Lots of lots of kids

I took on a big job today while the kids were off from school (still not sure why we get all these random days off from school!?). Random Fridays off from school are easy for me, since I don't work Fridays. But they aren't so easy for parents that do work. So today, I offered to watch a friend's 3 kids in addition to my own. We had 3 six year olds, a 5 year old and a 4 year old. Wowzas. 

Boy did we have fun! 

Fashion shows, dance parties, art time and games were among some of the things that we did. The girls did great sharing their toys/space and enjoying the day. I was exhausted, only because it's a lot of work to keep up with the "can you get me ____", "I need a push" (David LOVED the indoor swing!),  "I spilled", "can we have a snack?", etc.

I was happy to help out and my good deed was repaid tonight as Leigha came over to babysit and Ryan/I went to see a movie! It all works out :) 

Earrings

Sidney has been begging to get her ears pierced, this after seeing her BFF's video on Facebook of her recent adventures (clarification: it was on BFF's mom's FB page). Eventually, Sidney got smart and mentioned her request to daddy. He quickly gave in and suggested a date. Shockingly, she was still interested the next day and in just a few seconds...viola! ears pierced. 

She whimpers at the end of the video, but never actually cried. And she is sooooo very proud of her ears! We thought she might not want to lay down on them to sleep, but it hasn't been a battle at all. She loves to show off her new earrings and cannot wait to change them out to some super fancy ones!
Way to go Sidney!

The wee one

Today I took Sidney to her required 4 year old assessment for her future academic career. She went into the assessment looking something like this: 

Thankfully she came out looking more like this. 

Sidney came in on the assessment right where they predict she would for her age. The teacher commented that we have nearly 2 years before she starts Kindergarten, and yes, she will be one of the oldest in her class.  Not much we can do with a September birthday, she missed the cut-off by about 10 days. That gives me one extra year to snuggle her up, listen to her silly comments, watch as her imagination takes her to far-away places and bask in her super tight-never-letting-go hugs. 

I'll take it. 

Here's a little more about the littlest of this fam: 

She is energetic to no end. 

The less sleep she gets or the closer it is to bedtime, the more energy she has. 

Despite going to bed at 8pm, 9pm, or 10pm, she will wake around 6:30 or 7am. 

Every. day. 

She is my big helper, asking to help make dinner, bake, clean and fold laundry. 

Sidney has disliked car rides from day one. And that hasn't changed. She's bored and cranky whether it's a 10 minute or 2 hour ride. Therefore, we don't travel by car if we have a choice. 

She adores Grandma Jan's iPad, mostly preferring to watch videos of herself. 

She much prefers the mama of the bunch...we thought this would even out a bit more by now. 

Sidney adores Regan. She wants whatever Regan has and together, they can be the best (and worst) playmates. I hope this love of each other continues forever. 

She's my on-the-go kid, enjoying all things out and about. Asking her to stay at home for an entire day is like torture, most days she wants to go-go-go. 

Best of all, she is THE best 4 year old and we are so in love with her. 

It all came tumbling down

Today we decked the halls. The girls waited patiently while I strung the lights around the tree, all 500 of them. Regan read me stories, and I helped her sound out words as I climbed up and around the tree over and over again. 

And then it was time to add the gorgeous ornaments. We only use German glass ornaments. And we are prepared each year for at least one broken ornament. This year, Regan reached for her first ornament and dropped it. C-R-A-S-H. Broken ornament number one. Ah, but we made it through the rest of them and the tree looked great.  

Until, it happened. 

I was carefully returning the manger scene to its spot under the tree and I could hear a terrible sound. 

The tree was heading towards my head!! I dropped the manager and held my hands up to catch the 6 foot tree approaching my head. 

C-R-A-S-H! 

Yep, ornaments tumbled to the hardwood floors, many of them breaking. Too many to count. 

Tiny particles of glass everywhere. 

We tried hard to re-secure the trunk to the very old base but it wasn't helping, the bolts just kept pushing into the soft tree trunk. 

I couldn't help but laugh. How can you not?! Outside of the broken ornaments, it was a very funny sight. 

Then, as Ryan held the tree, I drove to Target and bought "the mother of all tree stands!". Laughing the entire way as I picked out needles from my hair and wiped sap from my fingers, picturing the tree as it was heading right towards my head. 

After it was secured into "the mother of all tree stands", we decked the halls.....again. 

