Virtual Baby

I created a virtual baby on the VW Routan website, using pictures of Mike and me. He's kinda funny looking, but cute. I can't wait to see what our real son will look like!!

So Far No Sign of Baby!

Yesterday Mike's stepmom left me a message starting with "I couldn't reach you on your home or cell phone, you're probably in the delivery room..." I laughed out loud.
I think I did a dumb thing every time someone asked my due date. I would answer December 9th, but then follow that up with "But Elise and Lydia were 2 and 3 weeks early."
So now I am in that 2-3 week early window, and um... nothing is happening.
Watch, he'll probably come on December 16th, ha!

"Hair blogger" for a day

Sometimes I feel guilty for not being more like my mom, who used to put my sister's and my hair in nice tight french braids all the time, and made us sleep in sponge curlers every Saturday night. Mom told me once that she wouldn't dare take 6 kids out in public looking like ragamuffins, because strangers judge large families more harshly. I always thought that was funny. You'd think they would give a mom of 6 a break if her kids' outfits and hair make them look homeless!

So anyway, my friend Julie recently introduced me to her favorite hair blog for little girls. Julie's girls have been sporting all kinds of fancy hairdos, and this was the source.

Hair blogs were something I'd never heard of before, but apparently there's a neverending network of moms who post instructions for fancy little girl do's. It seems to go hand-in-hand with marketing cute handmade bows. I checked out a bunch of sites (a fantastic time-waster) and learned how to do this cool twisty french braid that I've seen before, but never knew how it was done.

Elise actually sat for me this morning and let me be creative with her hair! Usually she wants to do her hair HERSELF, and all I'm allowed to do is recommend which headband might not clash too much.

Here are some pictures, but keep in mind they were taken 6 hours later. We're hoping tomorrow morning she'll have some fabulous waves.

Once there was a Snow Girl

Once there was a snow girl, tall tall tall... (and the poor thing was left undecorated for the first 24 hours):


In the sun, she melted... (and slouched over, but we finally put her face on). Did you know big carrots are only like 10 cents? Totally worth it.

Snowy Day!

Elise and Lydia were so excited this morning when they looked out the window. Elise made big plans for playing in the snow, and I hoped it would last until after preschool and lunch, which it has.

I think I'm going to count this as the first official snowy day of the season. We had one a while back, but it was on a Sunday (so we couldn't play in it) and it pretty much all melted a few hours later.

Stay tuned for snowman pictures. He is all built, we just need to find stuff for his face etc.

New Posts Galore!

I just spent a few hours catching up from AUGUST! Laziness is partly to blame, but also I ran out of harddrive space on my computer, and I couldn't get pictures off my camera. Luckily, Mike recently installed an extra drive to solve my problem!

For those of you with way too much time on your hands, feel free to check out what we've been up to the last 3 months!

(oh, and I finally figured out how to "fake" the dates of my posts, isn't that great?)

Trick or Treating

Trick or treating was fun. Between Mike's knee and my pregnancy aches and pains, it was hard to decide which one of us should take Elise and Lydia out. I ended up going, while Mike stayed home to answer the door.

Lydia got the hang of it pretty quickly, and as we walked away from each house she informed me "Mommy, I say [said] trick or treat!" Elise got a little too enthusiastic about the candy. The first few people who held out their whole bowl to her got robbed of a whole handful (or two) of candy before I realized and put a stop to it. It didn't even occur to me beforehand to teach trick-or-treat etiquette (besides saying "Thank you")!

The girls had a lot of energy for most of the time. Lydia was having a hard time lifting her little treat bucket once it got pretty full, but she insisted on carrying it herself. But then after a while she wanted me to carry her. That was about the time I called Mike and told him to turn off the porch light for a minute and come pick us up! We weren't even that far from home, but there was no way I was carrying Lydia all the way back.

The rest of the night, Lydia kept a firm grip on that bucket, and it was so hard trying to convince her to let go and change into her pajamas! She is so funny about candy! As you may remember from our Easter entry, she eats it immediately and as fast as she can. Elise takes a different approach. If she gets a sack of candy from a party or a roll of smarties from the checker at Macey's, she eats one and puts the rest away for later. She sometimes tells me her plan is to eat just one each day. Despite their quirks though, both girls are surprisingly generous with their candy!

First thing this morning, both girls asked for their candy buckets (from off the top of the fridge). I told them they had to get dressed and eat breakfast first. Lydia was happy to comply. Elise ate breakfast, but she decided she didn't need to get dressed, because she still had a stash of candy in her room from visiting Grandma at the elementary school! She stayed in her pajamas until 11:00. :)