Christmas Morning

Thank heavens Levin felt better long enough to help Santa assemble the presents.  There was a lot to do.  Levin really is good fun.  You can't see it very clearly, but there are Santa's foot prints coming away from the fire place.

 Oliver's Santa - a Jake and the Neverland Pirates tent, a Bat Cave and some extra figurines in the event some got lost.  Even with two Batman figurines . . they are both lost.

 Autumn our Frozen/Elsa obsessed got a princess palace and a Elsa doll.

 Leah's Hello Kitty kitchen.

 Lance's exciting undershirts!  Whoo Hoo! Oh yeah and Olaf.  This has gotten alot of love, but I think more from Leah than anyone.

The aftermath of Christmas morning.  It kind of makes me feel guilty and wondering about the poor starving children of the world.  But somehow it seems we overdo it every year.

 The kids enjoying their loot.

 Note:  Leah got the Anna doll and Ariel to play with Autumn in the castle.

 Could there be a cuter baby??  The butterfly toy that goes on his carseat got tons of use, still does, so did the teething giraffe and those sippy cups are still in use.  Good shopping on my part. :)

I don't know what happened to this picture.  Autumn's pink obsession bled into it??

Pre-Christmas Activities

Leah's school had a bazaar and Santa came on the fire engine.  Autumn doesn't look like she is a huge fan of Santa.  The bazaar is probably not something I care to repeat - lame-o - but it did give the kids a chance to sit on Santa's lap.  Poor Leah couldn't decide what to ask for until like 2 seconds before it was her turn.

Not pictured was a pretty cool event.  A few days before Christmas the fire truck drives down all the streets with the sirens on and Santa on top.  We are the only family with kids on our street.  So we were the only ones that came out and waved.  It was pretty loud!!  But because we did, they came and stopped at our house and gave the kids candy canes.  So this time it was our advantage to be the only kids.  The ice cream truck never comes down our street because we are the only kids so that is bad news.

For some reason a gingerbread house has always been part of our pre Christmas traditions.  I hate them.  I despise them.  Levin wanted to get one this year and I only if he did it with the kids.  He did.  I think now he realizes why I hate them.  We are quick people, not slow do things perfect kind of people.  So . . . these aren't for us.  'But the kids enjoy it so I guess that is what matters.

 The kids all looks so cute the Sunday before Christmas.  Levin was already gone by the time I tried to get some pictures of the kids.  Well . . . the bright sun coming in the door and our poorly lit living room didn't work out well.  And the kids . . . why is it so hard to get all of them to smile and look at the camera?!  This one below gets posted to remind Leah when she is a Mom how hard it was to get her to smile at the camera. :)  She has little patience so if you don't get the first one right you don't usually get much better smiles and then they turn to exasperation/fake smiles.

We had a little more luck with an individual shot.

 I had a little more luck with Oliver.

Not so much with Autumn.  I love this little dress of hers though. When the sun shines on it just right the sparkles make pink lights reflecting all over the place.  So awesome.

 Our last two Christmas Eve's have left a little to be desired - a lot to be desired.  Last year we were at the Russian hospital with Autumn and this year Levin was sick.  But at least we got to act out the nativity at home this year.  Leah was Mary and Oliver . .  I actually can't remember.  That's why you should blog sooner rather than later.  Autumn refused to be an angel and would only be a princess so we decided she was a wise woman.  Lance . . well you can guess who he was.

Trying to choose what picture to post is difficult when one kid looks bad in one, another bad in the other.  SO the one below is to capture Oliver's smile.

 We always open one present on Christmas Eve.  Actually, Levin never wants to, but he has a tradition that we watch Scrooge the musical every Christmas Eve and we eat our Christmas feast on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day too.  So enough with the Flake traditions, I get one at least.  So we open a present on Christmas Eve like my family did growing up.  The difference is that I always got to choose, but my kids we usually tell them what one they're opening.  This year were these cute little sweatshirts from Aunt Dani.  We actually got A LOT of use out of them over the winter.  Lance's had to be soaked in OxiClean several times, but they loved them and so did I.  We keep our house pretty cold so they came quite in handy.  Leah is wearing hers tonight on this rainy June day.  And its possible she's getting sick.