And I would have taken a picture of him holding the tree for 20 minutes, but I think he would have strangled me at that point....he didn't find the scene as funny as I did.  

The kids and I took on an art project this afternoon as well: hand print Christmas trees. It's tough to see the stars at the top that makes them look like trees. They had a lot of fun and we did them on canvas so we can keep their tiny hand prints for years to come! 

Finally it was on to baking Christmas cookies. They mixed the dough, cut out the cookies and frosted them. It went like this: some for the cookie, some for my mouth :) 

Happy Birthday Mom!

My mom celebrates her birthday around Thanksgiving each year. Which means she's lucky enough to have helpers for unwrapping and blowing out candles :) 

The girls made grandma a mosaic tile stepping stone and she was just as excited to see it as they were to create it. I love those pseudo-home made gifts. 

Happy Birthday Grandma Jan! 

Gobble gobble 2012

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We spent the day racing around New Ulm visiting all of the family and eating plenty of snacks, turkey and pie. Before we left home for the dreadful drive (within the first 6 blocks, Sidney was bored), I attempted a picture of the girls....

eventually I succeed with a beg. They were so sparkly and cute in their Thanksgiving dresses, and the weather was gorgeous early in the day. It felt more like Easter than Thanksgiving. 

Papa saved the wishbone for the girls and told them how to play the game/make a wish. I still don't know what Sidney (the winner) wished for....she's been keeping it a secret! 

Ryan loves him some turkey; it's his favorite. Because of his change in diet and exercise lately, he's now down a few pant sizes. But he couldn't resist on Thanksgiving. 

He ate and ate and ate turkey. Just turkey. Plates full of turkey. 

I'm not kidding. Plates full. 

Everyone was finished with dessert, I had cleared and cleaned the table, and there he sat...eating turkey!

My only "family" picture on Thanksgiving...we're missing the man who was still eating turkey :) 

In the evening it was off to Ryan's aunt's house for some playtime with the cousins. The girls, along with Hudson and Paxton, went screaming through the house, racing around, up and down the stairs. Apparently they had found her treat/snack table and were quite loaded up on sugar. 

Eventually they climbed up and snuggled with Maddi, Vicky and Hunter, so sweet :) 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

We're officially into the holiday season; it's the only reason I can tolerate December! 

Grandparent Breakfast

Each year, Regan's school hold's a "Grandparent/special persons" breakfast. And for the second year in a row, all four grandparents joined her for breakfast (add Sidney this year). I don't think Regan quite realizes just how lucky she is that all 4 grandparents make the 100 mile trek for a 45 minute breakfast. Not to mention, how lucky she is to simply have 2 grandmas and 2 grandpas in her life. Trust me, she loves each and every one of them. So much so that she can't imagine life without any of them. We are so thankful that they love her (and Sidney) so very much!

"giving thanck"

Regan went to work this evening and created her own "thanksgiving poem".

We have one very proud little girl on our hands, and she can't wait to hand over her poem to her teacher.

Read it phonetically, and you'll get the words: "I love giving thanck and...I hoop you do to. It is vare fun to see you haveing fun to!"

Triathlon

I mentioned several weeks ago that I have been training for an indoor triathlon (timed, not distance). Today was the big day. I did all I could to prepare and really, for a variety of reasons, was only able to push myself  at the gym this last week. Let's just say I pushed hard.

I woke this morning at 5:30am, and considered myself crazy. Who gets up that early to go workout? And to do the workout I was about to partake in! 

As I drove to the gym/club, I reminded myself "mind over matter". I didn't want to go crazy (crazier than I already felt!), but I wanted to go further than what I thought I could complete. 

I joined my fellow crazy coworkers and started to get ready. I had never done something like this, so I didn't really know what to expect. But I got into my swimsuit, and then carefully laid out my clothes, iPod, shoes, etc so I was prepared for the bike and run portions. And before I knew it, we were in the pool and the whistle was blown. Here is how it went down:

10 minutes swimming (I finished .59 miles)

30 minutes on the spin bike (I finished 18 miles)

20 minutes on the treadmill (I finished 2.3 miles)

60 solid minutes of exercise! My legs felt like noodles but otherwise it wasn't so bad. 

I went home and wanted to feast on this : 

Kidding of course! But it crossed my mind :) 

Just around the corner

In an effort to be prepared for all the holiday decorating, you know, the holiday that is just around the corner, I've been working with the girls on various 'art projects'. 

They are loving my new found love of Pinterest. 

