Julia's School Award and some other school stuff

Julia with her medal and certificate.

The completed ginger bread house. She kept telling me not to move her "masterpiece" from the dining room table which I thought was a little dramatic until I figured out she meant "centerpiece"!

Lilly, Juju and Hailey

I think this picture is cool because it shows how different their eye colors are! Alex's eyes seem to be staying pretty blue!

AJ's new way of sucking on his passy. Notice his bottom lip poking out. He started this when he cut his teeth, I guess it feels good on his gums. It looks really funny!

Yesterday morning, I went to Julia's school to help her class make ginger bread houses. I haven't gotten to interact with the kids much yet so I was very excited to see Julia in her classroom setting. When I got there, the teachers informed me that Julia had won the "Student of the Nine Weeks" award! It is only given out 4 times a year to one student in each class. It means she was the best student all around and was a "good citizen" and well behaved, too. She got a special medal, a certificate to Dairy Queen, and will get her picture in the paper. We are so proud of her! Hopefully it's first of many awards at school! I also had a blast helping the kids make their ginger bread houses, they were so sweet and cute and excited that I was there. The only problem was keeping them from eating the candy instead of putting it on their ginger bread houses!

I also have tell a little story that shows just how sweet she is. Many of you know and some might not, but we have had major issues with the pitiful kids that live next door to us. They are dirty, neglected and have behavior problems due to a dysfunctional home life. I was less than thrilled when the girl ended up in Julia's class and really less than thrilled when Julia decided to take her under her wing. It seems sometimes like it hinders Julia from hanging out with the other kids because the girl is so needy and emotionally messed up. I have tried to suck it up and not say anything to negative about it to her. But a couple of weeks ago, Julia told me that the girl is basically bullying her out of her lunch, saying she won't be her friend anymore if she doesn't give her things out of her lunch box. We were infuriated to say the least and told her do NOT give her any of her lunch and also spoke to the teacher about it, who was upset about it also and promised to keep them separated as much as possible in the lunch room. It may sound silly, but I work hard to make JULIA and only Julia a special lunch every day and the thought of this nasty rude kid eating her food just burns me up. Anyway, they haven't sat together much since then but it has happened a couple of times and Julia claims she "forgot" to tell the girl she can't have any of her lunch. She said this today and it made me really mad and I said, "If she says she won't be your friend anymore, don't worry about it! WHO CARES?" and the reply she gave was, "But, Mommy and Daddy, if I'm not her friend anymore then she won't have any friends." It was so profound and selfless coming from a 4 year old. Matt and I both teared up and praised her for being such a sweet friend. I guess I will not keep harping on it because Julia really just wants to share what she has and to be a good friend. She knows she will not go hungry and that it makes the other girl very happy. It was one of many lessons she teaches us every day and made me prouder than any award ever could. FYI the girl I am talking about is not in any of these pictures in case you were wondering.

Christmasy Stuff

Out of order, of course. Here is the finished product!

Intense decorating going on. All of the ornaments were concentrated in one area!

Alex was very fussy and had to hang out in the playpen. Now we know he was about to start teething! He cut 2 teeth over the weekend and didn't sleep at all.

At the beginning

Julia earnestly telling Santa what she wants. Alex was fascinated! Santa has kind of a weird look on his face!

Both kids having fun with Santa

She's a pro already!

She's really belting out this part. This is definitely the chorus!

Sitting with her class on the floor. They were wearing their new school shirts which I thought looked very cute.

As usual, things are totally nuts this time of year. But I have to post these pictures of Julia at her school program and the kids with Santa. We went to the country club (Grammy and Pa are members) and did not have to wait in line and it was a great looking Santa. For the first time, Julia was not scared of him and told him everything she wanted. She thought it was very cool when she told him she wanted an Easy Bake Oven and he told her he loves cupcakes and Easy Bake Ovens, too. Alex was not scared at all and grabbed his beard and put it in his eyes and mouth.

