Christmas 2008

A lot of fun! A lot of pictures! So here we go, try and keep up.....





What Christmas is complete without a little (or in our case a LOT) of snow? Snow = shoveling. Bugger! Keep up the good work Corey!





Corey, the boys and I went to BodyWorlds. There were no pictures allowed inside, but this skeleton in the lobby thought I was hot!

You could text in a message for his speech bubble. My husband thinks I am hot and my boys think my husband is silly.

Jigsaw puzzle #2. (#1 is further down) Corey could only rope DeeDee and Annie in for help. If the boys "helped", we would come back to find pieces jammed together and Colby smiling from ear to ear that he found pieces that "went" together. Super!

Colby could not believe his luck with the amount of Bakugan that he received for Christmas. Whatever floats your boat kid.

Naps for all, mostly the dog after a lot of running up and down and up and down the sledding hill.

Jigsaw puzzle #1.

A bubble bath for Colby. Bubble bath = quiet time for Mom.

Sledding on Christmas day!

Chris, Aleisha and the girls.

Luke and Lola. Lola would chase down Luke while he was flying down the hill and try to knock him off the sled. I cannot even begin to count how many times she ran up and down that sledding hill.

DeeDee and Hot Liz.

Hot Liz and Corey. I like the sound of that, Hot Liz. Catchy - huh?

Corey going off a totally sweet jump, dude!

The Colbster.

The spectators - Pa and Addi.

Annie and Leo.

Oh Sweet Leo. A face of an angel - just ask his mom.

You know the kid in A Christmas Story that was so bundled in snow clothes that he kind of waddled? Leo is THAT kid.

Did I mention napping already? Lola could hardly keep her head up, it kept drooping onto Luke's head and then she would jerk it back up, then droop again...

What fun?!!

How we can hardly wait for round two when Laura, Jeremy, Haston and Julie come in a few weeks.

Christmas Break!

Two and half weeks with no school, what are we going to do? NOTHING!


Colby has started us off on this lazy morning with his usual routine. He crawls into our bed, snuggles in with us and then patiently (not so patiently other times) waits for us to leave the bed so he can burrow down in and watch "his shows". Usually the latest Bakugan that taped at 4:30 am that morning.

I made Crepes for breakfast yesterday - The boys went NUTS over them, Colby in particular. So today he asked for "those Ape things we had yesterday"? Ape? as in monkey? Ok.

Lukie likes his little perch in the basement with his PlayStation or Wii controller in hand. IF we let him we would not hear from him for hours down there.

Now seriously, I don't know what bug he caught but it was not the Lazy Christmas Break Bug that we all caught. Come on Corey - Get on board!

Oh, Poor Sweet Leo.. xoxo

With a smile like that who would know that Leo and his sad parents spent a couple of hours at the "after-hours" Doctor's office last night...? Look close and you can see where sweet little Leo got 9 stitches on his chin. A little run-in with his mom's night table and with the help of her bed Leo split his chin wide open around bedtime last night. I am not sure who was more traumatized, Leo or his Mom & Dad, when they had to hold him down with the help of a nurse for the Doctor to stitch him up.




A little close-up of his stitches.
Ouchy. :-(

My Little Elfs

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Star Light Star Bright, First Star I See Tonight

Dearest Colby learned how to draw a star today. He felt we needed more stars in our house. So he spent the evening drawing stars, stars and more stars. He, in fact, felt we needed two stars on every window in our house. He didn't quite make it to all the windows (thank goodness) before bedtime. Here is a little bit of his handy work.

Something funny, something sad.

First something funny.

Colby and I are driving to someones house tonight and it is dark outside. Did any of you see a couple weeks ago the two planets, Jupiter and Venus. Colby did and he was looking for them again tonight. As we are driving tonight he looks up into the sky and says " I wonder when we will get to see Saturn and Uterus again?" "Uterus? Um, I am not sure when you will see that planet." Oh brother.



Now something sad.

Luke had to have 2 teeth extracted (aka - yanked) today at the dentist. He was WAY nervous, but was intrigued with the "laughing gas" they were going to give him. Man, oh man! I love how silly people get with it. Totally gaggy feeling, but oh so funny! Luke was so spacey. He kept talking about how he couldn't tell if he was dreaming or if any of this was real. His whole body was numb and he just kind of laid there. He would mumble incoherent little things and I would just smile at him and nod my head.


A nice little goofy smile and look he has going on here. He was supposed to be playing some video game, but he ended up just staring at the screen for most of the time.

Post-extraction. Yuck.

Just a sidenote...

I wanted to mention something funny...

On Friday, Corey was done working at the office so I asked if he could pick up Colby from Kindergarten. He said he would be in that area and would get him for me - great! I get a call from Corey, 10 minutes after kindergarten gets out and he is wondering where all the kids went! Oh man! :-( Cute Colby was sitting in the office waiting for someone to pick him up.

So for the record - it is not just me being slightly irresponsible and forgetful.

PLEASE let us make it to first grade. :-)

For Crying Out Loud!