Last night we created our own ornaments that will be hung above our dining room table during the Christmas season. And with the amount of acrylic paint that was poured into each glass ornament before they shook them up, it's going to take several weeks for those puppies to dry!

I took the kiddos to see Wreck It Ralph at the mall and wouldn't you know it, Santa was already there, perched in his chair. We aren't quite ready for the full Santa visit, so we dashed around to the back of his set-up and snapped a few pictures with the decorations. 

Christmas is just around the corner....it's of the few reasons I tolerate winter.

fall days

With the beautiful fall day (and days ahead), we hope to get outside and soak up the sun. But today, Sidney was given the option to go to an indoor jump location and she opted not to! Shocked, we jumped to Plan B: Bubbles! 

She was impressed with the size of the bubbles and loved chasing after them and watching them pop on the pool cover. 

I think I was more in love with the fact that it's the middle of November and we were outside without jackets/hats/boots/mittens on! I love warm fall days and love even more to spend it with this cutie.

First Grade

We attended Regan's parent-teacher conference this week. Her teacher, bless her heart, has some amazing patience. Not necessarily for our chatty, sweet first grader, but for teaching first grade in general! Mrs. M keeps a classroom of 23 first graders in line with her wonderful abilities. 

At conferences, we heard how Regan is doing in reading and math, how she does socially and physically and in general, about her life academically. As predicted, she loves to chit-chat, but thankfully, is starting to figure out there is a time/place for her favorite past time. She attends the top reading "club" of all the first graders, and for this, we are thankful. Her favorite subject is art and while she couldn't pick a least favorite subject, my sense is it is math. Not that she's terrible, it just doesn't come as easy as reading. We had a chance to peak in and chat with her gym teacher too.....let's just say that Regan is going to give her future gym teachers a run for their money. She's the "girl" in class, you know, the one who would rather stand in the back, ask to go to the bathroom, or walk around the track. *sigh*. I can't win all the battles.

We were given a sample of her hand-writing too; Regan has some pretty impressive handwriting (when she puts forth a bit of effort). 

Keep up the good work Regan! We are so very proud of you. 

Sidney-statements

Sidney says some of the funniest things. I often comment that she might be the funniest (2 or 3 and now) 4 year old around. Tonight in particular she had us rolling. All 3 of us!

Let me back up and give a bit of a background. Each night, I put her to bed first while Ryan tucks in Regan. And then we switch, he goes into her room and I into Regan's. He is often a minute or so delayed into Sidney's room because he's listening to Regan tell a story. 

Lately, Sidney will holler in her sweet 4 year old voice: "DADDY!"

To which he has recently responded "zip it!" {if you know Ryan, you know he says this jokingly}. 

We laughed hard a couple of weeks ago when, out of the blue, she then hollered back "you zip it!"

Tonight, as we put the girls to bed, I went into Regan's room after finishing up with Sidney and Ryan wasn't finished tucking in all the ends of Regan's blankets. And so....you guessed it. 

Sidney hollers in her oh so sweet voice: "RYAN!" {because she knows that gets him excited and he'll usually holler something funny to her}. 

He didn't respond fast enough. 

She hollers "DADDY!". 

Still nothing from him

Then she yells "HONEY!"

And we all doubled over in laughter. 

We love you sweet Sidney Marie!

Thank you for making us laugh each and every day. 

Game day

For at least 10 years, Ryan and I have been lucky enough to tag along with Lon/Vicky to a couple of Vikings games each year. Some years, back before we had kids, and I was a die-hard fan, I even missed Christmas eve celebration for a Packers/Vikings game. One year, Ryan "went deep" catching a football after the game. :) Boy oh boy do we have a lot of memories from a lot of games. I don't get to many of them anymore, but when I do, we continue to make memories. 

Today was a record-breaking history day for me: I made it into the dome and into my seat before kick-off! 

You read that right. For 10+ years, I've been going to games, but I don't ever remember seeing kick-off live. Don't get me wrong, we get downtown by 9am for a noon game. That's 3 hours of tail-gating type of fun. And sometimes we lose track of time....

we wanted to make it inside today to be a part of this:  

It was a really neat experience to both watch and partake. 

And since the girls were home with Grandma/pa, and had begged me not to go to the game but instead stay home and play (which I really wanted to do!), we had Logan take some photos of us to send home. I think this is also a first for us: a picture together at a game. 

