December pictures

How we found Aubrey sleeping

We found our elf on our tree sitting on an ornament

Cinderella

Driving around looking at Christmas lights
 while waiting to pic up our pictures

Counting his loot he made

Candy cane court

Movie party in the fort...watching Christmas Vacation

Who likes bananas?  She doesn't say me yet, but she raises her hand. 
I taught her that. And I'm proud.

Working hard making shapes

Working hard making an English castle.
 I especially love the drawbridge

Emily's lunchbox note.  Christmas lights

Special Request lunchbox note.  Emily asked for a picture of
her school with Christmas lights and the snowman.
 She also asked for Santa Claus, but that was too hard.

Den meeting.  Making tree ornaments for the elderly (and ourselves)
 from wood and alcohol inks.

Ms. Tamara (Gavin's mom) and Ms. Misty (Jayden's mom)
 showing off their ornaments

waiting for the ornaments to dry by the space heater. 

Our keepers that we decided to keep. 
Anthony's are the two on the left.  Mommy's is on the right

The boys on the float all decorated for the parade

Our ornaments on Grandma's tree

Mommy: What do you say?  Aubrey:  Cheeeese!

You can always tell when Grandpa's eating. 
Emily, Aubrey, and Debbie are like little vultures

December so far

Anthony didn't win the contest for king of the Candy Cane Court for the 4th.  But we did raise $183 which was $83 more than our goal. We had fun together.  It was a lot of work and I swore I'd never do it again.  But if Anthony asks, I think I will.  We got to spend extra time together and I enjoyed it.  Aunt Kim helped sell at Anthony's school and so did Grandma. It was a great experience. Now he's working on an extra credit project for Social Studies.  His class has Great Britain for Christmas around the world at school this year.  For extra credit the kids can build a 3d project related to England for extra credit.  Anthony is building a castle out of Knex. He had a cub scout meeting last night.  It was fun. Akela Melanie brought in wooden circles for us to sand and paint.  We used alcohol inks and turned our project into Christmas tree ornaments.  Anthony and I each donated one of our ornaments to the elderly staying at an old folks home in Maryville and put the others on Grandma's tree.

We got our Christmas pictures back. They were a million times better than what I expected.  The girls were both shy and cranky and I thought we'd be really lucky to get even one half way decent picture.  I love them all.  Even the bad ones are good.  They're hilarious. I just ordered copies of our pictures from Walgreens so I need to get to work so we can get our Christmas cards in the mail this weekend. We had to meet Ms. Kristi at a gas station to pick up our cd of pictures.  We were already out and early so we drove around looking at Christmas lights.  Emily saw that there were Christmas lights on her school during the day, so she had been asking if we could see her school at night. We stopped there and some streets behind the school.  We had fun.

Aubrey is growing up so fast.  She still waddles a little when she walks but is much more sturdy.  And boy does she move fast.  She's so smart.  She learned to hold her nose when I change a poopy diaper. (Something we'd been working on.)  The other night in the tub, I was counting while Emily washed herself.  I like to count and see if she can beat her time in seconds from the night before.  I swear after I said 6, Aubrey said 7.  When I take pictures of the kids with my cell phone, my phone says "say cheese" real loud when I press the button.  I noticed the other night in the tub, when I held up my phone to take a picture of Aubrey playing.  She said, "say cheeeeese."  Now I have witnesses.  Last night Aubrey was sitting on Grandma's lap and I took out my camera and said, "What do you say?"  Aubrey clear as can be said, "cheeeese!" 

Emily still won't eat at school. She said she doesn't want her friends to see her.  The other day she had a little pack of pretzels with cheese to dip them in.  She asked if I could pack some in her lunch the next day.  I agreed but only if she promised to eat them in school.  She said, "Ok.  I'll eat my lunch and my friends can look at me." The next day when I checked she hadn't eaten.  She said Ms. Rachel didn't put them out for her.  I asked if she wanted to eat them now. (she was in the potty while the other kids were having snack time)  She said, "No these are my rules and I said not today."  She's so silly.  

