Trying to play catch up here. Here’s a bit about our December, not including the most exciting news… that will follow in another post .

December held a Christmas pageant at the church in which both kids were in the Angel Choir. They each learned a different song and performed it in the Christmas performance. They wore little white choir robes and gold garland on their heads. Aubrey was front and center in her group – right in front of the microphone. Although we couldn’t see her from our seats, we could sure hear her!  Turns out they needed her at the mike too because the other kids forgot certain parts of the song! We were able to see Braeden and he was really excited to see us too – waving a lot. He was very proud of his song.

Aubrey also got to sing with her class in a Christmas show at her school. They sang a few Christmas carols with an adult choir. It was pretty hard to hear their little voices, but they had a blast!

We had a nice Christmas dinner just the four of us. We were so scared that I’d go into labor on Christmas Eve or Christmas day. We had a lot of people offer to help out if I did, but we still didn’t want to have to drop off our kids at someone’s house on Christmas day and not have any presents to open there.

Christmas here was crazy. The kids got everything on their lists (they’ll tell you they didn’t get earmuffs though – which they didn’t ask for!) We have to work on scaling back the lists I think. They are officially spoiled!

Hope you enjoy the pictures. Click on “View Full Album” then click on a picture to the right to see it bigger.

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Today was the kids’ first snow day since we’ve been here. I’m kind of surprised. Last year, they didn’t even call snow days when it was 35 below! Today the roads were terrible in the morning (about 6-8 inches yesterday), but most schools were closed. It was a beautiful sunny day today, so it was pretty ironic (and good for snow playing, I guess) that they weren’t allowed to go to school. It was supposed to snow a little until noon and there is a “blizzard advisory” until midnight tonight. This only means that the winds are going to blow all the snow already on the ground around like crazy so one might end up with eighteen inches their front yard and two inches in the back yard.

The kids played outside a lot today. We live at the end of a cul-de-sac, so when the snow plow comes to plow our street, it makes a huge pile of snow in the middle. The kids had a blast with that. Here’s a picture of them on top of the “mountain”.

Last year, I heard you *have* to go to the Santa display at Macys at the Nicollet Mall and see the Holidazzle Parade. We never made it; I think we let the weather scare us.

We actually made it this past weekend and it was great! The ‘Day in the Life of an Elf’ display was great. The kids got to see Santa and tell them everything on their lists.

The parade was coooold. 20 degrees cold. We had the kids in their snow pants, boots, hats, gloves. The full get up. We were wrapped up in blankets and Christian got us each a hot chocolate which helped. Christian was running around trying to find a hat or gloves or earmuffs for himself. I asked him before we left the house if he’d be warm enough and he said yes. Hmmm… wind-chill musta’ got him. ha ha funny boy. The parade was a fairytale themed and all of lights. People walking were all plugged in and lit up. Kinda’ reminded me of Disneyland, but much less spectacular. Kids loved it though!

(double click on the pictures to see them larger)

Check out scary Santa!

Picnic in the car before the parade.

Awwww… family pic

And, the last of the floats… Santa Clause!! (or, as Aubrey called him earlier that day, Nick.)

We had a quiet Thanksgiving this year. I think it is our first without any outside family. Christian got a turkey from work and I roasted that. The kids helped me come up with the menu, largely based off a Thanksgiving song Braeden was going to sing in his “Special Person’s Day” Program at school.  “Corn bread muffins, chestnut stuffin’, pumpkin pie..2 feet high…”

We had turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn bread muffins, green beans, brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin cheesecake. It was a lot of work for just four people! I’d much rather cook and clean with all the women in the family around!

Braeden was front and center in his Kindergarten program. He did a great job. We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

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Aubrey: “Mama, I know how you got another baby.”

Me: (holding my breath) “You do? how?”

Aubrey: “Because Daddy loves you very much”

Me: “Ahhh. Yes. He does.” (phew!)

She is also very interested in how breastfeeding works and how exactly the baby will get out of mommy’s tummy.

Busy. Wow, what an understatement. I’ll try to get you all up to speed with our lives and keep it brief at the same time.

Braeden: He finished up flag football and is now taking floor hockey at the YMCA. He can’t wait until Spring to get on his first real baseball league.

I got a call from the Kindergarten teacher the third week of school about inappropriate behavior. Apparently, he and another boy were comparing underwear characters in the bathroom.

Braeden has recently taken an interest in writing comic books. He is learning how to sound-spell in school, and likes to write down his stories. He is also being pulled for enrichment classes for math and reading (he needs more challenging activities), so we are very proud about that.