One would think "How hard could it be to remember every Wednesday is early out day"? Well, I can answer that - IMPOSSIBLE! There has yet to be a Wednesday gone by that I have managed to pick both boys up at the correct time on the stupid early out day!
It is usually poor sweet Colby that gets left in the school office waiting for his forgetful mom to come get him. He has taken to reminding me that "Mom, today is early out day. Please don't forget me". So sad. :-(
Yesterday is early out day - I remembered! In the morning I reminded the boys that it is Wednesday, early out day. Colby actually moaned! "Oh no! Early out day." I know I should be offended, but he is right.
So Wednesday it is. I arrive to the school BEFORE Colby's class gets out - I was beaming from ear to ear - he was less impressed, more surprised. I set my alarm to remember to pick up Lukie for his early out day. Only problem is, I could have sworn he got out at 2:45pm for early out day - apparently he gets out at 2:30pm. So when I showed up at the school, everybody is gone and Luke had walked home.

Darn it all! I HATE WEDNESDAY'S!!!! (although I think the boys hate them more than I do :-)

Look at me go! December 1st baby!

For real! December 1st and I have Christmas decorations up! Calm down, breathe. I know it is unheard of, but tonight for Family Night, no less, we decorated for Christmas. I feel like such a wonderful mother right about now. Last year, if any of you remember, we only decorated because we were trying to sell our house and it looked "homey" for the prospective buyers. In the Norman home we have had a whole range of "Christmas trees" - I use that term loosely. There was the year we had a mini tree with candy and toy cars on it. The year we had a tree only because Annie and DeeDee brought over another mini tree with cute little lights - they apparantly thought it was unacceptable to have a small child and no Christmas tree. One year, I can't believe it, we had a REAL tree - we haven't ever repeated that mess again. Another year we had the infamous paper tree - that was a fun one. Ah...good times. :-)

Here are a few pictures (proof ) of our Christmas spirit.

Picture perfect - huh? Cozy fireplace, curled up dog, stockings.... blah blah blah. I can hear Santa's bells already.

I seemed to have misplaced our tree skirt. Blame it on the move. I will have to rummage around tomorrow to see where it ended up.

Rose Family Annual Ginerbread House Factory

This is what we have been waiting for all year long -- Grandma DeeDee's Gingerbread Factory! Our annual tradition of making the coolest, most scariest, most yummiest gingerbread houses EVER!

Everybody hard at work. A ratio of 2:1. Eat 2 pieces of candy, use 1 to decorate. A genius idea the kids were all on board for.

Leo was exceptionally helpful... with the frosting, the candy, the graham crackers, ANYTHING he could climb onto the table to get and shove in his mouth. I think at one point we had 2 cinnamon bears and 2 gum drops in the little mouth of his. Good gracious baby. Thanks for the great help Mr. Leo.

Colby's super scary monster house! Complete with red eyes, a tongue sidewalk, and a whole bunch of other scary and gory things in the yard. BEWARE!

Hannah's masterful and beautiful house! You go girl!

Luke's "almost life-size" football field, complete with goal posts, a player and a football. I think it snowed the day of the big game. Brrrr!

Cute Annie and her beautiful house with stain glass windows and the works! I think she started out with the idea of a "sweat shop", but from the look of the star on the roof, maybe she saw Jesus and kissed the light.

Oh what fun! Thanks Grandma DeeDee! Now remember - Colby does not want any of those stinky birds to get his masterpiece again, so keep it away from the back porch. Muchas gracias.

Thanksgiving Break

We had a fun couple of days spent at DeeDee's house with the family. We cooked for hours, ate the entire meal in 15 minutes, then ate pie, then went for second helpings of the first meal. Quite the tradition.


Cute little Addi (Chris & Aleisha's almost 1 yr old). Grandma DeeDee has all the fun toys.



Of course we have a great big traditional Thanksgiving meal and what does Colby and Hannah want to eat? Cereal. Big surprise. Thanks for the smile Colbster.

Hannah and Colby like the cereal that "talks" to you. aka Rice Krispies

Could it be Thanksgiving without Chris' annual Thanksgiving outfit - I think not! He only gets to break this baby out once a year. The Christmas outfit is just as fun... just you wait.

Day two of our Holiday fun. DeeDee's Mexican Market. DeeDee had an itch for tamales. ?? For real, tamales. I made the meat, DeeDee made the masa, and all the girls assembled them. Annie made some yummy tortillas with the leftover masa. One thing this family does well is eat. We like our food and get together for any old reason as long as food is involved. You should travel with us, it is non-stop eating. If my sister Julie is travelling with us the food gets a little questionable at times, but hey it is all in the right spirit.

Juanita Annie making her homemade tortillas. They were yummy. I laughed at DeeDee when she suggested we make tortillas with the leftover masa - Annie, the good sport, jumped at the opportunity to learn some of DeeDee's limitless wisdom.

I, on the other hand, snuggled with Mr. Cutie Pants Leo. 10 year olds are fine and dandy, but they just don't snuggle like they used to. I try to convince Luke to let me snuggle with him, but I inevitably get a dirty look from him.

What fun is DeeDee's hot tub? Never ending.

Mr. Snuggles was not feeling so good this day. A little feverish and fussy - teeth probably. Sure made for some great Aunt/Nephew snuggle time.

We missed you Laura (J & H) and Julie, but it sounds like you guys were well taken care of where you were. Love you, miss you.