Julia has had 2 Christmas programs, one with her school and grades pre-k thru 2nd and one with all of the pre-k classes in the county. The first one was at night and was in the gym without bleachers and it was very hot and crowded. We were way in the back and couldn't see anything, and her class only sang 2 songs anyway. The 2nd program was at a different school during the day and it was a much better set up and was very cute. Julia was one of the few who knew all the words and choreography. She did a great job!

Julia's "J" Playdate

Julia and Jaidyn

Jessalyn, Julia, Jaidyn and Victoria

Some antics on the trampoline. Check out the staticky hair!

Juju and Jaidyn swingin'

A couple of weeks ago Julia and I did something fun and different- we went to her friend's house for a girly playdate! We don't get to spend that much time together alone and it was really fun for her to get to play with someone besides the kids at school and to be around so many girls! The friend's name is Jaidyn (she is a precious little girl from dance class), her mom's name is Jessica and her sister's name is Jessalyn, so Julia fit right in with her "J"name! They have a huge yard with a swingset and trampoline and the girls had a blast. They are all very sweet and I hope we can go back again soon!

Thanksgiving 2008

Alex and Daddy

Some of the boy cousins. There are a LOT of boys in Matt's family!

Alex loves his new teether from PatPat! It is especially good now because he cut his first tooth last night!

Cute picture of Juju

Juju, Jane and Dylan playing Cornhole. I've never heard of it, but evidently is a very popular bean bag throwing game. It was really fun to watch everyone play!

We have been so busy this month that I just haven't had the time or energy to do many blogs. But at least I'm doing this one before Christmas! We had a very nice Thanksgiving at Matt's Granny's house. The food was AWESOME and we all ate too much but it was worth it. We didn't get that many good pictures but I'll post a few anyway.

Walk to the Gazebo

Alex getting ready for a stroll

Some Christmas decorations. They look a little cooler at night!

A goldfish in the pond in the square. No lie, this fish is about 2 feet long. It's pretty freaky!

Daddy and the kids in the gazebo

A neat old cannon

Julia's favorite, a HUGE Santa Claus! Alex could have cared less.

A beautiful old tree on the square

The gazebo

One of Julia's dance class moves. She says this is a "passe'". Sounds good to me!

Bub in the jumperoo where he spends 90% of his time because he really loves it! He jumps and jumps and jumps and jumps!

There hasn't been a whole lot going on here. Julia had strep throat last weekend and part of the week so that was a huge ordeal. It was pretty scary, it was the sickest she has ever been and we almost took her to the emergency room because her fever was so high and she was shaking violently. Anyway, she's better now.

Alex is doing good except he still doesn't like to sleep. Ever. He hates naps and bedtime like it was torture. But at least he is over a lot of the issues he used to have and he doesn't cry all the time anymore. He just celebrated his 6 month birthday! It is hard to believe 6 months has gone by already. He is a very important part of our family and I can't imagine him not being here. He is trying very hard to crawl, is sitting up pretty darn good, and just learned how to say his d's so he is babbling "dadadadada" a lot. Matt loves it because it sounds like he's saying Dada. He is so precious and sweet and we love our little Bubbo (as Julia calls him)!

These pictures are from a walk to the downtown square and gazebo. It is only 2 blocks from our house and Julia wanted to check out the Christmas decorations. It is a really charming and pretty little town square and it's fun to walk there and hang out.

Not so yummy cupcakes

A funny picture Julia took. I guess it's a hint for Christmas.

The other day Julia happened upon a recipe for "healthy" cupcakes on one of her kid websites. She printed it because she liked the picture and brought it to me and we decided we would make them. I never bake anything (I do cook, I just don't bake) so it was quite a challenge for me to make cupcakes from scratch even though the recipe was pretty simple. Anyway, Julia got bored after a couple of minutes, and when I tasted the batter I realized that they were going to be that gross spicy pumpkiny flavor. I now know that nutmeg makes that flavor- I didn't know that and added it liberally. I didn't tell Julia, and we baked them up and iced them but they were not very good at all! Julia said she liked them, but only the top. She just licked the icing off but I can't say I blamed her. I ended up throwing them away after a few days. But it was still fun. In the future, I won't expect much from a healthy cupcake recipe- they're not meant to be healthy, right???