Pirate and Princess Party

We love our local library.  Their summer reading program isn't as cool as the one near my mom's house, but they do have a lot of fun activities and a lot of good books.  We get like 15 books every week and have gone through a lot of DVDs too.

In December they had a Pirate and Princess party.  Autumn is obsessed with princesses and at that time was wearing a pricess dress of some sort on top of her regular clothes nearly every day.  I think it ended at Christmas when I gave her a new one she didn't love.  But the other two were pretty much in tatters.  Oliver likes pirates too and Leah's always up for dressing up.

 They were not up for taking pictures.  A bunch of horrible pictures and this one shoes Leah's true feelings on the matter.  Is it just my kids that don't know how to say Cheese and look at the camera???  I'd rather they just looked with frowns I guess . . .

 The two funnest librarians.  Seriously, a lot of fun.  We try to go to the weekly story time that is hosted.  We don't always make it, but these two are the ones you hope for - the best.

 I can't remember how many Elsa's we counted - but a TON.  I think half the girls were dressed up as Elsa.  Unfortunately, in a room of 35 or more princesses there were only a handful of pirates.  Oliver didn't seem to notice too too much.

Walking the plank 

 Their paper pirate hats and crowns.

It was a lot of fun.  

Leah's Birthday

I don't remember a year that Leah's birthday wasn't celebrated in conjunction with Thanksgiving. It just always seems to work out that's when we have friends or family around.  My brother was visiting from Colorado also that weekend so he came to the party.  This wasn't my best birthday party hosting ever and Lance was crying during it and would only let me hold him.  So the pictures are not so good.  Sorry Leah.

First up is Leah playing pin the tail on the donkey.

 Kyla's turn.

 Oliver's turn . . and you get the point.  The other kids took their turns.

 Somehow I missed a picture of Leah doing the pinata.

 The little kids weren't making enough progress so we had to recruit Benjamin to help out.

 Opening the presents.

 Since May or whenever my kids started watching American TV with commercials Leah has wanted this ball pet. It's a stuffed animal you can fold into a ball.  In the past I have tried to steer Leah to toys I thought were good for her or fun.  But a while back I realized - just give the kid what they asked for as long as it isn't horrible or expensive.  Then when it breaks to quickly or something they don't care, they got what they wanted anyway and the actual birthday is memorable in a good way.  This is an As Seen on TV thing, but guess what she played with most that night - the ball pet. So I'm glad we got it for her.

 She also got this KidiZoomer watch.  I'm a little disappointed with how much this got played with.

 A new dress which she wore a ton over the winter - most every Sunday.

 The ball pet opened up.  She also got some princess dolls that Autumn kind of stole, some nail polish and chap stick and a game from her relatives.

 I wish I had a better picture here, but our lighting is so bad and as mentioned before I think I was holding a crying baby.

I love Leah so much.  She is such a great kid to have in our family.  She has a love of life you can't find in just anybody.  As Levin would say, "Do Leah's grow on trees?  I'd like to see a Leah tree."  She has been loving Kindergarten and is rushing me off the computer so I better end or I'd say more mushy love stuff about her.

Thanksgiving 2014

For Thanksgiving we had our first visitors since moving back to Maryland.  We opened Flake hotel for business and had a lot of visitors.  Levin's sister and his brother came with their families.
I guess we didn't take any pictures of actual Thanksgiving I guess - or at least I can't find any.  I must have been too excited to eat.
But we did go to Ft. McHenry where the National Anthem was written and to Annapolis Maryland.

 That's a lot of kids.

You can tell what kind of person I am.  I have no pictures of the Naval Academy, but we have a lot of pictures of Chick and Ruths.  Chick and Ruth's restaurant is famous for their 6 lb milk shake.  We ordered 3.  Because it is a tiny little place and always crowded we felt bad taking so many tables and ordering so many waters so we got some fries too. But I think none of those got eaten because how can they compare to this?!!

 Our kids had to stand up to reach the straws.

 Every last drop was sucked through a straw or tipped into someone's mouth.  I have to say the one I picked, Moose Tracks, was the best!  There were tons of little Reese's at the bottom that hadn't gotten sucked up the straw . . . . yum!  You'd think I'd have walked away sick and never wanting to do it again, but it was dang yummy!  I may go back . . . . someday . . . . you can see why I have struggled to lose the baby weight.

