Christmas 2011

We had an awesome first Christmas as a family of four:)  We started with Christmas at my parents house on the 24th where the kids were happy to be able to spend the day with their cousins from Ohio! 

All 5 of the cousins together:)  So cute!

Christmas Day we spent at home just the 4 of us.  It was such a great day!  I hope we can manage to keep a day to ourselves at home every year for Christmas.  We slept in and got up to the excitement of discovering that Santa had visited!  It was so magical to see the excitement on Athena's face to wake up on Christmas morning at home and see that Santa had come:)  We woke up Alton and then the kids opened presents in their jammies.  Such a fun morning and day! 

Alton got a big red wooden barn from Santa!  He loves it and immediately rounded up all of his tractors and started driving them into the barn and parking them all there. 

Still loves the tractors.  The big one in his hand was a Christmas present from grandpa Ralph and grandma Janet. 

This melted my heart.  I knew she was up to something because a couple of days before Christmas she asked me for boxes and tape.  I gave them to her and she disapeared into her room and when she came back she put the boxes under the tree.  She had wrapped up some of her dollie clothes to give to her dollies for Christmas so they would have presents to open too:) 

Last summer Ena and I read Charlotte's Web together one chapter a night and then watched the movie.  So for our next mommy and Ena book and movie adventure we're doing Mr. Popper's Penguins.  She got the book and movie from us for Christmas.   

For her Santa gift, she wrote a letter to him asking specificly for a blue, Columbia fleece jacket.  Santa made it happen! 

Alton was so cute opening his gifts.  He would tear off one little piece of wrapping paper at a time and hand it to John before tearing off more. 

Since Athena is constantly sneaking into the office and taking envelopes we thought we could remede the situation by giving her her own box of 175 envelopes.  She plays 'work' all the time and writes tons of notes and letters and sticks them all in envelopes. 

After 9 months of using all of his sister's princess stuff Alton finally got a new 'boy' snack plate.  He was pretty excited and immediately carried it into the kitchen and pointed to the pantry.  Smart boy;)  We put a little snack into his new plate for him and took a snack break before opening more presents:) 

Our sweet girl Amber taking in all of the excitment:)

Three piggies in a blanket snuggling after lunch. 

Of course a huge part of our special Christmas Day at home including lots of great food.  We made lots of yummy things throughout the day, but I focused on pictures of the kids this day:)  No foodie pictures in this post.  I will say that a certain little boy was happy to gorge himself on home made swedish meatballs though!
We're traveling up north for this coming New Years weekend to celebrate Christmas with John's family:)  So we have even more fun and celebrating yet to come!

Party Weekend #2

Athena's friend birthday party went great this weekend!  We went with the rule of having as many kids come as how many years old you are.  Though we needed a minumum of at least 6 to have it at the pottery studio she wanted it at, so we invited 8 to make sure we had at least the minimum number of kids.  As it turned out, exactly 5 of her friends were able to make it:)  They all had a fun time painting their projects, eating cupcakes and watching Ena open her presents.  The hour and a half flew by!  In a few days I can go back and pick up everyone's projects when they are done being fired and then we can take them to school and deliver them to her friends along with her thank you cards.  It works out pretty slick;)     

Such concentration!  Artists hard at work:)

She went with a horse theme for this party.  We had fun finding these little plastic horses and decorating the cupcakes with green sprinkles to look like the horses were hanging out in a grassy field. 

Happy 5th Birthday sweet angel baby!!!

Party weekend #1

December is usually a pretty fun & busy month around the zuge zoo:) In addition to all of the Christmas celebrations, we also have Athena's birthday. This weekend was the kick off! We had the family celebrations for Athena's birthday this weekend. Grandpa Jim came to spend some time visiting for her birthday on Saturday and then Grandma Kathleen, Grandpa Mike and my family came to celebrate her birthday on Sunday. Seriously can NOT believe she is turning five! Yeash!

Here she is with her cupcake tower fit for a Birthday Princess:)

Oh my goodness, a huge box of baby dolly clothes! This is one happy little girl:)

Next weekend is her friend party at a neat pottery studio here in town. Should be fun!

A Big Day For Athena!

