Recovering from Christmas

So I really dropped off with the posts right around Christmas! Well were busy and having fun. Audrey received a Webkinz from Jason's cousins and we have become a little obsessed with webkinz world lately! We stayed home on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It was nice and relaxing. My parents came on the afternoon of the 24th to see go to church with us and see Audrey sing in the choir. We came home and had soup and sandwiches and then opened presents from each other. After we put the kids to bed we started the assembly of Santa gifts and didn't get batteries in and everything put together until well after midnight. It might have taken so long because we had to play with the toys to test them out :) Audrey left 3 cookies for Santa and hot cocoa instead of milk because she was sure he would be cold and need to warm up a little! Audrey and Henry were so excited when they came down the stairs and looked under the tree. Audrey said that she got everything that she wanted and that it was the best Christmas ever. My parents left after breakfast (Jason made waffles AND eggnog pancakes!!) and as they were walking out the door Jason's parents were arriving! The kids opened presents from that set of grandparents and then we had Christmas dinner of ham, cheesy potatoes, green beans, and Hawaiian delight. I had a horrible sinus headache all day, so I just laid around on the couch in between getting stuff in and out of the oven. We all stayed in our pajamas all day and didn't clean up any of the Christmas mess until the next day. On Saturday we went to my parents to have Christmas with my sister and cousins. On the way there it stormed really bad and there were tornado warnings, and semi trucks blowing off of the interstate. We have had some weird weather here lately. It will be windy with a wind chill of -15 and then a couple of days later it is 65! Anyway, we had more Christmas fun at my parents house and finally finished up our celebrating and were home again on Sunday night. We have spent the last couple of days catching up on laundry and housework. I have a few pictures of Christmas festivities. I will try to post them this week.

School Christmas Program

Audrey had her school program this morning. Her dress was a big hit. Her Bitty Baby already had that dress from a couple of years ago. Last week I found the cape at a resale shop and Audrey was so excited. I happened to find the dress and hat on e-bay in her size and she couldn't wait to wear it all for her program! The girls in her class always are so excited to get dressed up for programs. She did a wonderful job singing as usual. She is done with school until January 6th. We had more snow yesterday and it is really cold. I haven't posted anything for awhile. We had an early Christmas with Jason's brothers and sister this past weekend. We had a good time visiting with everyone. The next thing I need to get ready for is the progressive dinner on Saturday. We are the first house and we will be serving appetizers. I don't know what I'm going to fix yet and I'm sure I will wait until Sat. morning to clean up the house. I took Henry to the doctor yesterday to get his ears checked. He was really grouchy and kept pulling on one ear. Well he does have an ear infection and is now on antibiotics. They must be working because he already seems a little better. I'm glad we caught it when we did and hopefully he will be back to normal by Christmas.

Christmas Giving Tree Program

Audrey did an awesome job in her choir performance on Sunday. She knew all the words and was so excited. I got it on video and we finally have the cable we need to upload from the video camera to the computer, but the files are too big to post on the blog :( I'm not sure if I can to something differently, I haven't figured it out yet. Tuesday we went to visit Hollis School. It is a small school not too far from us that accepts out of district students. The facility is really nice. There is only one class for each grade and the kindergarten class is capped at 18 students and has the teacher and a full time teachers aide. Audrey decided it would be a great place to go because they have an indoor pool and they swim twice a week in p.e. class! We are still trying to decided what to do about school next year. The public schools around here aren't very good, but the primary school Audrey would go to is one of the best ones in Peoria, but I'm still not completely comfortable with it. We have even considered homeschooling for Kindergarten, but I'm not sure it's what I want to do either. We still have a little time to decide. Last night I hosted book club. It went pretty well, but there weren't very many people here, and no one had finished the book. It was 600+ pages and I didn't get in until last week! While book club was going on Jason took the kids out to eat and then Christmas shopping.

Santa Breakfast

Both kids had a really good time at the Santa breakfast this morning. Henry enjoyed all of it except the sitting on Santa's lap part.And yes, Henry is wearing his Spider man slippers. He asks to wear them all of the time and I thought, what the heck, at least the colors match. I didn't get very many good pictures , but there was a photographer there taking pictures and we will get some tomorrow at church. I think he at least got some good ones of Audrey. On the way there she was telling me all of the things she was going to ask Santa for, but when she got on his lap she drew a blank and just asked for Barbie dolls. Later she was worried that she would only get 1 gift because she had only asked for 1 thing.

