Christmas Festivities

Friday night we had 4 families over for pizza, hot chocolate, and caroling. Today we saw Santa at the mall and had a couple neighbors over for hot chocolate. Now I'm off to start wrapping presents. It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas! 

James now knows the truth about Santa, but was a good sport. Ruthie got really shy, but eventually opened up enough to mention something specific she wanted. I was really impressed that Claire would sit with Santa. I think she was only in it for the rubber duckies Santa was giving out. After waiting in line and seeing the duckies in the wishing well, Claire knew just what to do and threw hers right in the water. Unfortunately, she wanted it back. Her hero (Daddy) hopped the gate and retrieved it. Add a carousel ride and it was a magical evening for her!

 This picture is for my mom who pointed out that Dan doesn't smile enough in photos on our blog:

Family Photos

Now we can just roll out of bed Christmas morning: here we all looking groomed in our matching Christmas jammies (that I made!). 

This is officially our first attempt at photos of any kind with all 6 of us. We don't even have a snapshot of us all together! I don't think any of these are clear winners, but I love the people enough to make all the photos wonderful in my eyes.

A Christmas Primer

Christmas according to Claire:

Grandpa:



"Tinkerbell, Tinkerbell, Tinker all the way":



One treat for every moment Mom isn't paying attention to me until Christmas:

Dan Christensen, PhD!

This morning Dan defended his dissertation--and passed! 

Here is his primary advisor, Dr. Maiken Nedergard (sp?) introducing him. She was put on the spot, but shared some very kind words about Dan. She said she has just loved working with Dan and he was very impressive because he came into the lab as the first Optics person and with very little background in Biology. He started coming to their weekly journal clubs and within a few months was asking some of the best questions and making the bio people scratch their heads because they didn't know the answer. He did a great job coming up with research ideas for himself to answer biological questions they didn't have answers for and did it without having an Optics advisor in the lab! His Optics advisor would answer questions when Dan had them, but Dan very rarely asked for help and mostly just figured it out all on his own including the design of his microscope, building it, writing the computer code for it, and creating the user interface. He's pretty amazing!

 Some slides that show off Dan's smarts.

I am so proud of Dan and all his hard work! After his presentation, he had to undergo almost two hours of grilling from his committee, but they passed him with very few revisions. Then he went back to work. This guy works SO hard!

When does cold make you melt?

(photo credit to a friend of mine, Petra, as I certainly was not thinking about taking pictures while trying to keep track of all the kids in the dark and crowd!)

When does cold make you melt?

When you are a two-year-old who is done done done being outside.

We went caroling at the church history sites in Palmyra tonight. Just me and the 4 kids since Dan is out of town again. It was about 0 degrees F. The kids had a lot of fun, but on the way back to the visitor's center at the end of the night, Claire totally melted down. Someone aptly compared her screaming to a Tsunami siren.

The worst part is that she would NOT stop or tell me what was wrong! We stayed in the hall and sent the big kids in for their cocoa and cookies, which Claire refused. She calmed down as we turned into our development, but started crying again when we got out. Her poor little feet were still red and cold even after the 20 minute drive. Poor thing!

I should give some credit to all of the missionaries who did their best to help me throughout the evening and to help Claire after she lost it.

One more question:

When does having a garage not help with cold weather?

When your driveway has too much snow and too much of a slope for your car to even make it to the garage. Dan did his best to keep up with the shoveling and even used the neighbor's snow blower before he left on Sunday, but it kept snowing! I got home and couldn't make it up the driveway, but it was after bedtime, Claire was screaming, Rosemary was crying, the other kids needed to go to bed, so I just left the van at the bottom of the driveway. Here's hoping the snow will melt. In the 0 degree weather. Miracles happen!

Three Months

My sweet Rosemary Lynn is 3 months old!

