Holidays

Well things haven't really slowed down much, but we keep trucking on!  November wasn't too exciting.  We had another concert with the Idaho Falls Symphony, Asher and David had school, and David had his end of the trimester concert that I took the kids to!  I was really excited that Asher and David had the entire week off for Thanksgiving.  We took advantage of that time to get some chores done around the house, like splitting all the wood from the apple trees we cut down.  David was very sore after 2 days of chopping that wood, but it makes me feel good that we have a secondary heat source if our power goes out in below zero temperatures.  

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun!  My sister reserved a church building for us to have dinner at so we had lots of room to spread out.  My mom rented a giant inflatable bounce house/slide and we set it up in the gym so before and after dinner all the kids had a lot of fun playing on that!  The day after Thanksgiving was my mom's birthday and so my parents and 4 out of 5 of us siblings all went to lunch together.  It was very weird because it was an all adult dinner.  I don't remember the last time I went out with adults besides David to have lunch!  Later that night I took my kids to my moms house and we had a movie and birthday party for my mom.  It was a lot of fun and a great break!

December has been pretty good so far, minus everyone getting sick.  Well, besides me.  I always manage to avoid the sickness which means I get to take care of everyone else.  David always asks me why I don't get sick and I tell him it's because of my amazing willpower. ;)  So all this week there have been lots of fevers, chills, congestion, coughs, and lots of people falling asleep in random places because they are too tired to move.  I think they're all slowly getting over it, though, so hopefully we can have an illness-free Christmas!  

I just wanted to add another section of "things I want to remember" because there are lots of things I just don't want to forget:

• Ava's favorite phrase she says all the time is "A pah de toe".  I have no idea what it means, she says it in any and all circumstances, and she has been saying it really since she started talking.  What has made me laugh lately is that when Ava says this, Mia will respond with "Oh, nice!"
• Speaking of things Mia says...she really hates when I brush her hair.  Or wash her hair.  Or basically touch her head.  She has a very sensitive scalp.  Sometimes when I am brushing or washing her hair she'll yell out "Please, help me!"  That always makes me feel like a super good mom.
• I recently went to Asher's Parent-Teacher Conference.  His teachers always tell me about the funny things he does in class and I'm always so relieved to hear that he is nice and helpful at school, even when I'm not there to help remind him.  His teacher said that she likes to have students come up to the whiteboard to help point at the words they're reading and she always laughs when Asher does it because he'll copy her mannerisms and say things like "I'm not going to call on you if you're not raising your hand!"  She says he's always very nice to the other kids and is a great reader!  She says he's almost at a 2nd grade reading level.  I like that at least one of my kids is a bookworm just like me.
• Mia can be a difficult toddler sometimes.  When she gets upset she has a hard time telling me what she wants and gets furious if I don't guess right.  So sometimes she can be a little bit of a trial.  But when Ava gets mad all I have to do is chase her around the house a little and she will be giggling and laughing her head off!  I will be so sad if she loses her belly laugh and starts getting all serious because she is one of the most joyful people I know!
• Mia loves containers.  She will find little things around the house and fill any basket, bucket, or box she can find!  Every once in awhile I have to go through the house and empty all her containers out because things like remotes and headphones will go missing.
  

And now for picture time!

We were watching a movie in Asher's room while David was teaching lessons.  This is how Mia wanted to watch.  Both her and Ava love to play in this and pretend to take naps.

Asher was reading them books one day after school.  He seriously is an amazing big brother.  Most of the time. ;)

I like her cute little face.

We got rid of the cribs!  Ok, not got rid of because I'm not sure if we're done having kids and if we do have more I'm still terrified it's going to be twins again.  But we broke out the twin size beds and squished them into the girls room! 

They really like their beds.  I only had one bed rail when we first put them up so we just pushed the beds together.  This led to Asher getting very jealous that he was the only one who didn't GET to share a room and had to sleep all by himself.  I told him lots of kids wanted their own rooms, but I don't think that helped much.

Thanksgiving!  Ava loved "helping" do the puzzle with David.

She also loved going down the slide with Asher!  Slides are by far her favorite thing.  I love that she loves slides.  Asher's favorite was always the swings and that meant me standing there pushing him on a swing for an hour every time we went to the park.  The slide is much less work for me. ;)

First real snow!  We got a pretty good amount and Asher really wanted to build a snowman, but the snow wasn't right for snowman making.  But we all went out and played in it anyways!

Asher pulling the girls around our yard on the sled.

If I only had Ava, moving beds would've been so easy because she is my best sleeper.  But Mia likes to stay up late so I had to cut out naps for both of them after we switched beds because there is no way Ava would go down and take a nap while Mia got to stay up.  So for awhile Ava would find a nice spot on our hard floor and settle down to take a power nap. She has adjusted now and rarely falls asleep during the day and now they go to bed at 6:45 instead of 7:30 which makes me feel like my evenings are much freer!

It snowed on Thanksgiving and when Asher saw it he shouted out "It's like the earth knows it's almost Christmas!"  He loves Christmas and can hardly wait!

Ava is asleep on her bed so nice.  Mia is asleep upside down because she had spent the last hour kicking at the wall with her feet.  This was when I decided we really did need to cut out naps so there was a chance she'd fall asleep at a reasonable hour.

We had a sick day.  Mia and David took a recuperative nap together while we watched a movie.

Asher got a flyer from school that the local food bank was putting on a Christmas thing where you could see live reindeer and Santa and they would accept food donations.  It was a fun family outing!  David had taken Mia inside a store, but Asher and Ava got to see the Grinch and Max!

The kids were all super excited to see some reindeer!

And they loved Santa!  Well, Mia didn't love it, but once I asked her if she wanted to sit by Ava she was fine and sat right down.  It was a very cute setup and maybe next year I'll get to have them all look at the camera at the same time!

Every other year the Idaho Falls Symphony brings in a professional ballet company to do the Nutcracker.  Neither of us played in it (which was actually really nice).  They do one night performance and one shortened matinee performance for local schools.  A couple days before the performance I got an email from the symphony office saying one of the schools couldn't come and they had a whole bunch of extra seats we could use!  I decided since it was free and wouldn't last more than an hour I would try taking my girls.  I'm so glad I did because they LOVED it!  Ava sat on my lap and hardly blinked her eyes because she was so engrossed in it.  Mia was so excited and kept yelling out things that were happening on stage "It's a mouse!" "She has pretty dress!" It was fun having some girl time!