Emily has seen me tag clothes to sell at the consignment sale and witnessed Anthony and me making things to sell at his school the last few weeks. We have accidently created a little entrepreneur.  The other night she made me a picture of a beautiful snowman and wrote my name on it. She drew Daddy a heart but had trouble cutting it out so I cut her out a heart for her to color. She asked if I could make her more shapes.... So I made her diamonds, squares, rectangles and crescent moons. She colored them with pencil and told me she was selling shapes and asked if I would like to buy one. I asked what I could get for a dime. I am now the proud owner of an Emily original rectangle.  I posted a message on facebook asking that if anyone would like to purchase a paper shape, to hit Emily up on her Elmo cellphone.  Daddy's sister Aunt Lisa ordered a diamond and moon.  We're going to have to remember to mail her her shapes in her Christmas card.

Tree decorating

The kids did the decorating themselves this year

Emily and Anthony with their Advent calendars from Grandma

Anthony's sign we hung by our table for the Candy Cane Court

First day of sales for Candy Cane Court

Our elf drinking soda and eating cookies while playing video games

Emily helped us sell one day

Gifts from Stevie Tenderheart. (I won a contest on goodreads
and the author sent us extra goodies in the mail)

napping in the fort

Our elf helped Daddy fix the washer machine. 
Then he dropped a wrench on his head.

Taking My little pony out for a test drive

Anthony claims he doesn't remember staying up all night playing Uno with the elf

Update from the Bryants

I've have more pictures to add but for now, before I forget....

After two weeks I'm proud to say I finally taught Aubrey something new.  Each time I change a poopy diaper, I hold my nose and say pee you, hoping she will do this same.  The last few poopy diapers I've changed she's held her nose and smile.

Anthony is up to $89 in sales for the Candy Cane Court.  He's not likely even close to winning.  Some of the mothers do all the selling for their kids and hang out at the school all morning and afternoon.  I'm helping Anthony, but he sells every day during lunch with me and usually skips recess to help sell.  He helps peel crayons at night for our Lego men and has sold all but one of his ninja stars.

Emily is starting to do a little better in school.  She still won't eat her lunch, but loves the pictures I tape to her sandwich box.  She's learning a lot. She has starting singing Christmas carols around the house. I know she doesn't sing them with her friends at school, but she's paying attention and still learning.  She's getting fantastic at recognizing letters.  And when she hears a word, she can usually figure out what letter it starts with.

The tree is up and decorated.  Emily put most of the ornaments up herself.  She enjoyed it so much, she undecorates the tree daily.  Aubrey was being pretty good about staying away from it, but of course has learned from her sister.

Last night I gave Emily a V8 fusion sparkling juice.  It's 100% juice but Emily doesn't believe me.  She said, "I'm gonna call this soda, because it made me burp."

I woke up in the middle of the night to find Anthony sleeping on the couch.  The elf was sitting on him and they each had a stack of uno cards.  Anthony said he doesn't remember playing Uno with the elf.  He said him and Daddy stayed up late watching Wolverine and that afterwards he fell asleep.  He said the elf must have erased his memory so he would forget.

Daddy and the kids are with Grandma today at Dollywood so it's just me and Aubrey.  I love the kids and miss them terribly, but the quiet is nice.

Girls just wanna have fun

Aubrey is so smart.  The other day she pooped in her diaper as I was making her lunch.  I changed her diaper, but since I knew it wasn't likely she was going to go #2 again, I was going to have her go commando so I wouldn't waste a diaper since she was getting a bath right after lunch.  As I was zipping her pjs, she kept tapping me on the arm trying to get my attention.  Then she pointed and grunted to tell me that I forgot her diaper. 

On the weekends, the girls wake up before is.  We can hear them talking away and playing together for sometimes an hour before Emily comes to tell us she's awake.  This morning we heard a loud crash coming from their room.  I went to check on them and Aubrey was running in circles around the room naked and giggling, while Emily was crying and had her foot stuck.  She was sitting in the crib and the mattress and wooden board underneath had fallen.  Emily said they were playing hide and seek and the crib fell.  I reminded Emily that she is too big to be playing in the crib.  She said she wasn't in the crib, she was hiding underneath it when she kicked the mattress and it fell on top of her.  Emily was stuck but Aubrey managed to escape thru the gab between the bottom bar and the mattress that was now on the floor.  I think Aubrey was gloating because she won their game of hide and seek.

Today is picture day. We're bringing the kids to see Ms. Kristi to have their Christmas pictures taken.  Santa will be there.