Some things about Rosemary:

• She has blue eyes!
• She has less hair than the other kids.
• She is VERY ticklish and will giggle when tickled on her tummy, neck, or feet. She even giggles when we wipe spit up off her chin.
• She gets the hiccups and often spits up more when she giggles!
• She'll coo at us when we talk to her.
• She is VERY gassy, but it does not seem to affect her mood.
• She is a lazy nurser. Combine that with my milk supply issues, and she has to have formula supplements.
• She sleeps through the night consistently IF she is wearing her white sweater suit and is swaddled in her stretchy butterfly blanket. 
• She goes to bed around 8 or 9pm!
• She does not love her pacifier, but she doesn't need it. Sometimes it helps if I need to rock her to sleep in public, but other than that, we don't use it. 
• She loves to be held and stops crying when I pick her up. At least for a minute until she remembers she's hungry!
• She likes to suck on her fingers.
• She likes to lay on her toy mat and grab at toys.
• Her pouty face is adorable.
• She smells like sourdough bread, or worse. Function of liking to sleep all bundled up! 
• She is my most drooly baby so far. 
• We still call her Rosemary 98% of the time. James calls her Rosie sometimes and occasionally we still say "Rosebaby". Claire mumbles her name "Roemamy"
• She HATES baths! She can hardly catch her breath for how violently she screams during the whole thing. Refer to the sweaty, sourdough smell bullet point.
• She hardly ever wears bows. Fourth child/third girl. Every time I take her pictures, I make a new bow for her. This one I actually just quickly cut and stapled some elastic and then used a glue stick to tack that flower on. I'll have to make it more permanent eventually :)

Just Dance

Bonus Thanksgiving photo: family dance party with Just Dance 3. 

Shopping with 4

Usually I shop when the older 2 are at school, but last week we needed to pick up some supplies for James' class party and pick out a gift for a birthday party Ruth was going to. We went to the closest grocery store and planned on getting nail polish and lip gloss as the gift if they didn't have any good toy options. 

They have the cart part down:

 But when we were looking at nail polish, Rosemary was crying, James and Ruth were fighting because Ruth didn't want James making suggestions, and Claire sat quietly and painted her toenails, foot, pants, face, and the floor. It happens fast. After that, Claire got to ride in the cart too which meant we left with 2 screamers. I'm not looking forward to shopping over school vacation!

Gingerbread Rink

Some out of the box thinking for James today. At his class gingerbread house making party, he made a hockey rink. Goals, players, penalty boxes, even a puck with a "moving fast" line behind it. I love this creative thinking!

He really enjoys the pun of using "icing" on the rink when normally that's a penalty.

Deck the Halls

About 8 hours after we arrived back in Rochester from Thanksgiving, Dan left for the week on business. He took a red eye flight back on Friday night/Saturday morning and as soon as he got home, we headed to a local (well, 40 minutes away) Christmas tree farm (Stokoe Farms)! We love this farm in the Fall and have been there once before in the Winter just to look at the trees, but this time we got to bring one home! 

The tractor ride out to the tree fields:

We were lucky enough to find the best tree in the forest after only approximately 10 minutes of looking. Dan cut it down and we pulled it back to the tractor stop.

Back at the main farm area, Dan waited in line to have the tree shaken out and wrapped while the kids and I got free hot chocolate and cookies. We interfered with Claire's nap time, so she was a boogery crying mess by the end and fell asleep on the drive home. 

After Ruth got back from a friends birthday party and I got back from a photo session, we decorated the tree and house together. 

 I actually put the outside lights up Monday night when Dan was gone. This was almost all the lights we have. We are building up our collection through Craigslist, but it has a ways to go. I have a new found respect for the big light displays like my brother and others do. It may look like I just threw the lights on that front tree. That's true, however, it's not necessarily the easiest approach. It turns out if you throw lights at a tree, they often bounce right back and hit you in the face. Often more than once. True story.

We have also started the Elf on the Shelf tradition except our Elf is reporting and suggesting acts of service that we perform for each other in our home. Since James knows the "truth" about Santa and such, he has been taking charge of hiding the Elf and writing her daily reports. I am glad to have him reminding me!It has been neat to see the kids focused more on being kind to each other and has given me an opportunity to praise them more for it. Love and kindness is the true spirit of the season as we remember our Savior and his example of love and kindness. 