One more funny story about Julia...Every day I make her lunch for school. I love to do it and we spend a lot of time discussing what will go in her lunch box and so forth. We have asked her from time to time if she would like to try the school lunch but she always says no, which is fine with me. But Monday afternoon, she came home and said she wanted to eat the school lunch tray the next day. We discussed it at length so she would understand that she would not have her lunch box with her and she would get a tray and pick out food to go on it. When Matt picked her up, the teacher told him that on the way to lunch Julia had cried because she "missed her lunch box" but then she was okay and ate the school lunch anyway. When we asked her what she ate, she told us she had gotten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and white rice!!! I don't know why that cracks me up so much, it's just such a weird combo and I can just picture her little 4 year old self having no idea what she was doing walking through the line and out of everything to pick from, she picked a pb&j and white rice! I doubt she ate it, and needless to say she does not want to eat school lunch anymore. I love that she wants that little "piece of home" when she's at school. She is so grown up in so many ways and still my little baby in so many others. She is such a trip and is our special sweet girl!

Fun at the Fair

Alex staring wide-eyed at his first view of the lights and rides

The merry go round (in case you couldn't tell)

Alex's first ride! It was a little choo-choo train. He seemed to enjoy it.

Grammy and AJ

Waiting for the bumper cars. Looks like Julia has already had too much sugar! And Matt not enough.

Julia thought this was awesome!

It's a blurry shot but I love the look on her face!

Bubbo all crashed out

It's been almost a week so I figured I better post something! Last Thursday night, me, Matt, Julia, Alex and Grammy went to the fair. It's a pretty good one, it's clean and very family oriented. We went last year when I was pregnant and Julia loved it so we were excited to go back and take Alex to his first fair! We all had a great time- Julia is a total daredevil and wanted to ride all the rides, even the scary ones. Matt loves them, too, so they rode everything together while Grammy, me and Alex watched from the sidelines and took pictures. It is hard to get good pictures of the moving rides but I got a few good ones. We ate good old greasy corndogs, funnel cakes and cotton candy. We all had a blast, Alex was good and even fell asleep for a while. He won't sleep at all at home but he can sleep at the crazy loud fair. Go figure!

Halloween 2008

Nurse Julia

The feisty chili pepper and caring nurse

Our beautiful pumpkins. Matt did the mean one for the boys, Julia helped design the other for the girls, and she wrote all over the little one.

Alex laughing at Julia during the pumpkin carving. He always laughs and smiles at her no matter what, even if she's screaming or getting in trouble! It's so cute.

Julia before the carving began. She was bored after about 5 minutes and started whining. I guess if we had given her a knife, she would have stayed interested longer?

Nurse Julia trick or treating.

Some cool decorations in someone's yard

More trick or treating

Jane's dogs Sugar, Maggie and Lily. They greeted trick or treaters at the door and were the hit of the neighborhood! Dawg fans will notice the gator in Lily's mouth but we won't discuss that any further in this post!

Alex and his favorite buddy Missy. She bought him a "My first Halloween" bib and he wore it proudly!

We had a very fun Halloween, even though both kids were sick. Alex had to go to the doctor Wednesday and had pink eye and an ear infection, and then Julia had to go Friday afternoon (she even missed school) and had a bad sinus infection. But they were both troopers about hanging out and making the rounds Friday night. First we went to Grammy and Pa's, then to Big Granny's, and then to Jane's. She has a great trick or treating neighborhood so we left Alex there with Missy while Julia, me, Matt and Grammy went trick or treating. Both kids looked adorable and we had a great time! Hopefully Alex had a wonderful first Halloween! Like always, my pictures are totally out of order. I just can't get it right!