New Years Eve

Every year the week or so after Christmas, we will all meet up and my Grandma's house for Christmas. Last year as it was ending, Martin suggested that the next year (this year) all of the little kids should draw each others names like they used to and get a small gift for each of them, and all the adults (15 and older) draw a name and make a homemade gift for them. I drew my Uncle Chuck and instantly wanted to make him a quilt. I think he makes a quilt for someone every single year, but never gets one himself. I tried to pick colors that would match his living room, but wouldn't be too girly. I think it turned out pretty good.

In the middle of trying to get everything finished, Lincoln who was standing on a bar stool (having been told probably 2.567 million times to sit down) slipped, fell and smacked his chin on the granite counter top. A lot of blood, a lot of crying/screaming later, he was sitting on my lap and I looked at how bad it was. It was pretty deep and I was pretty sure I could see bone. I immediately cinched it closed as tight as I could with band aids and headed my my moms to see what she thought before we went for stitches.

Once there, we both thought that it was bad enough for stitches, but that we would try gluing it shut and steri stripping it closed instead. I had bandaged it up before getting a picture of the original goriness, so this is what it looked like before we played doctor. For obvious reasons, we didn't want to pop it back open just for a picture.

Linc did really well and only whimpered a little bit. He sported these lovely neon band aids for the next couple of weeks to make sure it healed.

Once back home, I had to find a jimmy rig a big enough table to lay out my quilt and get it finished.

Once finally finished, we rushed up to my Grandma's.

I think he was surprised but really seemed to like it. After we were all finished, he told me that his grandson's were staying at his house and he didn't have enough blankets for them while they were there.

The homemade Christmas went really well, and everyone seemed to like it. There were some really fun things that people came up with. We are going to do it again next year.


Lincoln's chin progress:

This was a few days later. It was bloody, but I didn't want to take the strips off until I absolutely had too for cleaning.

He finally got a little bugged and pulled them off himself while he was sleeping. It looked so much better than I could have anticipated.

This was about a week-week and a half later. The band aids irritated his skin and made it all dry and flakey.

I will take a final picture of it all healed up and add it, but it looks great. He does have a little scar, but nothing bad at all. What a fun way to end 2014! :)

18 months

I am so very behind on my blog, and really want to get caught back up. 

The end of December, this little lady turned 18 months old! Seriously, ridiculous. Wasn't she just born a couple months ago?!? She's getting so big, so much fun and we love having her in our family.


18 month stats:
Weight: She finally hit 22lbs, finally hit the 50th percent!
Height: 5%
Head: 5%

She only says Mom and Dad, but says them very often. The doctor is concerned about her lack of talking, but I'm really not all that worried. Lincoln took a crazy amount of time to talk too. She communicates what she wants just fine, it just consists of a lot of pointing, shrieking, crying, screaming, grunting, etc.

She can hang with the boys, and loves to wrestle with her Dad. She will get very upset if he doesn't include her when he's throwing the boys all over the living room. She's also very much a girl and gets mad if we forget to put her necklace on for the day. This day, she was feeling like she needed a little something extra ... :) She was mad I only put one necklace on her, so she would get in her drawer and bring me pretty much whatever she was in the mood for.

She also has finally decided it's pretty fun to have painted nails. She will tell me that's what she wants by blowing on her fingers.

She thinks she's awfully big and loved sitting by herself at my mom's to eat dinner.

On morning, I really needed a few minutes to get some work done, so I attempted to entertain her with a girl movie, some juice and a bowl of pretzels. It lasted until she ran out of pretzels and she was off again.

She also figured out her new "cheese!" face.

Along with being a girly girl, she also has a full flare for the dramatic. She was upset I wouldn't get her a snack that very second.

Some mornings, she rocks some seriously awesome fuzzy bed head

She also started nursery on Christmas Sunday. She was excited to get in there and play with the toys, but wasn't happy I left her in a room full of strangers. It only took her a few weeks to adjust and she's done great ever since.

Just a little more drama, she was so excited for church!

Happy 18 months sweet baby girl! We love you to the moon and back. You were the missing link in our family and we are so grateful we have you.

Christmas

  Now that it's February, I guess I need to hurry up and get my Christmas post over with so I can move on with my new year. :)

I was trying really hard to be ready for Christmas earlier than Christmas Eve so we could enjoy the night without stress, and that didn't happen, but it wasn't as stressful as past years.

Surprisingly, my children went to bed really easily and fell asleep quickly. We were able to get everything ready and head to bed.

We hung up wrapping paper in hopes of keeping children out the next morning, but that didn't happen. They didn't rip it, they just snuck in and luckily they only went through their own stockings.

Just as I was getting ready to go to bed, I went to lock up and saw a Christmas miracle in the making. Snow.

That miracle didn't disappoint, we woke up to a yard full of white fluffy snow! (Which to this point has pretty much been our only good snow storm this winter ... bizarre).

The kids were so excited, I don't know if Ethan could have waited another minute.

He had even gone in early and started organizing everything in his own way.

Jade was a lot more fun this year, I love watching her figure things out!

 
Santa did good this year:

Jade continued on with her gift sitting and was really funny all morning.

Being married to Mart = homemade boxes. Ha ha!

Ethan has reached the age where clothes are HUGE disappointment ... and it just so happened that the first several gifts he opened (aside from his Santa gift) all turned out to be clothes.

And last but not least, we plan to have a lot of family adventures this year! To help with that, two new kid bows and arrows! (These go with my new bow from my birthday, Mart's new shotgun, some new fishing poles ... and hopefully to come, a canoe!)

Mart has been wanting to get a shotgun for a very long time! Thanks to a handful of side jobs before Christmas, we were able to get him one the day after Thanksgiving.

Later that night, after a not so fun moment of family drama (thank you Ty), we headed to Grandma's house to spend some time with her.

Without fail, every single time my boys go to visit Grandma, they come home with a business card or two. Thanks to Grandma, they each received 500 of their very own for Christmas. Yay for us ... ha ha.

 
Nanan made each of them a knitted dinosaur and the kids thought they were great. 

Grandma apparently thought Jade needed a stuffed pig that was as big as she is, and it was very cute.

The kids must have had a good Christmas this year, because for a couple of days after, they were all very entertained.

Jade as convinced that her new doll stroller was actually for her.

Ethan loved putting together his new snap circuit set from Grandma and making the propeller fly

And Lincoln was so excited he finally got his own skateboard and had to try it out.

Merry Christmas!