stated again, "I couldn't do it" but then added, "I couldn't give up my son. I couldn't do it. The world would just be out of luck."

 

For sure.

 

The girls before Christmas Eve service.

 

 

We had help today in the form of a really nice lady from church who volunteered to go to the service with me and help out. With windchills far below zero, there's no way I could have taken these kiddos out, especially Mighty Mouse, without her along. I dropped them all at the door and parked; she carried my purse. Wow. I could hardly believe she volunteered to be with us; it was definitely an early Christmas present!

 

I could really get spoiled. For Miss Mouse's Christmas program day, I called some friends who rode with us and allowed me to drop them at the door with the kiddos, too.  Maybe doing everything by myself was a silly idea in the first place because this is really great.....

 

 

Mighty Mouse is getting a Christmas tooth. He enjoyed some much-needed respite from his teething for the first 30 minutes of the service.

 

Our sweet baby and our sweet not-so-babies.

 



 

She's a squirrel.

 



O Christmas Tree

An almost-sleeping Mighty Mouse by the Christmas tree.....It's so delicious, I can hardly go to bed tonight for staring at his picture (this is regardless of the fact that with his crib in our room I can stare at the real him all night!).

 



 

There's just something about babies and Christmas trees and lights all amidst the darkness of this time of year.

 

Miss Mouse wanted photo after photo in front of the tree. She has declared it the "most beautiful tree ever" but was sure to add that we "won't tell anyone ours is the most beautiful if we go to their house and their tree is nice, too". Yep, our six foot, artificial tree has really impressed this sweet mouse!

 

She's taken several pictures of the tree on her camera, as well....

 

 

And then there was Sunny.  Her Daddy had several captions for these pictures, but none of the captions were printable on my blog.  Suffice it to say, this is Sunny trying really, really hard not to touch the ornaments. Or the lights. Or the tree.

 

This is Sunny trying so hard because she knows she could tip it over on "Brother"....She told me tonight she does not like our "house fancy". Mike and I think we have a solution to be implemented in the morning. Hopefully it will help everyone in the house be able to succeed and enjoy this Christmas season - Mighty Mouse to not have a tree fall on him; Miss Mouse to have a Christmas tree; and Sunny to not feel like a continual failure because, really, who wants THAT feeling to be what she associates with the Christmas season!  We want her to gaze lovingly at pictures of her babies in front of a tree someday....without going into a post-traumatic episode of some sort!

 

I'll end with a disclaimer that the pictures of Mighty Mouse are mighty nice in color, but he was reclining on a very pink blanket which his Daddy thought should perhaps be eliminated from the photo. Not being talented enough for that, I chose the b&w option! "Real baby boys lay on pink", right? Or something like that!

Our Little John Deere Bison Elf

Our nephew/cousin Matthias got to visit last week. There will be a copious amount of pictures including him in the next couple of days, but since Mighty Mouse has decided to make up for his comfortable tummy last Thurs-Sun by having an upset one for the past two days, I'm not sure when I'll get around to another post. I wanted to get these up for my sister without too much procrastination, though!

 

I'm getting rid of as many hats as possible. If you want one, let me know, and I'll let you know what colors/sizes/styles I have! As you can see, Matthias is modeling a Christmas elf-style hat. He was pretty okay with it!

 

In the above picture, he is doing what my sister calls "looking down his nose at you". It's really very funny.

 



I see my Grandpa Don and my Great Auntie Elsie in him in these two pictures. Otherwise I always and only see my brother-in-law! Well, I do think Matthias has my sister's pretty mouth, but I told him (Matthias) that I won't keep telling him, "You have such a pretty mouth!" for too much longer!

 



 

More elf hat. I think he's getting a little tired of it in the picture below....

 



Since he was tired of the elf hat, I grabbed the Bison hat. My Mom pointed out that it is also a John Deere hat, making it more acceptable and appropo for a child of my sister. Ahem. Cough. Cough.

 



It would be more fun to see my nephew in a Bison hat if my sister had actually enjoyed her time at the other school. Still. I'll do what I can to create another future Bison.

 



Grandpa Bob got this smile, I believe.

 



Pretty sure that I earned this stare. He was done and tired, but he's such a sweetie! He and Mighty Mouse are going to be such good friends! And the girls just absolutely love on both of them like crazy. Both girl Mice listed Matthias as one of the best parts of their weekend, which was really fun. He has taken a lot of "their" time with Auntie Laura away from them, but what he's given them is going to be beyond measure. It's so fun that they already can sense that.