Athena had a very big day (and night!) this weekend! She slept in her own bed, by herself, all night for the first time since she's been about 18 months old! She has separation anxiety that surfaces at night time. John and I have been very patient with having her sleep with us knowing that it is what she needs to feel secure. It's been hard when we felt like we needed to defend it to others who have no idea about adoption and separation anxiety but we know we're doing the right thing. We told her that when she felt ready to sleep alone in her own room we would get her a pet fish to have in her room to keep her company. We headed out today to pick one out:) We know she's going to have a long road ahead of her until she feels secure enough to hop into bed by herself with no tears every night, but we sure celebrated that first night and her getting her pet that she earned!

Here she is with her new pet Goldie the Goldfish. Yes, there is a fish in there-hiding behind the red plant in the corner after her exciting day of a ride in the car and a new home:)

We even celebrated with a goldfish breakfast! A PBJ cut out into a goldfish (a circle for the body and a heart for the tail), then covered with orange carrot 'scales'. The eye is a dried blueberry and the bubbles are cookie sprinkles.
We'll see how tonight goes! She's tucked in and reading books to Goldie right now, but she was very anxious about being alone in bed again tonight. I think we'll also do a sticker chart where she can earn other fun things for sleeping in her big girl bed. The sticker chart worked great when she started at preschool and there were tears every morning when it was drop off time. I needed to use it for about a month. After that she was used to drop off and we didn't need it anymore.

One thing is for absolute sure. We love her so much and are so proud of her no matter how long it takes! We're going to continue to be patient and do whatever it takes to help her be successful at this next big step:)

You'll never buy pancake mix again.

This is my go-to recipe for home made pancakes. They turn out great every time and the ingredients are things you always have on hand. They taste way better than the box mix kind and you don't need to worry about pancake mix expiring in the pantry if you don't go through it fast enough. The cast of characters:

1 1/4 cup flour

3 t. baking powder

1 T. sugar

1/2 t. salt

1 egg

1 cup milk

2 T. vegetable oil

Directions:

Mix all ingredients with electric hand mixer until mostly smooth. Let batter stand 20 minutes. Then fry 'em up:)

Wilderness Waterpark 2011

We had our second annual trip to the Wilderness Waterpark in Wisconsin Dells last weekend with friends. As expected it was so much fun and we're already making plans for next year:) This year instead of getting all separate rooms, we all shared a 3 bedroom suite and it was so nice with the kids to have the room to spread out and hang out together. There was a kitchen and living room and 3 bedrooms and each family got one bedroom. We arrived Friday evening and stayed until mid afternoon on Sunday and we all played in the waterparks all 3 days. The kids were exhausted after the weekend! (and the parents were a little bit too;) It's an affordable little mini vacation that we plan to keep doing every year as long as the kids are interested and keep enjoying it.

Here is Athena on her favorite 'green slide'.

Alton was a total water baby and had a blast in the baby areas at each of the 3 indoor waterparks at the resort.

Handsome surfer dude!

Look out below!
Daddy and Alton taking a Cheeto break:)

The 3 big girls goofing around:)

Our crew for the weekend:) Ages 2, 5, 4, 1, 4, 1

We're already looking forward to our 2012 trip back!

Alton 18 months

I had Alton in for his18 month well child check a couple of weeks ago. He actually was just turning 19 months when I took him in. Somehow along the line we got behind by a month and it has just stayed that way. I figure since he was a month premature, it means we're right on time, right?:) Well anywho, the big news is he is growing like a champ! He went from 11th percentile for height up to 21st percentile! Yay! He hovers around 50th for weight every time I take him in and that stayed the same. He still doesn't say much as far as words. He says 'mama' but not just for me. He calls me and John both mama. His other only consistent word is he calls Amber 'baa'. I've decided to go ahead and set up a speech evaluation for him through the Birth to 3 program. I made the phone call early last week and am in the process of working on the scheduling of it with our B to 3 coordinator. Alton may or may not qualify, but I just want to get some professional input either way because if he could use some therepy we should get started on it sooner than later. I've been taking tons of cute pictures of Alton to try to score some perfect ones to get ready for our next post placement report. He still LOVES tractors!

Look! I made a tractor train!

I can drive 2 at once!

Daddy dressed me in bibs today and I'm looking too stinkin cute!