Home from school again!

Well Audrey is home from school again today. When she woke up this morning she said that her tummy and head hurt and she had a very slight fever again. I'm not sure she is really feeling that bad but I figured I would keep her home because we had a big day yesterday and I want her to be healthy for this weekend because we have a lot to do. Yesterday after school we went over to the Westbrooks to decorate Christmas cookies. Kristin and Jef were our first friends here in Peoria almost 8 years ago. Now they have 3 boys, Ashton 4 1/2, Logan 3, and Jett 5 mos. Poor Audrey is the lone girl in the bunch. Both Audrey and Henry have a great time with the boys and they are all really good friends! Audrey, Ashton, and Logan made a HUGE mess with the cookies, icing, and sprinkles, and I think they ate more cookies than they decorated, but they had fun. We didn't get home until around 4:30 and then after a gourmet supper of grilled cheese Audrey went to her first piano lesson. Karianne was impressed with Audrey's rhythm and said she thought it was going to be easy for her to learn. Audrey is very excited and is practicing right now. Henry is teething AGAIN, and is in a pretty foul mood lately. When we ask him if he has an ouch he nods his head yes and points to him mouth. Yesterday he brought me the Orajel and said "medicine, better". Poor little guy. Well, I should get busy. The 3 of us are supposed to go get our hair cut at noon. Tomorrow morning is the Santa Breakfast at our church. I'm sure I'll have some pictures to post. I just hope everyone is feeling OK and that Henry isn't totally freaked out by Santa this year :)

Let it snow!

Audrey's fever finally broke last night and she was able to go to school on today. After I picked her up we got some lunch and then went to Sams. When we came out of the store it was snowing again. Audrey has really been wanting to play in the snow, but she was sick the first time it snowed and quite a bit of the snow melted. It is supposed to stay cold all week and there is a chance of more snow on Saturday. I have to say that as long as we can safely get out and about, I really enjoy the snow. It puts me in the Christmas spirit. If we could have snow on the ground from now until Christmas day and then no more snow the rest of the winter, it would be perfect! Audrey has been excited to watch the Christmas specials that are starting to be on. Tonight it was Rudolph. It is one of my favorites. For a while Henry sat on Audrey's lap and watched too. He really isn't into watching TV yet. It just doesn't seem to hold his attention. Henry loves to be read to before bed. We have been reading "Christmas In The Manger" and he has learned the names of all of the characters in the nativity story. It is adorable to hear his little voice say "wise men" and "baby Jesus". When he sees the page with Mary he says "Mary" and then "Christmas". He also said "Sean" when he saw the picture of Joseph, which made me and Jason crack up because the it did kind of resemble him.

Christmas Tree

Well we have again had a busy weekend. Friday we went to the Santa Claus Parade. It didn't seem all that cold until you stood there for an hour and a half! Then we went and got lunch a went to a couple of stores. Saturday we went and got our Christmas tree. It turned out to be a good day to go because it wasn't all that cold and now there is snow everywhere. We found a nice tree but we kind of misjudged the height of the tree. We (Jason) had to hack off quite a bit from the bottom of the tree to get it to fit in the house and we still can't fit our star on top. I think I am going to try to find a big star ornament that I can wire to the top branch of the tree instead :) We also had a light situation and ended up taking a trip to Target for new lights. The kids are super excited about the tree! Henry says "wow" or "ohhh" whenever we come down the stairs and see the tree. Audrey was a good helper and put on lots of ornaments. It snowed a heavy wet snow on Sunday morning. It was so fun to watch Audrey's excitement when she woke up and looked out the window. I heard her squeal and then she came running into our room to tell me to look outside. She stood at the window for 5 minutes just watching the snow fall. Sunday afternoon I finally finished getting out most of the Christmas decorations. Audrey developed a fever last night and is home from school today. We are enjoying staying in our jammies relaxing and listening to Christmas music. We plan on staying in today. Jason said the roads were really bad and it took him an hour to get to work (it usually only takes 20 min.) We are supposed to get more snow today too.