Friday, December 23, 2011

little family christmas

Today I celebrated Christmas with my boys! I had to do it a little early because the next two mornings I work in the AM and on Christmas day the house is going to be full with family members from afar... ok, just the Brainerd area... so not too far but you know what I mean :)

So last night I gave my boys their Christmas PJ's and we put out cookies and milk for Santa! By morning the boys totally forgot about the whole thing so I actually had a moment to wake up this morning before we dug into presents :)

The boys got up pretty early (6:30AM) so it was dark outside so you'll have to excuse the dark pictures...




 They loved all of their gifts!
I tried to get a picture of my boys in the Christmas PJ's...



 Then this is where I found Gabriel most of the morning...
 Being ever so naughty taking pine needles off the tree...

Then I made breakfast for us. Carmel rolls and scrambled eggs... YUM!!!

The boys spent the rest of the morning playing with their new toys and fighting with their new swords! Uncle Christopher helped them with the toy tool set cause, ahem, I have no idea what goes with what and what not. And since the toy set resembled real life tools, well, I was kinda lost and Gabriel kept asking me how things worked and soon my brother came to my rescue after the umpteenth 'I don't know how it works' from me :)

We ended up going to town to an appointment but afterwards I took my mom (whom is also having a birthday today, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!) and the boys out to lunch at my work, The Lazy Moose... not that I love work so much or anything that I want to go in on my day off... but have you been to Moose Lake? There is only one nice restaurant in town to go to and I happen to work at it :) I don't mind though!

We got home, I put the boys to bed and ate some pie and then started on supper. I made green bean casserole, creamy sweet potatoes, and herb roasted chicken! YUM!

By the way, I discovered today that it takes a heck of a lot of work to get the giblets out of a chicken if your chicken is not de-thawed completely. Seriously, a very. long. time. I had my hand up a chickens bottom for far too long of a time today...

Ahem.

After supper we made a gingerbread house! Gabriel was so excited and even more so when he discovered things were edible. After discovering things were edible there was less decorating that went on and more eating because according to Gabriel 'I'm hungry and I need more sugar!' lol!


 Did I mention there were some sour candies?




Our final project!

It was such a fun day! 

Merry Christmas! 

Monday, December 19, 2011

St. Nicks Day

Every year I celebrate St. Nicks Day with my kids. The boys write up a letter to Santa...

Gabriel drew a picture of the sword he wanted and the tools...

Eli had a little help from Mama and didn't know what to think...

And then we stuck the letters in their boots...

How cute are they?

We put the boots outside and waited for Santa to come along and take the letters and fill the boot with goodies!

This year they got candy, their Christmas ornament, and a card from Santa :)

This is what Gabriel does when I ask him to hold up his card and say cheese! He sticks the card in front of his face and then says cheese!

The boys thought it was fantastic and loved every part of it!


Then we came upstairs, hung up the ornaments and had the boys favorite cookies, ginger snaps!


I love St. Nicks Day!

Almost one year ago...

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Absent

You may have noticed (or not) that I have been very absent from my blog lately. A very large reason for that would be this...

I have been trying to nurse my two boys back to health for almost two weeks now. Both boys got sick the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and have been sick ever since. They had 100+ degree fevers for 4 days, Eli's peaked at 104+ that Friday, before I took them into urgent care late Friday night along with awful coughs and nasty gunk coming out of their eyes. I hardly ever take my kids in when they are sick, or myself for that matter. Things have to be really bad for me to go to the doctor, and I'm not a huge fan of narcotics, but I knew my children needed something. They both were so sick that I had to help them sit up to take sips of water, neither one of them wanted to eat a thing, and all they did was sleep. Honestly, they looked like the walking lying down dead, just, you know, alive. It was awful.

I took the kids to the hospital in Moose Lake where the urgent care unit was and the nurse and doctor looked them over. The kids pretty much just laid on the table or in our arms and let the doctor do whatever he needed to do. Eli was a little less cooperative at times but still, they were obviously sick. That and they both had pale white skin, little red dots on their cheeks, obvious black circles under their eyes and their eyes were pink and puffy. The doctor looked them over and then told me he really had no idea what was wrong with them. Of course, in different, more doctor like words then that. He said that if their fevers weren't gone in another 3 days I could give them this prescription and hopefully it would knock out whatever the heck it was that they had.

I was not happy.

I took the kids home and put them to bed. The next day I wanted to take them into a different urgent care but it got to the point that if I took my kids in, it would 'wipe them out' and make them worse and who knew if another doctor would say something different, or I could stay home and they could rest and sleep and be far less miserable then if we went out.

To make a long story short, I didn't take the kids back into a doctor because they started to show signs that they were slowly getting better. The first day they actually smiled and were semi their normal selves was the next Tuesday, but neither, especially Eli was 100% better. Throughout the week I monitored both of them closely and Gabriel got better daily and now, he's almost completely back to his normal self. Eli on the other hand I'm still worried about. I thought he was getting better but his awful cough has persisted and suddenly his fever came back. And, odd for him at least, he won't sleep! Eli normally takes very long naps, sometimes more then one, every day. And the last few days he's so tired but he just can't sleep. I feel so bad for him! I went and filled the prescription that the doctor gave me the week before and now we're giving that a couple of days to see if it works.

It's been some really long days (and weeks!) around here. Also, in the midst of all of this I got sick myself and I started a part time job as a waitress at the Lazy Moose in Moose Lake. And, to top all of that off, it's getting down to the last few weeks of school, which means lots of papers and assignments are due. Today is my first 'day off' in what feels like forever because I don't work AND all my homework is done for the week. Alas, there is laundry and cleaning to do and Eli is still sick, but it still feels like a day off to this lady :)

Thanksgiving

Is it too late to blog about Thanksgiving? No? Good. As long as I do it before Christmas, right? Good.