Wait a minute, I see something over there that I haven't tried destoying yet!

If sissy can do it, then so can I!

Faster Ena! Faster!

I love my 4 wheeler almost as much as I love tractors:)

Pumpkin gutting:)

One of Athena's most favorite activities ever is gutting pumpkins. From the minute pumpkins are brought home all she can think about is when she gets to gut them and play with the guts. I would dare to say she looks forward to it as much as, if not more than Santa Clause coming, Easter Bunny coming and even her own birthday. We got some awesome pumpkins last weekend from our friends' very prolific pumpkin patch. (thanks guys!) Every night when I pick her up from daycare she asks if we could gut a pumpkin tonight. I've held her off all week because our weeknights are so short on time and we should wait until the weekend. Smart little thing asked me what day it was when I picked her up today and when I told her it was Friday, she knows Friday is a 'stay up late' night and therefor is part of the weekend! We got started with the cutting and gutting the minute we got home:)

We collect the seeds for roasting, though there were hardly any in this pumpkin for some reason. ps-don't you love her new haircut! It's all layered and stacked up the back and so cute on her. So easy to comb and go in the morning too. I love it!

This one's for you Katie:) We're working on our language and vocabulary development. Saying what the parts of the pumpkin are. Here she is showing off a piece of the pumpkin 'flesh'.
Realy getting into it with both hands.
She drew the face on with a marker, then I cut it out.
It was a little windy and cold when we went outside to light it so she ran back in to get her blankie to keep her warm while I snapped about a zillion pictures of her and her new pumpkin friend 'Eleanor'.
Good night Eleanor!

Crayon snack for 4K:)

We made these cute edible crayon snacks for Athena's treat day at school. I got the idea from the Our Best Bites blog over on my favorites blogs list.
First you cut pretzel logs in half and dunk each end in colored white chocolate. The Wilton brand is called 'candy melts'.

I printed these sheets for the wrappers from that blog too.

Super fun:)

Mama mobile number 2! Lets try this again:)

Now that all of the dust has settled from my car accident we finally had the time to do some car shopping and buy a new mini van to replace the one that I totaled. I loved my old mini van. We bought it used with only 23K miles and got so many awesome options on it that we never would have spent the money to get on a new one. I would have happily drove it into it's ripe old age for the next 10 years. But, many things in life are out of our hands and sometimes you just need to take the hand dealt to you and move forward;) My new mini van is definitely awesome too:) I love the color (charcoal dark grey that shimmers in the sunlight and looks black at night with chrome trim) It is a brand new 2011 and I think we got a pretty decent deal on it because it's a model year end clearance car since the 2012 models are already on the lots. It also has some pretty neat/different features that my old one didn't have and after driving it for just one day, I love this one now too:) So, here is my second smokin' hot mama mobile after laying my first one to rest after just one year.

Here's Alton having fun coloring with crayons:) The fun of coloring lasted for about 1 minute!
After that he decided to pull an all-boy-Alton move and destroy the paper & throw it. I tell ya, after reading the book Gender Matters (a good read that I recommend to any parent) and raising both a boy and a girl there is no doubt in my mind that there are definitely innate personality differences in boys and girls that comes from their gender regardless of how they are raised/parented. This kid is a trip after raising only a girl so far:)

Ena's first day of 4K!

Athena had her first day of 4K today:) She was beyond excited this morning and let me tell you she is beyond tired tonight!! It's a district run 4K program, but it is physicaly housed in the private preschools in town because of space/room issues. We requested her current preschool/ daycare as her 4K location and got our request. I can still drop her (and Alton) off at 7:00 and pick her up at about 4:30/5:00 like usual. They simply walk her down the hall to the 4K room when the time comes and pick her up to walk her back when 4K is over. She is in the afternoon session which I think she will really benefit from because she recieves her regular preschool in the morning and then district 4K in the afternoon. Had she gotten the morning session, she would have district 4K in the morning, then return to preschool/daycare in the afternoon just in time to eat lunch and have a 2 hour nap. The way it is now, she gets twice as much school but no more nap. That's why she is so very tired tonight, but we'll slowly bump up her bedtime little by little each night to make up for it:) She said everything went great and came home very excited about her first day:)