Thursday, December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas!


We want to wish all our family and friends a very merry Christmas! We hope you are enjoying the day with those you love.

We are espeically thankful today for the Christ-child. Thank you, God, for sending Your Son!

Monday, December 22, 2008

MIA Lately


We have been MIA lately. At that's no exaggeration. I am pretty sure that we have only had a handful of healthy days in the month of December.

Ben started it off with a whopper of an ear infection. He was getting pretty crabby and he complained just a couple of times. He is one tough kid so I knew that if he was mentioning it, I needed to get him to the doctor. We put him on antibiotics and less than 1 week after finishing them, we wound up at Urgent Care. Ben was spiking a 103 fever and said his eyes hurt. Again, if he mentions something, I know I need to get to the doctor because that means it's pretty significant. Ella was feeling pretty yucky too, so she came with as well. We left Urgent Care with antibiotics for sinus infections as well as pink eye. How lucky are we? A few days later, Jason started coming down with a sore throat. He stayed home from work for 3 days which is very unlike him so I knew he was pretty sick too. God must have provided me with protection from all those bugs because I was able to stay healthy until Jason started feeling better and the kids were well on their way back to normal. I did say "was", right? I didn't manage to escape it and I am just now starting to feel like I am getting better.

At least we have it all done with before Christmas. I guess there's a silver lining if you look hard enough.

Friday, December 5, 2008

The Nutcracker







Today Ella, Ben, Nana, and I all went to see "The Nutcracker". What a great way to get into the holiday spirit. It was so much fun to go to the ballet. It was a special show just for kids. They shortened it to only an hour which was the perfect about of time for little children to sit still. Actually, Ben could have settled for a 45 minute show as he was pretty squirmy the last 15 minutes. Ella was hypnotized. She didn't hardly move a muscle and looked like a statue most of the show. She was so taken with all those ballerinas twirling around on stage. She loved all the beautiful colors and the snow the slowly fell from the "sky".

If you know the story of "The Nutcracker", you know that the Nutcracker comes to life at the stroke of midnight and Clara is awakened. Shortly after, the Mouse King comes on stage and he and the Nutcracker dual it out with the victory going to the Nutcracker. I was a little worried about this part of the story as I have a very sensitve little 4 year old and a 2 year old who is an even bigger chicken than his sister. I wasn't sure how I was going to handle this part of the story and was hoping that since it was a "children's version" that it would be tamed down enough to suit Ella. As I thought about the show earlier in the week, I hoped I hadn't wasted all of this money on tickets only to have to leave the show early due to a clinging, crying pair of children.

My fears were not calmed any by what took place in our house on Wednesday night. Upon returning home from Awana, Ella and I saw that Daddy and Ben had found the "Cars" movie on tv. Our kids never watch movies and are only accustomed to Elmo. We had heard that there wasn't anything to worry about in this movie so I told Ella that she could go and watch it for a little bit with them. About 10 minutes later, I heard the pitter patter of little feet. Ella had decided to come back upstairs and hang with me. I asked her why she wasn't watching the movie, she replied "Well...it's kind of scary...I don't want to watch it anymore." I probed a little and asked what had scared her. Ella said "I didn't really like it when the car got sprayed with mud." "Oh" was all I could say. Talk about scary stuff!! (Insert look of amazement) I sat there puzzled that something as silly as that could cause her to not even want to watch anymore of it. I kept thinking to myself that we may very well have to leave the ballet early if my daughter is seriously scared of mud.

I woke up early this morning partly excited and partly nervous, not being sure how the morning would play out. I had come up with an escape plan if one needed to be used. We got to the ballet, found our seats and started watching. Much to my delight, they had taken out the Mouse King all-together. There wasn't one scary thing in it...or any mud flinging of any sort. Thank Goodness. It was a success.

When we got home, Ella was inspired! She wanted her tutu skirt on and her hair put into a bun like the ballerinas. She pranced and twirled all around the living room yelling "look at me Mommy!" ...Ben liked it too, but not enough to wear a tutu and twirl!