He turned 6! We had a baseball party indoors because the first snow of the season decided to creep up on us the morning of his party – in mid-October! nice.

Aubrey: Started dance classes again this month. She loves it and fit right in as a lot of the kids this year were in her class last year too.

Aubrey is a budding artist. She is including details in her work that continue to amaze us.

She got to go to her first concert with her dad. Mylie Cyrus. Christian said it was totally worth the 16 hour drive (to St. Louis and back. Twice.) to get to see her face. She was so excited!

Both: They are both getting ready to sing in the Angel choir for the church Christmas pageant. Practices start next week.

They are talking a lot about Christmas, so if you are wondering what to get them, we have set up a wish list on Christian’s Amazon account. Here is a link: Christmas wish list

Us: We finally rented out our St. Louis house. It’s only for 6 months, but it’s actually better to put the house on the market in the Spring than in the winter, so it won’t be that bad. What we are hoping and praying for is that this family will sell their house in Louisiana, then buy ours!

We moved. We now live in a 4 bedroom house, so now each kid will have their own room! There is a lake in the back and Aubrey actually caught a tiny bluegill this afternoon with some hot pink bait!

We love our neighborhood. There are young couples and kids all around us. Braeden wishes there were more boys, as he has only met one and he is three. He’s having fun with the girls though, jumping in leaf piles and riding bikes. Next year they’ll all ride the bus together. We kept Braeden at the same school for the rest of this year because there wasn’t an opening for him in the Kindergarten all-day program at the school we’re zoned for.

Christian: He adores work. He constantly tells me he’s never worked so hard in his life, but he loves every minute of it. I am so thankful that we made the right choice to move here last year.

He finally got rid of his BMW. We traded it in for a 7 passenger Jeep Commander. We like it a lot and there is plenty of room for 3 car seats!

Me: This pregnancy has been the worst of all my pregnancies. It is wreaking havoc on my body in ways I don’t care to share right now, but they are not pretty, let me tell you! The baby is healthy though, so that’s the good news. I was in last week for a Level 2 ultrasound. I had a low lying placenta, and was having to go in every month until it rose up. This month it was up, so I don’t have to go back in and I don’t need a cesarean. Kinda’ sad, really; I liked getting a peek at the baby. When I went in last week, she weighed 4 pounds 1 ounce.

I have been tired. Really tired. I have pregnancy-related anemia, but only slightly and I’m taking iron supplements, so I can’t really blame that I guess. I have had no time to myself at all since the beginning of summer (a crucial element in my happiness recipe). To remedy this, I have recently cut down my hours at work. When Aubrey was at school, I was splitting my time between working for the church and teaching 5 classes for the preschool. I have decided not to work the church hours for December to give me about 3 weeks “off” before the kids get out of school and then the baby comes. It’s not much time, but at least I can fill it how I want. My first day I cleaned – how sad is that?

I’ve been volunteering to teach Sunday school twice a month and I’m teaching catechism to a group of 5th graders every Wednesday.

I’m still doing cakes. I’ve gotten a few orders and was contacted by the Wilton team to teach at the Michael’s in my city. I told her I was going to have a baby in January and she said she’d call me back in February.

So that’s about it. Now that I have a few more hours a week, I’m hoping to get back to keeping up with the blog. Unpacking, house projects and Christmas cards are already filling up that space though! We hope you all are well and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Christian and I are becoming Food Network junkies. We love to watch Chopped, Iron Chef America, The Next Food Network Star, Ace of Cakes and I’ve watched all the Chefographies. Watching all these shows always inspires me to do something more with my culinary skills from trying new things to changing the way I pronounce certain words. Christian has been teasing me because I’ve started pronouncing Ricotta like all the chefs do (Ree-coat-tuh) and not the way I’ve heard my whole life (Rih-cot-uh).

Most recently, I’ve been inspired to improve my cake decorating skills. I have always loved decorating cakes and I think I have a talent there. I always try something new when I make a cake, and I am always pleased with the results, save for the time I tried to make a tier cake with a toilet paper tube (tasted great though)!

I just completed two Wilton cake decorating classes (Wilton 2 and 3. I took Wilton 1 last year). Here’s some cakes I’ve done lately: 

Anniversary cake: first basket weave, first time working with Royal icing and first layer cake.

Spiderman: First cupcake cake

Rosebud Sheet cake: Made it to sample at a church auction (I donated a cake).

Football & teammates: My first job! First fondant cover.

Bow: Fondant cover and bow. Wilton class finale

Roses: Fondant cover. First time with fondant roses.