 Thankfully the Vikings WON and it was an awesome game day! 

whirl wind

Lately our life has felt a little like this picture: 

We are a family on-the-go. Not the oh-so-interesting, I-must-blog-about-this, type of on the go. Just staying busy with life. There's school, work and play dates. Then dance, gymnastics and faith classes. There's weekly dinners with extended family, and weekend plans with friends/kids. He golfs, I spend time with friends. We clean, we cook, we bag the leaves. We dance in the kitchen, dance in the car and make believe we are professional dancers. We love life and live it to the fullest. 

We've been busy doing a lot of living, and I apologize for our lack of blogging. 

These two cuties are healthy, happy and making us laugh each and every day! Oh but we have our fair share of tears and drama and fighting too...they are sisters after all :) 

Voting

The buzz today is the election, and the importance of voting. Regan's school recently sent home a letter encouraging us crazy brave parents to take our children to the polls with us. The purpose is to show the children the process and help teach them about their eventual right to vote. So we did it. We braved the thought of long lines with two squirmy children. And Regan responded that it was "BORING!". Lines will do that. 

And then, when it was time to go, I held out Sidney's jacket and asked her to put it on. She looked at me, with her light brown eyes and a sad face. She asked "where are we going?", and I responded "home". To which she replied "but I thought we were going boating?". 

No sweetie, it's voting, not boating.
We weren't the only ones who got a good laugh out of that comment :) 

Regan for President

Regan filled this out at school today...I love her ideas. 

Friends as her VP, living with Sidney (they talk about this ALL the time and plan to live with each other forever!), a pet "fisi" (aka: fishy) and helping people by sharing. 

Great vision Regan! 

Saturday fun

Sometimes we spend the weekend hanging around at home, but not often. 

This weekend was jam packed, Saturday in particular. We tend to live by the idea of "live life to the fullest". Thankfully we have two sweet ones who adore being on the go. They fuss and argue when we have a lot of downtime at home. They are a lot like me and enjoy being out and about, staying busy, being social. 

So while Ryan went golfing with some friends, the girls and I made the most of our Saturday. 

We started the morning off at Home Depot's kids workshop. Regan essentially created her entire turkey napkin holder all on her own. She enjoyed watching the project take shape and the girls cannot wait to bring their napkin holders to Grandma Jan's house for Thanksgiving!

From there we headed to Como Conservatory. I was pretty disappointed as the flowers seemed fairly dormant for their "fall show". Not much color, but we enjoyed looking at them anyway and checking out the koi fish. 

After some arts/crafts in the visitor's center, we headed into the zoo to check out the animals and all they had to offer. 

We got several up close and personal shots with various animals. The gorillas were laying, butt faced up to the window, for a lovely view. Regan was pretty impressed with their feet. Just the size of them was surprising. And then she noticed "they have toenails like us!! But they're black! Gross". 

While Sidney checked out the tiger, Regan noticed a small mouse in the lion's den. Thankfully the lion was sleeping or I think we would've seen lunch happen in front of our eyes. 

Oh I know you aren't supposed to sit on the giraffes, but the pictures are just too cute!

The girls had fun climbing on the turtle too, and especially liked that it wasn't steamy hot as it is in the summer. 

From the zoo we picked up Ryan and ran to the Mall of America, along with a million other people. Thankfully our only stop was the American Girl doll store. And we quickly left to a friend's birthday party, where we were joined by 6 other kiddos! 

 The kids had a dance party on stage complete with a karaoke machine....I think Santa will be picking up one of these for Christmas. It was a HIT!! 

Needless to say, the girls slept well during the time change this morning and even got in a nap this afternoon! We pack in the fun and live life to the fullest! 

Pinterest obsession

I have a new love in my life, its name is Pinterest. 

I love it!
You see, I'm training for an indoor triathlon (call me crazy), and so when I'm on the spin bike, pedaling my heart out, I peruse Pinterest. It's saved me on boredom and I tend to go as far/fast as my fellow friends in training. Win-win. 

I find all sorts of things from organizing, to kids crafts, to suggestions for the house. 

Most recently I came across something perfect for Sidney who is practicing her letters/numbers. 

Works wonders on our fridge. Now she has an added challenge for those magnetic alphabet letters.

And I adore all the braids and suggestions for long hair. I simply love love love Regan's long hair. It's thick and beautiful. But to keep it away from her eyes and pulled back, I needed some suggestions. Now I'm excited everyday to get my hands on her hair! Sidney's hair is super fine, but not to fret, there are Pinterest suggestions for her locks as well! Love it!