The Great Outdoors

I often dream about what it would be like to live somewhere in the middle of nowhere on a big piece of land. Our kids could run free in the outdoors, we could have some chickens and a dairy cow (that the kids would have to milk), and I could avoid people to my heart's content. There is a country song that starts out, "Well, I grew up wild and free, walkin' these fields in my barefeet. There wasn't no place I couldn't go, with a .22 rifle and a fishin' pole." I hear that and I want it for my kids and I wish that they could grow up like that. Don't get me wrong, I know that I romanticize the "country lifestyle" in my mind, but I still often think about how great it would be.

Sometimes, in my dreaming about how great it would be to live in wide open spaces somewhere, I forget about how great it is right here. Granted, we can't have a cow and I can't send Jake out to shoot us a wild turkey for dinner (which would give him tremendous pleasure), but we do live in such an amazing place. We just have to share it with a lot of other people. One of my favorite perks about our particular location is that if we walk a few houses down to the end of our street, we get to a trail that leads us directly into a wilderness park. Jay and the kids love to ride their bikes through there, and I like to take the kids there to just explore and enjoy nature. I don't take advantage of it nearly as much I should though. And, I can't exactly let the kids run free there - you know, on account of the occasional mountain lion, and the fact that it is not our personal property and, therefore, crazy people might also be running free there. But, whenever we spend time there, I always promise that we will do it more often. The latest activity of choice "down in the dirt" (as the kids refer to the area at the end of our street) is shooting practice...

Hopefully, they'll get good enough that if we do ever end up in the country somewhere, I can send them out to shoot me a little something for dinner.

Lovin' on Tate

Everybody in the family continues to be smitten with Tate, and Tate continues to bring us all such happiness. We truly cannot get enough of him and his sweet little smiles and giggles and noises. I have a video of Tate giggling while Jay makes funny noises at him, but for some reason it won't upload. The rest of us are gathered around him just laughing at him laugh. There's just something about a baby's giggles that make you happy. You don't care if you have to act like a fool to get them or if you have to do the same thing over and over again. Those giggles are worth it! The kids are constantly reading to him, talking to him, kissing him, and, really, smothering him. And he just smiles.

Sorry for the lengthy video. I would suggest fast-forwarding to somewhere after the 2 minute mark and then notice how Addi pays no attention to where her body is or to the fact that she practically rolls over onto Tate. That is typical of her...no awareness whatsoever of what her body is doing.

She decided to sing this book to him, again demonstrating the remarkable singing talent my children are prone to.

Don't ask why Addi is wearing a sundress in the middle of winter, with cowboy boots and some sort of sun hat and Minnie Mouse ears. I do not have a good answer to that question.

At the end of the day though, Daddy is still number one!

Christmas 2011

Yes, I am well aware that Christmas was a couple of weeks ago, but I am just now getting around to posting some Christmas pics. Christmas Eve was much quieter this year than it usually is. We always get together with my family on Christmas Eve and with a total of 13 kids (plus 2 more on the way!) between us, it is always a fun night with a lot of chaos. This year was certainly still fun, but not nearly so chaotic because 8 of the 13 cousins weren't there. Two of my three sisters and their families weren't there, so it was much quieter than usual. Have I mentioned how much I truly hate that we are not all together anymore? I do.

But, we still had a great time. My parents gave Jake a Lego set, which is always a hit. He could hardly rip into the box and get it put together fast enough. Addi got the Josefina American Girl doll from them. She has started getting into American Girl lately and has been wanting one of the dolls, but spending $100 on a doll is just not something that we were willing to do. So, instead, I bought a used one from Craigslist for half the price, and Addi doesn't know the difference. The doll was going to be Addi's present from us, but my mom needed an idea, so it became her present from my parents instead. She LOVES her and takes her everywhere.

Then, Christmas morning started with our treasure hunt for Jesus that the kids really love doing. I tried to make the clues a little trickier this year so that "following the star" to find Jesus would be a little more challenging. We then ate a little birthday cake and finished reading our Jesse Tree book and the story of Christ's birth, and talked about what we were doing for Jesus for His birthday. Then, we headed out to deliver Christmas goodies to a few random families. We love this Christmas tradition that we started a few years ago and love that it helps the kids to focus on others first. We stayed close to home this year and delivered to a couple of neighbors that we don't really know and another family up the street that just had a baby (their 7th!).

On our way to deliver treats

Jake and Addi take turns, with one of them setting the goodies at the door and one of them ringing the bell, and then they both run and hide.

When we returned from that, it was Jake and Addi's turn to open their presents. First, they opened the presents that they had gotten each other. Jake picked out (on his own) an American Girl sewing project for Addi (so, in other words, a sewing project for me), and Addi got Jake a 5-in-1 survival tool, which he thought was pretty much the coolest thing ever. This thing is a serious tool with an ax, saw, hammer, etc. and Jake loved it. He spent the next couple of hours playing with that (he took it outside and chopped down a small tree in our front yard with it) and his new legos, while Addi played with her doll. Jay and I also got to open our presents from the kids. I got a new pair of flip flops and we each got some sort of craft that they had made.