We had our follow up ultrasound today to make sure the second Choroid Plexus Cyst was gone. It was. The baby is perfect. Everything she looked at, she used words like normal, beautiful and perfect. It was really great to hear. She checked the brain, the heart, the umbilical cord, the legs, hands and face, amniotic fluid…everything!

She is weighing one pound, eight ounces today. She had the hic-ups when we were in there, though I can’t feel those yet. I have been (and so have Christian and the kids) feeling her move for about a month now. She is measuring 4 days behind my due date, which is normal.

We got some really great pictures this time! Click on them and they will get larger. Here’s what you are seeing: First pic; face is on the right. You can see her arm and her hand (fingers out) is in front of her face. 2nd pic: face. 3rd pic: face. The nose has a shadow on it from the umbilical cord. Bottom two are profile pics, baby looking up in both.

Both the little ones are off to school for the year. I am excited to say the least. They are too. I hope they never lose this excitement for school.

Braeden’s first day was last Wednesday. He went for an hour and a half with me and Aubrey. It was an orientation day. I received lots of paperwork to fill out and return and Braeden got a chance to practice going through the lunch line and did a classroom scavenger hunt. He couldn’t wait for Thursday because he got to ride the bus all by himself and be the classroom helper of the day- the first one! 

Here’s a picture of him at orientation.

So Thursday morning rolls around. We’re up, dressed, fed, beds made, rooms cleaned and at the bus stop five minutes early. Ten minutes pass and the bus is coming up the street. We stand and back up…. and the bus passes us by. I put my arms up but he doesn’t stop. I wonder what happened, Braeden starts to cry and Aubrey tries to keep pace with me back to the house. I am urging Braeden to hurry up so I can get him to school on time. He is devastated and thinks the bus will turn around to get him. I make the phone call to the bus office and they inform me that the bus stop is at Ivy Lane  West, not East.   The street signs in my neighborhood do not say West and East. Just Ivy Lane, and since I had on several occasions seen kids with backpacks on last year at Ivy Lane [East], I (wrongly) assumed that was the correct Ivy Lane. Go figure.

By the time I got him to school, he was ready to start his day. I asked him if he wanted me to walk in with him or drop him off where the busses go. He said, “I’m in big-boy Kindergarten now, you can drop me off”. I think I should have cried here, but I was still so hyped up with missing the bus I didn’t cry until that night, when he was in the bathtub.

He had a great first day, although to you and me it might not sound like it. He said he met a friend, but the friend ended up saying he didn’t want to be Braeden’s friend anymore. And Braeden had anticipated being the helper of the day, but that didn’t get to start until the next day. I think he really did have fun though. He got to ride the bus home and he didn’t come home in tears. That’s enough for me.

Here’s a picture of the highlight of his first “real” day of school.

On to Miss Aubrey. She had orientation with me last Friday. She said she wanted to dress like a rainbow. Here’s her outfit:

I know some moms would cringe. They work so hard to pick out the prettiest dress with matching shoes and hair-bow for the first day. I say… eh… wear what you want!

Her first real day of school was wonderful. She had a blast. She has two friends in her class that she knew from last year and both her teachers are new to her this year. She likes them a lot though. When I showed up to teach Spanish, she was really excited to see me and she was very well behaved in the class. I didn’t have as great of luck with Braeden in my class last year. When I asked her about her day, it took her about five minutes to tell me the whole day. Step by step. If she was taking too long to remember something, I’d ask her a question like, “did you have snack?” She’d get frustrated and say, “I’ll tell you when we had snack” because she needed to tell it all in the correct order. This method of telling about her day started at the end of last year. It’s pretty funny.  If you ever want to hear her do it (and you have time), call her and ask how her day at school was!

I was hoping to enjoy some time to myself now that they are both away, but I was hired to do some work for the church, so there goes my “alone” time. Ah well… maybe in four more years when the next little girl goes off to preschool.

Awhile back ago, Christian lost a bet at work and had to shave his head. Braeden wouldn’t even look at Christian for the first day or two. A few times we asked Braeden if he wanted to shave his head like daddy and he’d always have an extreme reaction in the negative.

Christian and I were both surprised last night when, upon getting out of the shower, Braeden announces that he wants to shave his head! We wondered why and he said simply, “because I don’t want to wash my hair”. He also talked about how when we comb his hair it hurts and this would stop that.  I reminded him that he is going to start school next week and everyone would see this new hair cut. He said he thought his new friends would like it. We reminded him several times that there is no going back once it’s done. He understood and had made up his mind.

We agreed to let him do it. He is very happy with it. I like him better with hair, but I’m not going to say anything. I just like that he made a decision based off sound reasons and stuck to it.