When Levin drove the two older kids out east this summer Leah left her purple skirt at Kyla's house.  It was small for Leah anyway so I made her a new one and Kyle kept hers.  Here they are matching.

 Because we had such a full house, our entire family was sleeping in our bedroom.  Leah and Oliver were on the floor and one night I came in to find them asleep on the floor with their arms around each other.  It was worth taking a bad picture to capture the memory for me.  And risking waking them up.  I love these too kids and how much they love each other.

Oliver Cute Sayings

I wish I had a cute picture and all to go with this, but I don't, but it is the most recent of things I vow to write about on my blog, but haven't done . . as you can tell.  The kids are always saying and doing wonderfully cute things that I want to have a memory of so I'm going to try and get back to recording them here.

Yesterday Oliver had a doctor's appointment.  He's behind on his immunizations and its time to get him ready for kindergarten registration next week.  I have been putting off taking him to our new doctor here because he was only sick while we were on vacation and I knew this day was coming with a Kindergarten physical required also so I just waited until I could get the physical form.

Oliver has accompanied me several times to take Lance and Autumn to the doctor and Leah who recently had some dental work done keeps coming home with fun little treasures from the dentist.  You'd think Oliver would be glad he wasn't the patient, but he was actually really excited to be the kid being focused on.  He remembered in Moscow before we left we got TB test shots and he was sooo brave!  Braver than Leah we might add.  So he wasn't scared for his shots.

I thought, how sad that this kid is so excited for attention he's willing to get shots for it!  He had a small moment of panick before the first shot when he saw the needle, but was sooooo brave!!  We also discovered our "runt" isn't such a runt afterall.  The doctor plotted him on the 4 yr old line, but he's almost 5 so I had Levin and I plot it again on the growth chart when we got home.  The numbers were less impressive, but Oliver is 75th percentile for height and I think 50th for weigh.  Our other kids are at the top of the cart or off the chart so you see why we think of Oliver as a runt.  That morning I'd put Lance (not quite 10 months) in a shirt Oliver got for his 2nd birthday.  So you see . . . anyway, I'm happy he's not really a runt afterall.  It's all in comparison.

I promise I'm getting to the cute story . . . so I took hiim to McDonalds afterwards.  Levin had Autumn at home while he teleworked (iPads make great babysitters) and so Lance, Oliver and I went to McDonalds.  I even let him get a happy meal which is a real treat to our kids.  There was one other little girl in the play place with her Dad.  She was super friendly and she adn Oliver hit if off!  They had tons of fun playing together.  We had to leave a little before them and Oliver left nicely so I was really proud of him since I know he wanted to stay.  This girl was pretty amazing so I had even let us stay a little longer than I intended.  Oliver hopped in the car and said he got to drive because "Daddys always drive."  She didn't mind, but I made a mental note to make sure I'm not raising a sexist. :)

When we got in the car to go home Oliver looked at me and said, "I love that girl."  Now Oliver has claimed multiple times he'll never love another girl besides me and Leah.  And he didn't say it in a super excited wow that was fun kind of way.  It was totally serious and almost tender.  I couldn't even laugh or make light of it at all.  All I could say is, "I know you do honey."  And we went home.

He has the most tender heart.  I love it so much.  I just hope his little heart doesn't endure too many heart breaks when he's finally older to really do something about loving girls.  He would give anything to his sisters and I can just see it when they innocently break his heart and I feel so sorry for him, but unfortunately, such is life.

Can I Keep This Up?

I got a new Gmail address.  My old one was basically just associated with my blog and I just realized a couple of my kids frequent flyer program.  But trying to get my new email address associated with the blog remember all the passwords to both and yadda yadda . . . well, I got it done!
Hopefully this means I'll blog more.  I'm busy and tired and well . . Lance is FINALLY starting to sleep better.  He's been a bad sleeper since Thanksgiving I think.  So maybe I'll have better control of my life.  I also don't have a lot of internet usage available to upload photos and the time before 8 am seems to go by quickly.  We get unlimited from 2 am to 8 am but who has time for blogging during that time?

But here goes to trying to get caught up!