Our neighbor, Jack, helped Jake to cut down the tree. I bought Jack the same survival tool that Addi gave Jake, so the two of them worked together. I don't think that his parents were too thrilled with my choice of a present though. They thought it was a little dangerous. Oops!

Jake would have been perfectly content playing with his tool and doing nothing else for the rest of the day, but Addi requested to move on. So, they then opened their present from Nana and Papa. Addi got an outfit for Josefina (if you know Addi, you know that she changes clothes about 10 times a day, so she is thrilled to have changes of clothes for Josefina as well) and the entire set of Josefina books. Addi has gotten to be such a good reader that she reads them to me sometimes instead of me reading them to her. Needless to say, she loved her gifts from Jay's parents and then spent the next part of the day playing with Josefina some more, changing her clothes, etc. She did that while Jake tried out his present from Jay's parents, which was a really cool Nerf bow and arrow that he loved. He set up target practice and was actually really good at shooting it. They then spent the next couple of hours playing with those things.

It was probably early afternoon sometime when I suggested that they open their present from us. They would have been perfectly happy to just keep playing with the things they were playing with, but I was excited to give them what we had gotten them. We got Jake a Red Ryder BB gun (that came with some very strict rules), and got Addi a weaving loom, which also goes along with the Josefina theme. (Josefina learns to weave blankets in the stories.) The goal will be for us to work together to actually learn how to use the loom and to make a blanket for Josefina. So really, it's a present that created more work for me. Not sure what I was thinking on that one. We knew that Jake would be ecstatic about the bb gun, and he was. As you can imagine, the rest of the day (and pretty much every day since) was spent alternating between various weapons and legos for Jake and in a make-believe doll world for Addi.

Poor little Tate got nothing...not even a picture taken. I take that back, he did get some cute clothes from Jay's parents and from Jay's aunt and uncle. And I always have some cute pictures of Taters...

Superbaby

Tate will be 3 months old tomorrow. I know, I can't believe it either. According to the "experts," I should probably have started giving him tummy time around a month ago. I haven't though because, well, I just haven't. I can see that he's plenty strong, and it's much more fun for me to hold him and look at his face and talk to him when he's awake. I decided to put him down on his stomach for a couple minutes this morning though, and he proceeded to immediately turn himself over onto his back. I thought that it had to just be a fluke. After all, he hasn't even had any practice time on his belly. I put him back on his stomach and reminded him that he's already getting way too big way too fast, and he's not supposed to be rolling over for at least another month and darn it, he needs to slow down. He responded by immediately rolling over again. So, I got the camera, put him back on his stomach, and...

Getting Ready For Christmas - Advent 2011

This year, I haven't posted any of the things that we do during December to prepare for Christmas because I posted most of it last year. So, I'll direct you to those posts instead. We are on our third year of eating rice and beans for advent. It's just such a tangible way for our entire family to sacrifice something in order to have more to give. The kids are able to be involved and they really get what it is we're doing. They are again choosing items this year from the World Vision Christmas catalog that they want to give. They take this very seriously and put a lot of thought into exactly what they want to buy with the money we are saving by eating only rice and beans for dinner each night.

This is the advent wreath that Jay made for me last year.

We did our annual St. Nicholas Day festivities with friends, but, unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from it. As I've mentioned before, Santa is not a part of our Christmas celebration. Our kids know that St. Nicholas was a real person who loved Jesus and gave generously, but that Santa Claus is not. You can read more about it here, but basically, we do not want Christ to be replaced by the jolly man in red. We want Jesus to be the reason we celebrate and the reason our kids are excited at Christmas time - because of the ultimate gift of Jesus, not because Santa is going to show up and leave presents under the tree.

Some of the other things we do during advent to attempt to focus our attention on Christ are posted here.

And, here are just a few pictures of our tree decorating night from a couple of weeks ago...

For some reason, Jay has loved doing this little balancing act with each of our children as soon as they can start to hold their heads up on their own.

Jake decided to write a birthday card to Jesus to wish Him a happy 2011th birthday.

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving in Tucson with Jay's family and had a fantastic time. It was great to spend time with his parents and to see some extended family that we haven't seen in several years. We had some concerns about the drive with Tate since it is more than a seven hour drive and he is sometimes not a huge fan of riding in the car (after all, that means that he has to be set down), but he ended up doing really well. Jake and Addi were great too and didn't complain at all even though we made the drive on Thursday and then had to turn around and come right back on Saturday. We weren't sure how it was going to go when we left our house on Thursday and had literally been in the car for 5 minutes when Addi asked if we were in Arizona yet. And she was dead serious.

I don't think that this picture is really from when we were in Arizona, but I just needed an excuse to throw it in.

The kids learned how to play battleship while we were there and it became a great source of entertainment.

I'm not sure where she gets these poses.

I was not a fan of the motorcycle ride around the block, but Jay convinced me that it was fine, and Jake was in heaven.

Nana's first time with Tate. I think she likes him!