Christmas Photos

Here is a picture of Ben and Molly before church on Christmas Eve. It's become a tradition to take their picture in front of the tree. I must have taken 30 different shots to get ones of them looking decent.

Here is The Little Mermaid Salon Molly wanted. She was so excited to see it Christmas morning. She has pretty much played with it non stop since she got it. She combs her hair and pretends to spray it. She used the little hair dryer and curling iron. It is all interactive and Ariel talks to Molly while she's doing everything. Yes, Molly talks back to her.

Do we want to know the total time it took Daddy to put together the Flying Dutchman for Ben? 268 pieces. What was I thinking? I think it took about 2 hours for Darrin to put it all together. He handed it off to Ben with stern words about not taking it a part for a LONG time.

Christmas cookies

We decorated Christmas cookies earlier today. Can you guess which cookies are Ben's and which are Molly's? Molly had to have pink and purple frosting. My favorite cookies are the ones my Grandma makes. Each cookie is the perfect thickness of cookie and frosting. I look forward to them every year. Yum. I can't wait until Christmas Eve so I can have one.

Mom...I want an XBox

Many of you have heard a lot of Ben-isims. He has a great sense of humor and is pretty quick witted. I could do just a blog of entertaining Ben quotes. Here is his latest. Mom, I want an XBox for Christmas. Well, Santa isn't going to spend THAT much on Christmas this year. Santa doesn't BUY TOYS!!! His elves build them in the North Pole!!! Sorry, Ben Santa is still not bringing you an XBox (over priced video game system). But it is good to know some first grader hasn't come along and ruined his faith in Santa Claus. Molly yells "I WANT THAT!!" or "I want THAT for my birthday!"at every TV commercial. I've been trying to get her to just say "I like that". No such luck. She doesn't realize her birthday isn't for 7 more months. SHe is 3, she wants it all now.

My shopping is done!!!

Here it is, December 6 and I have most of my shopping done for Christmas. The kids are easy. They yell what they want when there is a commercial on TV. Basically, Ben wants anything Pirate, and Molly wants "all the princesses and their stuff." I think they will be happy. What's on my Christmas list? A 4 gig pink ipod. I made my mother in law look at them with me in almost every store we were in. She probably knows more about them than she ever wanted to know. (My new Disney Crocs came today. No, I don't get to wear them before Christmas.)

SNOW!!!!

We have snow!! We woke up to about 8 inches. By the time the kids got out to play we had about a foot. Poor Gus does not like the snow. It's pretty funny to see a goat hanging out in a dog house. I did have to pull out the heavy boots. My toes just got too cold shoveling off the front stairs in flip flops.

You can see by the picture that Molly was eating the snow. Then came the snow angels. Ben even managed to make it to the swing set. After dinner was snow ice cream--a little milk, sugar and vanilla mixed with snow. Ben is hoping for more snow so he can stay home from school. After 5 days off, I am hoping for all day school.

Happy Thanksgiving

Here is a picture Ben drew in school Tuesday. It is him eating ice cream. There are our pets, Gus the goat, and Jackie and Ariel our rabbits. He told me he drew Fred (the blue square) too because he misses him. (I don't know how much you can miss a fish that survived almost 3 weeks). I love Ben's drawings. He's really blossoming as an artist since he began Kindergarten.

I hope everyone has a fantastic Thanksgiving.

I'm back...

Back on line at home that is. 11 days of no on line capabilities just about killed me. Ben is happy to have the computer back on line as well. He tries to spend hours playing video games on cartoonnetwork.com. I figure he's working on that hand-eye coordination. Plus it's pretty funny to watch him play. He gets so excited if he makes it to the next level. Molly could care less about the computer. As long as she gets to watch The Little Mermaid once a day, she is content.

Sorry!!

Sorry to you 2 or 3 faithful readers. My computer hasn't been able to go on line for 8 days. 8 DAYS!!! That's an eternity for me. Luckily, I have the most wonderful mother in law in the world, and I can use hers :). So here is a quick update. Molly had 2 ear infections last week. She is back to annoying poor Ben, so she is feeling better. Darrin's Uncle Jerry passed away. Ben drew him a picture to take to heaven with him. Fred, or beloved betta fish, passed away too. After flushing poor old Fred, Ben said "Oh no!!! We forgot to feed him!" Um, do you think he's understanding this death thing??

So here there is an update. I mainly wanted you all (yeah, the 2 or 3 of youwho were dying for an update) to know, we have no gotten washed out or blown away by our freaky weather.

Ben's School Picture

Check out Ben's school picture. He chose the green background because green, and red, and blue, and orange are his favorite colors. I am so glad he looks good in the picture. If you have seen his picture from tee ball, you know what I mean. I love the deer in the headlight look. Ben told me he tried to smile so you could see where he lost his bottom teeth.

The Vampire and the Princess

The kids had a great Halloween. Ben was so excited to be a Vampire. He wanted that make up on as soon as he got hoome from school. First I did his hair. It took forever to get it to lay back. It still wasn't what I wanted, but it looked ok. He sat pretty still and had to check in the mirror every few minutes. We got a lot of compliments on his make up. 4 ladies at Down Manor insisted on taking his picture.

Molly wanted to be a princess. She let me put her hair in a bun and she put on her Barbie dress up dress and some of her dress up jewelry. She wasn;t too happy to wear her tennis shoes "because they're NOT PRINCESS SHOES!" Yeah, she put them on when it was time to go and she didn't want to be left behind :)

No, Ben didn't stay awake on the way home. I have picture of him every year asleep in the car in his Halloween costume.

Jack-O-Lanterns

Darrin, Ben and Molly carved pumpkins Friday night while I was scrap booking. At first I was a little disappointed to miss it. But then I realized, no clean up for me was a good thing.

Ben was so excited to draw his own face--notice the 3 eyed jack-o-lantern??

Molly was content to scoop the seeds. I'm sure she'll have to draw her on face to carve next year.

Molly's Hair Cut

The top photo is the after photo. I took it after Molly's bath. I was thrilled to see her curls weren't completely cut off.

The middle picture is what Molly's hair looked like straightened and trimmed. Much better. I am so happy her hair isn't that straight all the time. I love the curls. Molly's favorite was when Sarah (the hair dresser) sprayed glitter in her hair when she was all done. "My hair sparkle-ee."

The last picture is the before picture. Sarah is using a flat iron to straighten it all out so she could see to cut it evenly. She cut off about 3 inches. Molly was so excited to get her hair cut that she did not move the entire time she was in the chair. Now I just have to figure out how to fix her hair again.

What's in a name???

Yes, I've started a blog. How excited you must be to be one of the first readers. Ha ha.

We've added a new family member. Meet Fred the Fish. Ben wanted to call him "Jack Sparrow, but just the Jack part." Molly wanted to name him Tree House. Somehow we ended up with Fred.

Fred seems to enjoy having been rescued from the back shelf at Wal Mart. He's been very active in his bowl. Choose him was difficult. Ben wanted a green fish and Molly wanted a pink one. So we got a blue one.