Thanksgiving 2013

We had a wonderful and poorly documented Thanskgiving! We followed our annual tradition of spending the holiday with my dad and stepmom at their home in Michigan. Joe and Linda and their families joined us from Missouri and Arizona, respectively, and Stephanie came from Chicago. 

We arrived Tuesday and took Linda's family photos and hung out on Wednesday.

Thursday we ran the Detroit Turkey Trot which is the world's largest Thanksgiving day race! James aptly pointed out that there probably aren't THAT many turkey trots in the world though since it is only a holiday in the US. This year the race organizers made some changes to help with the crowds including starting the Mashed Potato Mile and the 10k at the same time. We decided to run the mile with the kids and then just do the 5k. The kids did a great job with the 5k! James ran a 10:34 pace! Ruth ran the whole time too, but we didn't get an accurate time on her. The 5k was SO crowded and it had started snowing so the course was slick. I ran pretty much as fast as I could weaving around other runners and still only averaged a 9:51 pace! I have never seen anything like it! I hope next year they change the course (again) to take out some of the many 90 degree turns that cause bottle necks. 

As usual, Dad and Dianne made a delicious Thanksgiving meal and Dianne's parents joined us for dessert. It is always great seeing them. This year they brought the kids new DVDs. We let them stay up late and watch a movie in bed in the basement every night from then on and Ethan even got to join them on Saturday night. It will be fun when all the cousins are old enough to do a "sleepover". We'll have to start it at 6pm so they can still get some sleep!

Friday, we went to an indoor golf place and went bowling. Ruthie did not win this year, so I guess we won't have to hear her bragging all year ;). Actually, Linda and Mike were killing it with Linda getting 4 strikes in a row at one point and Mike getting a turkey soon after. I did not get a single strike. Wah-wah, as Seven would say. 

We did something new on Saturday and tried out a local jump place prior to Joe and Lauren starting their drive back. It was a great way for the kids to get their energy out!

 

We also took some impromptu group pictures. I think I am going to push to make this an annual tradition so we can track the progression of our growing families!

  

 And a sweet picture from our last bedtime at Grandpa's house:

 

Clean ups and Drama

Today I wiped the following off of Claire's face: milk, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snot, glue stick, markers, toothpaste, and purple nail polish (that she poured all over the place at the grocery store). She is definitely 2!

Yesterday Ruth had a drama day. In the morning, I was starting to feed a screaming Rosemary, Claire was on the floor tantruming because the bottle she wanted was dirty, and Ruthie refused to go get socks because, "she couldn't find her room". That definitely reached new heights in ridiculousness.

Last night, Ruth was being equally dramatic, but she started saying things like, "You love Rosemary best of all the kids", "You don't care about me", and "You always just leave me alone and don't play with me". It broke my heart. I think a lot of that is her being dramatic (she uses NEVER and ALWAYS a lot when she is upset), but I'm sure there is some truth to it too. There is not enough time in a day!

I apologized and told her I'd try to do better. I also reminded her of how long I'd read books with her and all the things that I had done that day just with or for her, but I think there is definitely just not enough of me to go around, especially these weeks when Dan is out of town and I have all the housework and holiday preparations to do as well! Last night was definitely a low point of my week. Ruthie's 45 minute out of control, screaming tantrum didn't help either!

Impromptu photo shoots!

The other day a nurse looked at Rosemary and said, "Look at those beautiful blue eyes!" That's right, someone said that about one of MY babies! I think these pictures might actually show her eye color better than any others so far. They are kind of a dark blue--denim almost. However, they are definitely NOT the same dark grey/brown all the other kids' were at this age!

Some of my favorite pictures of Claire are from when she tags along on photo sessions for friends. On this occasion (a couple weeks ago), she got into my makeup while I was nursing Rosemary right before a session, so she got to stay all "dolled up"!