Pretty Clean-ish

Never fails. You actually get your kids clean and how long does it last? Pretty much only while you are still in the bathroom toweling off. Here's Miss T fresh from a shower and a cereal bar has attacked her face, hands and was all over the couch. Please notice she's wearing her awesomely cozy smoking jacket given to her for Christmas from Gramma Char.

Toddler Mind Overload

The above picture of Tessa gambling with her penguin friend has nothing to do with my commentary today.

Nate has been coming home with all sorts of kindergarten knowledge. Well, Miss Tessa is similarly learning a lot and only wants to do what her brother is doing. She's just been growing and maturing at the speed of light lately! So, I had to laugh at her little mind working overtime the other day. This was evidenced by her counting for me and when she got to 15 she followed with "thank you, amen." Seriously? We're obviously working on numbers, manners and praying! Ha! Back off mom and dad!

New Years Eve

Sometimes planning nothing turns into something really fun! We don't get caught up much in the hype of NYE...anymore, I should say. This year we got a phone call from the Allens that they wanted to come to visit. Having nothing extravagant planned we welcomed our friends and only slightly modified our plans of cooking up some dinner for a few more people and getting a few more juice boxes for all the kids to fuel up and let them run until they dropped. As it turns out, some other folks in and around town didn't have plans to get dressed up and go out or just simply did not have a babysitter booked for the evening. So our casual evening remained quite casual but did turn out quite a crowd. Pork tenderloin, chicken nuggets, juice boxes, wine, beers, champagne, games, including a full on adult basketball tournament in the kitchen and the kids playing mermaids with garbage bags and I think even some BB gun shooting in the driveway is how we celebrated the evening. The kids, donned in a wide variety of dress up clothes from the toy bin, knew no different and celebrated NYs at 10p sharp with a video clip of the ball dropping. We tossed their tired little bodies into beds and sleeping bags and continued to enjoy the evening much longer than rational adults should. See ya 2010.

Kelsey, Naomi, Lisa and Kelly

Kelly making salad while Nate collects "dinosaur eggs" commonly known as an avocado pit.Nate, Tessa, Allie, Kayleigh, Katie and Sam.
Jay, Nate, Abby, Kayleigh, Sam, Katie and Maya.
Kelsey...the best baby in the world, hands down.

Chicken Nugget Feast.Tessa wearing her mermaid suit.Mermaid friends Abby Storch, Kayleigh and Allie.Tessa, Katie, Maya and Jay anxiously awaiting the ball dropping!Kaleigh Boike, Allie McKaig, Abby Storch, Katie Allen, Maya and Jay Sinha and Nate

More Christmas with the Baughmans

The Baughman Grandkiddos Cole, Claudio, Haley, Christian, Tessa, Keaton & Nate!

As if Santa doesn't bring enough packages and toys, we were showered with even more toys and treats at Gramma Gayla and Grampa Steve's! By this time, the kids have mastered tearing open presents at record speed. Tessa served her Christmas Tree Cake for dessert.

Miss Claus and Gramma

Tessa, festively sporting her Miss Claus couture, did some baking with Gramma Char on Christmas day. Christmas tree cakes with gobs of green frosting and fixin's was their specialty.

The Spoils of Christmas Morning!

Santa's sleigh made his stop at Gramma Char and Papa Kenny's for Nate and Tessa yet another year. And, the load was not light. Cousin Paige peeled us all out of bed bright and early to let us know that Santa had left piles of packages and tons of toys with all of the kids' names on them! We assume that Santa leaves Napoleon as one of the last stops of the night and must be running low on cookie fuel because he is notorious for leaving a mess by the fireplace. Once again, there was something similar to a small crime scene with only crumbs of cookies left, the logs in the fireplace were knocked over and Santa's dirty boots tracked all over the Gramma's carpet. He even left a little note apologizing for the mess and congratulating the kids on another year of good(-ish) behavior! Please don't judge the mama with the savage midwinter tan and the dark circles under her eyes in the following pictures.




Boz got the boys their very own personalized Detroit Tigers jerseys! How awesome! They couldn't believe it said their own names!

Santa Claus is Coming to Town!

We packed up Griswold style and headed back to Ohio for Christmas. All four of us had our seat to sit in and not an inch to spare otherwise. Santa Claus made his annual stop at Gramma Char and Papa Kenny's on Christmas Eve. Everyone got a chance to sit on his lap...including Me and I asked for a cleaning lady. That Santa is a good, jolly old man and my cleaning lady starts in two weeks. Yay, for me. Anyways, Santa brought his best elf, Bernard, with him. Bernard is rather technologically savvy and had digital "files" on each child stored on none other than his cell phone! Nate jumped right up on Santa's lap and answered his questions, promised to work on sleeping in his own bed all night and didn't even ask for a Wii for the gazillionth time. Miss T wasn't feeling Santa and Bernard. So, from the safety of my lap she reiterated that she wanted a big fat Barbie and a big fat penguin. Not sure why everything had to be big and fat for her this year?
The rest of the evening was spent imbibing, stuffing our faces and kids opening a sea of presents. Oh, and trying to master the Fushigi ball. After a few drinks and rounds of the Fushigi ball most of the adults just wanted to throw the ball at the skinny dude with the ponytail and exceptionally long fingers on the Fushigi training DVD. Below is Master Fushigi Brian.