So for Thanksgiving I had no idea what the boys and I were doing until the night before Thanksgiving. We had a few options on where to go and I kept going back and forth between places. Right before I went into class on Wednesday night I found out my brother and his family was coming up to celebrate Thanksgiving at my parents, so I decided to stay at my parents for Thanksgiving as well.

Thanksgiving was full of baking and cooking and all the boys playing. My brother, Nathan, and his wife, Tia, have 4 boys, and with my 2 it was 6 boys total. And the kicker was that their ages were -1, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. It was a lot of fun and the boys all love playing together. This was the kids table...

They were so excited to have their own table! They started sitting there maybe an hour before supper and just kept sitting there until we told them to go do something else because it was going to take awhile for the food to be done. We set up the adult table all purty :)


The food (and dessert!) was so delicious! We all had lots of fun!

The next day Gabriel taught the older two boys how to be crazy and jump off of his bed. Gabriel was by far the craziest one in the bunch, Brendyn and Tyvan were far more cautious when it came to jumping from high heights onto my bed, but in the end they were almost as crazy as Gabriel.




On Saturday Nathan and Tia had to go down to the cities and they left their three older boys behind. We had fun coloring and Opa took the boys trapping. By mid afternoon this is what happened...

We know how to wear children out round these parts :)

It was a fun weekend! What did you do for Thanksgiving?

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

new things

My kids are sick :( It's not so fun. And it doesn't help that I'm a little sick too. *Sigh*. Tis life though. Thankfully both of their fevers seems to have broke, Eli's fever keeps playing with me, it will go up and down and up and down. I feel so bad for them when they are sick. There is not much sadder then seeing your normally bouncing-off-the-walls toddler be so sick that all they do is lay on the couch and barely have enough energy to sit up to take a drink of water.

In other news, I got a job! I'm kind of excited about it, and scared. I haven't had a job (besides making cakes) since I had Gabriel. It's not like it's a high-stress job, I'm going back to being a waitress. I didn't want something that was going to stress me out a lot, or take too much time since I am still going to school full time and have both my boys. I just wanted something simple and part time, and thankfully that's what I got! I'm just nervous about the whole thing, mainly because for the first time in my life I have to look for a daycare for my children :(

I never wanted to put my kids in daycare and when I call daycares I never know what to ask. I mean, I never went to daycare, don't really know too many people whom take their kids to it, and never had to use it myself, what are you supposed to ask these people? I don't know. And I'm sad to think about leaving my kids with other people to teach them the things that I want to teach them. I know it's part of my life right now but that doesn't make it easy. I've always dreamt of being a stay at home mom and now that I can't be that 100% of the time anymore can be a hard pill to swallow sometimes. I know I'll be fine and I'll make it, and I and they will get used to it. I might just have to assume that I might cry the first day I drop them off. It's like when people have to drop their kids off at kindergarten for the first time, except this time, their babies (ok, toddlers, to me they are babies though). Ah! I'm gonna freak out.

I can handle this. I can handle this. I can handle this.

I know, you might think I'm over dramatic, but it's my babies that we're talking about here :)

My classes are almost done for the quarter! I'm so very ready for them to be done! Only 2.5 more weeks!  Next week with homework should be too awful, except there is a research paper that I haven't even started on yet that is due. But besides that, the homework looks very minimal for now! I'm ready for my two weeks of Christmas break :)

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Surprise!!!

I have been crazy busy this week. I've done more baking this week then I have done in a long time but I like I said in my last post, I loved it! Not only did I bake cupcakes, tortes, cookies, and banana bread, I also baked even more cupcakes and a cake!

My sister-in-law Tia is from England and she has decided to become a U.S. Citizen sooo.... my awesome brother decided to throw her a surprise party! How cute is that? I think it's cute :) Anyway, so I was put in charge of making the cake. I was more then happy to do it!

I made the cake and cupcakes the day before her surprise party, then we got up the next morning, packed up and drove down to Brainerd to scream 'surprise' when she walked through the door :) I wish I would have been able to get a picture of the event but I forgot my camera.

It was an extremely fun day and I got to see a lot of family members that I haven't seen in awhile.


Congrats Tia on becoming a U.S. Citizen! 

*Sorry for the not so wonderful lighting in the picture. If you can't tell, the cupcakes are red velvet with blue holders and cream cheese frosting with a gold sugar craft star on each one. The inside of the cake was french vanilla with buttercream and chocolate with chocolate ganache. 

Thursday, November 17, 2011

yummm.......

I love to bake. It's probably not a secret though :) What I love even more then baking is baking for other people! I love to surprise people with baked goodies or bake for get togethers. This week I got to do both! On tuesday I went to my mom's group and it was our last day for the season, so I decided to make cupcakes for everyone!

There was red velvet and french vanilla cupcakes topped with whipped cream and vanilla frosting with a snowy theme. It was fun and it turned out to be a perfect theme considering it snowed that day!

The second set of things I baked was for a couple of boxes that I was going to give people. I really like to surprise people with boxes full of goodies so I made this chocolate truffle torte with sugar craft daisies...



... and tucked it inside one of the boxes. I hope the family that got it likes it!

That's what I've been doing this weekend! And I loved it!

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

1 Peter 3:4


Rather, it should be that of your inner self, 
the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, 
which is of great worth in God’s sight.
1 Peter 3:4