 

Speaking of the weekend, we had a marvelous one in which we welcomed little Mighty Mouse into the family of God and celebrated with both of our families. Because I got just a little stretched thin on Sunday, none of the baptism pictures are on my camera, except some nice ones of the amazing (A.M.A.Z.I.N.G!) cake that my sister-in-law created (she didn't "bake" this thing - she CREATED it!). We were so thankful for great travelling weather so that all of Mighty Mouse's awesome and faithful sponsors (his Auntie Stephi, Auntie Laura, and Uncle Jon) could make it as well as all of his grandparents! The girls and I even got to swim with both aunties and one grandma (Mighty Mouse's only water usage was his baptism).

Bond

Bond. James. Bond.

 

I'm told this is how most little boys feel about wearing suits.  In my defense, I did leave the adorable (and comfy-looking!) little coat off. This time.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

After asking him repeatedly, "who's my little munchkin-bunny?" I got this hint of a smile. He is such a tolerant and easy-going little guy, but he does not care to smile at me with a camera in front of my face.

Smiles for which I am thankful

Happy Halloween!

Punctuation and Astronauts

 

There's an awful lot of "big girl" going on in our house these days.

 

Can you see the camo-boots in this picture? Yep, a trendy headband (thank you, Auntie Stephi!), a skirt, a sparkly shirt, a pink kickball....and camo boots. That's our Miss Mouse, and we love it!

 



 

We had one great kickball game going that afternoon. Mighty Mouse napped for hours in his crib, so the girls and I hung out in the front yard, enjoying what might have been one of the last sunny, fall days.

We've been a little preoccupied this year with a certain smallest Mouse to get our leaves raked. The elder Mice haven't minded a bit!

 



I love these pictures because I think Miss Mouse looks like such a nerd in them!!! Hopefully anyone reading this knows me well enough to know that's a compliment! The little girl descends from two of the biggest nerds she'll ever know, so she's fitting in just fine with her sparkles and camo. If she wasn't so incredibly sensitive, I think we could already have a Star Wars geek on our hands. As it is, I think we'll wait on that awhile....VeggieTales still isn't setting very well with her.

 



Notice the boots? Notice the squint of pure autumn joy on her face? I love it!

 



 

I'm not sure there are words for these!

 

 

She raked up her own pile since her parents weren't going to be doing it.

 

 

It's been so fun having a kindergartener around! We had a great summer. It wasn't one without challenges and bumps, but we figured a lot of things out and were clicking along pretty smoothly by the mid-summer point.  It was good to get a break (a "break"!) when Mighty Mouse arrived; I think we were all ready for some time off, even though we don't spend an entire 6-7 hour period sitting at the table everyday or anything.  Three weeks, though, was enough, and we were back at it. It was as good to get back into kindergarten again as it was to take a break. It's trickier, for sure, with a newborn around, so we're dealing with other bumps and challenges. We'll get through them, though, too; I keep telling myself there will be a time again when we wake up one day and realize we're "clicking along" again instead of chugging and huffing and puffing along! It's been especially fun getting to go on two field trips lately through the local homeschool group that we [finally] joined. The first was to a nature center about an hour away and took my mom's assistance while she was here for me to get a kindergartener, a preschooler, and a two-week old out there. We were "only" fifteen minutes late! Miss Mouse didn't miss much, and she was so, SO proud! The next field trip was last week, and I did it on my own with all three. We visited a fire station. It definitely freaked Sunny out leading to some wild behavior later (Miss Mouse would have thrown an inexplicable 45-minute fit; Sunny gets wild), but it was totally worth it. The girls have been really excited about fire fighters and fire stations ever since. It was great for them to get to see a fireman in his full gear, and it was ridiculously fun for ALL of us to see them slide down the fire pole! The only thing that could have been better would have been to get to try to slide myself.....but, of course, that's not allowed.

 

One fun thing this fall has been seeing how Miss Mouse is stretching her vocabulary. It's always been decent, but she's getting so much more "adult". My Mom took her to pick up Applebee's carside-to-go one night, and they drove by a chiropractor's office where Mike and I have both gone from time to time. Miss Mouse pointed it out to my mom and said, "That's where Mommy went to get punctuation!"  My Mom is so good with things like this! She covered her mouth until she could stop laughing and then gently said to Miss Mouse, "Oh! I think my chiropractor calls it accupuncture; do you think that's the same thing your mom had?" Of course, Miss Mouse said, "Yes! THAT'S what it was called!".

 

The day we were playing kickball outside, Sunny decided to start stealing the kickball and running under our neighbors' bush with it. The girls were having quite a high time being silly. Suddenly, Miss Mouse says to her sister, "You are like an astronaut!" I started laughing (because I'm not quite as quick as my mom!) and asked her what she meant. She said it again. So I asked if she knew what an astronaut was. She said, "Well, like someone at a football game who gets the crowd excited!". I told her an astronaut is someone who goes to outer space like Neil Armstrong - she knows him from our preschool unit on him. She looked confused, but after some thought she said, "Oh, I think I meant 'mascot'".  Have I mentioned I love this???!!