Cosetty turned 4!!

Miss Cosetty turned 4 this month! Grandma Westerson came over to throw her an awesome birthday party and it was a lot of fun!

Cosette's still our spunky one, she loves to stir the pot (if you will) with her brother and sister and often feels the need to fight for attention, "Hey!! I WANT TO TALK! Nobody is listening to me!" One example of her spunk... In August I wrote this story about Cosette:
She's such a little tease now! She's always teasing her siblings. We recently put doorknobs on the kids room with locks on the outside (we only use them for time outs, I promise!!) and Cosette has taken to locking the door after Debbie goes in her room. The other day Chad came out of our bedroom to find her jumping up and down in the hall with a huge grin on her face laughing, "I'm the lock monster!!"
She just loves to push buttons, it drives me crazy!

But, she is also so sweet and cuddly and loves to give kisses. A few weeks ago I was at Costco and I was kissing her on her cheeks (she has the most kissable cheeks) and she kept saying "Only ONE kiss, momma. ONE kiss." Well, I kissed her again and then said, "I just couldn't help myself." Later in the store she grabbed my head and pulled it down and gave me a kiss on the cheek and then repeated back to me, very seriously, what I had said to her, "I just couldn't help myself mommy."

Playing 'Simon Says'...

This is Debbie and one her best friends, Madison. Those girls are two peas in a pod!

Milestones

I remember when I was younger, using the door frame to climb up the walls. Well, Isaac figured out how to climb up a wall today. [Does it make me a bad mom that I was standing there cheering him on?]

At the top!

Debbie lost her second front tooth finally! I was in the hospital when it happened, but Chad was nice enough to take pictures. :)

We got the kids report cards from school and they're both doing very well, excelling in many areas.

Learning to Walk

Christmas

This is a Christmas post and as usual, is an explosion of pictures.

We had a really nice Christmas this year. It was really busy but it was full of family and that makes it so much fun. We spent Christmas Eve at my sister's house with my parents and 2 of my brothers and that was a blast, it was a perfect night. Then Santa came and daddy was so excited that he finally slept in the hall so the kids wouldn't wake up and see without him knowing. He's going to hate me for saying this, but he was so excited he couldn't sleep, and he didn't even know that he was going to get an AWESOME present the next day!

The kids woke up around 7 and we got the party started!

These pictures are from the Rogers house later Christmas day.

Isaac loves this light. Grandma Rogers bought it for him to read at night, but he's been using it so he can still play with his legos after we turn off the light.

This is Isaac's "what in the world?!" face. He got this movie from Grandma Westerson and was saying how this is the exact same movie as his cousin Jimmy.

The kids like to have 'sleepovers' in each other's rooms and because it was Christmas break, we let the girls sleep in Isaac's room a couple nights. I just thought it was funny to come in and find Cosette sound asleep like this.

So, this is a funny story. Chad has really wanted the new Zelda game. He's been talking about it for months (basically since they announced it's release date) and every time he got money from his wonderful mother he would say, "I'm not going to buy anything right now because I'm going to save it and buy Zelda when it comes out." Well, life happened and that money got spent on other things and when the game finally came out, he couldn't get it because we have 2 hospital stays to pay off. He was so bummed about it so I email his mom and asked if she could help out. She went online and bought it immediately! Here comes the funny part... We REALLY wanted this to be a surprise for Chad (it's nearly impossible to surprise that man), so were being as sneaky as we could. The package was supposed to arrive on Tuesday and I was home all day and UPS never showed. I had to leave for an appointment @4:30 and didn't want Chad to happen upon the package so I asked my neighbor to keep an eye out and grab it if she saw it that night. While I was gone she had grabbed a pizza (and she's oh so wonderful and has saved me so many times at dinner time) and thought she would share with us. As she opened her door to come bring us pizza ups showed up, dropped the package and knocked and then ran back downstairs. It was perfect timing. She hurried and grabbed the package, tossed it into her apt. and then was standing on our doorstep with pizza when Chad opened the door. It was so perfect!

Opening presents at the Rogers

I forgot to bring the camera to the Shapiro family party, but it was so much fun too! I love getting together with my family, they're wonderful. And I love that the kids have ALL their cousins to play with. The minute we walk in the door, the kids are off and we don't see much of them until it's time to leave, it's beautiful. I think we're considering changing the name from 'family party' to 'the great cousin exchange' because we always seem to exchange kids for a day or two. This time Debbie was included and got to spend the night with her cousin Emma. Thanks family, I love you all!

New Post!!

Well, it's been a while, to sum it up...

November was terrible for me, I went back into the hospital the Sunday after Thanksgiving, stayed there for 3 days, decided that I need to stop waiting for other people to do all the work to fix me, it's not going to happen without me doing some of the work, and am doing somewhat better (with a lot of support and help from family and friends).

Christmas is nearly here and I think we're pretty much ready!

I've rediscovered crocheting and have been crocheting hats and scarves for our family and basically the entire neighborhood, I'm running out of people to make hats for. :) This hat on Debbie is my latest obsession. The one on Cosette is the pattern that hooked me.

Chad's Dad dressed up as Santa Claus at his work on Saturday and we took the kids to go see him. Michelle and Kyle were there and it was a lot of fun!

Isaac's always been a little jumpy around santa and I think he was totally weirded out that his grandpa was dressed like santa.

As we were getting ready to go home we were all out in the parking lot and this car drove by and a little girl leaned her head out the window looking very concerned and yelled, "Hey Santa! Where's your fat!?"

Now, for some cute stories...

For a while there Cosette got in the habit of coming in our bed almost everynight. We finally had enough and I told her she wasn't welcome in our bed anymore (harsh? maybe). Her first response was, "Ok, I won't come in your bed tonight... [pause] but I can come in tomorrow night?!" Umm, negative. "But I have nightmares!" So I told her to climb in bed with Debbie if she had a nightmare. Well, all was clear in our bed for a few days then one morning around 4 I feel a little body climbing into bed with us. "What are you doing in my bed!?!" Her sweet little voice... "But I didn't have a nightmare."

Isaac came home from school a couple weeks ago and was excited to tell me and my mom a story,

"Hey mom, my friend and me were sitting at town square today putting our hands like this and making our hands fart. Isn't that funny!?" [insert his awesome little boy laugh/giggle]

He was so innocent about it all, very sincere, he thought he was being hilarious. I love it.

I said, "Huh..... umm, that's not a very nice word buddy." and my mom added, "Yeah, girls don't really like that word.

He look genuinely surprised and confused... "Girls don't like that word?? [long pause] Do boys like that word? I like that word!! I think it's funny." [insert awesome laugh/giggle again]

Me: "When grandma was little, she would get her mouth washed out with soap if she said that word."

Isaac: "Huh, [pause while he thinks] does daddy wash his OWN mouth out with soap?"

Ahahaha! I gave up, he can love the word fart all he wants!