deer

I went to CVS tonight with the girls after putting the boys to bed. We drove there, got lots of good deals and then headed for home. On the way home the car right in front of us hit a deer. There was a group of deer that ran across the road. I had to slam on my breaks to avoid hitting the car in front of me. The girls got to see the deer that was hit laying in the middle of the road. After a car or two went by the hit deer got up and ran off, so it appeared to be okay. The person who hit the deer was fine, but shaken, as to be expected. We stopped to make sure she was okay. Everyone was fine, but it was a great opportunity to reenforce seat belts usage :-) And made for a great story for the girls to tell Daddy when they got home.

all I want for Christmas....

Is my two front teeth!

a new brother

Evie bought herself a new brother at the AWANA store on Thursday.

His name is James, he's in bed for the night in this picture

He sleeps on the couch every night. His birthday was today and he turned eight. He's taller than the girls, that's why he's older than them. The kids had a birthday party for him and sang to him. They wanted to eat M&Ms at the birthday party, but I wouldn't let them. Just thought I'd keep you updated on new family members!

baking

In a 24 hour period starting yesterday afternoon and ending this afternoon I ending up baking like crazy. I had some fresh cranberries I needed to use, and had planned on making cinnamon rolls with, so I made a quadruple batch of dough for that, the girls helped make the dough and knead it. Hannah thoughts on kneading "I'm never doing this again!" I assured her she would :-) Yesterday evening I took the dough and made four pans of cinnamon rolls, I froze three of them and we had one pan for breakfast! The girls were super excited about that. Since I use the same dough for cinnamon rolls and kolaches, I had planned ahead and bought sausage. I made fourteen sausage and cheese kolaches, along with 11 cream cheese kolaches, I had never made cream cheese kolaches before, but I had extra dough and cream cheese, so I figured it was worth a try. They are super yummy. After finishing wrapping up the kolaches for the freezer and being all excited about having 24 kolaches I realized that was only four meals worth for a family of six. Although the sausage ones are huge, so I'd probably split it for the boys, and possibly the girls too. But still, it seemed like so little for so much work. Oh well. Today was the youth groups Thanksgiving feast, so I made a chocolate pie and apple crisp for that. I had also signed up to bring food for a family in our church who just had a baby, so I made bread, brownies and beef stew for them. All four of the kids helped with the brownies. When I went to start them I found I needed more sugar, so I said "Evie will you get more sugar?" Little Boy Blue responds "I get it" by the time I convinced Evie she needed to go with him he was coming back up the stairs with the sugar. I thought that was pretty impressive for a two year old!

the park

Yesterday we went to the park. It was a great park day, warmer, 50ish degrees. We met some friends their and had a great time. I also probably earned worse mother ever by one of the other people at the park. Green Machine decided he was a big boy and was following the girls around and trying to do everything they did. This included going down a "slide" that I was impressed Evie was able to do when we first moved here at three years old. It's a slide that has two bars, and you put your legs over the bars and slide down it. Well, Green Machine kept climbing up, and I kept taking him down, then I gave up and helped him go down it. I helped him several times, he'd put his arms over the bars and slide down that way, and then I went to see what Little Boy Blue was up to on the other side of the park, Green Machine continued going down the slide and made it down successfully twice, on the third attempt he fell. This slide was only about five and a half feet off the ground, he was hanging from his arms, well, the mother closest to him absolutely freaked out. Yelling about how he had fallen. My response "he's fine, it happens all the time" she didn't buy that, especially from "that height" but whatever, Green Machine was perfectly fine. He stopped crying in less than a minute and had no bleeding and wasn't saying anything hurt. Anyway, later, Little Boy Blue found the same women's stroller and attempted to push it....she wasn't too happy about that. Oh well, such is life. Green Machine also attempted to go down the firemen's poll as well. I helped him do that several times, he loved it. I guess I'm finding out who my daredevil is!

The girls also figured out how to pump the tire swing on their own. When they had four of them on it they actually got it going in circles as well! 

We spent over three hours at the park. Everyone had a blast!

first snow fall

This morning we woke up to a light covering on the ground. Hannah was super excited that it was supposed to snow in the morning and woke up early just to see the snow. She and Evie went and played in it right after Evie got up. It didn't last too long, but it brought lots of excitement and the girls are looking forward to more snow to come.
Little Boy Blue looked outside and said "grass all gone. where is it? grass all gone" he was so funny :-)

A beautiful light snow fall!

The girls exploring the new snow

Yale Peabody Museum of Nature History

Wednesday we took a field trip the the Yale Peabody Museum. We had gotten free tickets through CAFAP which is an organization which supports foster and adoptive families in CT. The museum was nice and empty when we got there, we practically had the whole place to ourselves. Except for the people working there...who weren't exactly as pleased to see us, as my kids were to be there. We walked into the Egyptian room on the first floor and were greeted by one of the people who work there with "You're not supposed to have that stroller in there, you should have left it out front, but I guess since you wouldn't really be able to walk through here without it you can use it. All the cases are alarmed, so make sure you don't bump into them. And you can't have that backpack on your back, it has to be on your front." Wow, what a way to start out our trip. We went quickly through that section and then entered the dinosaur room, the person in there was much more friendly and said the boys had the best seat in the house being in the stroller and that we could take our time and enjoy the dinosaurs since there was no one else there.

The girls enjoyed running around and looking at all the dinosaurs.

The boys enjoyed the dinosaurs as well. They kept pointing and saying "dinosaurs" "big dinosaurs"
After the dinosaurs we made our way up to the "Discovery Room" which on the website says "The Discovery Room’s most important rule is “Please Touch!”" Apparently their "Please Touch" is only half true. They had cool stuff in the discovery room, but it was no place for a two year old and definitely not a place for two two year olds. There were many things that you could touch, but were not supposed to pick up, and then there were things like animal cages that you weren't supposed to touch at all. And when my boys started running down the ramp and around the nice circle they had they got in trouble for running......I at that point took the boys out of the room, and fed them lunch while the girls enjoyed watching a snake eat his lunch (a mouse!) and the other animals (leaf cutter ants, stick bugs, breaded dragons) being fed.

Waiting for the snake to start eating.....

Yum!

The girls watched the mouse go all the way in and followed it down the snake. 

The girls enjoyed the upstairs Egypt room. 

Evie looking at hieroglyphics, she thought they were pretty cool. 

 Hannah pretending to be an Egyptian

 Both girls thought this mummy was really neat. 

They thought this one was pretty neat too. 

They had lots of neat exhibits of animals as well. The girls liked looking at these too, they had all the birds in CT too. 

We didn't get to spend nearly as much time on anything as I would have liked due to the boys, but hopefully the girls learned a little while we were there. I think part of the issue was due to a lack of sleep on the part of the boys due to the time change, when we left the museum three of the four kids were asleep within minutes of leaving. Evie doesn't like to miss anything, so she enjoyed being the only one awake with me the whole way home.

map making

We had some very nice days in October. The girls were riding bikes and scooters a lot and enjoying the wonderful weather. Well, one day they came in from outside and wanted to make a map, so I helped Hannah make a map. Since she was interested in making maps, a couple days later I laid paper over the title downstairs and drew a map of our neighborhood. We were given a car by my sister in-law that will follow aline. The girls had a great time with the map, and then enjoyed watching the car move along the roads they had made. Here are some pictures of them working on drawing the map.

playing in the leaves

Since I didn't post any pictures in October, her are some from October in November. Sorry for the lack of posting and pictures lately!

The boys weren't into the leaf jumping as much as the girls, but they really enjoyed racking the leaves! We've had a lot of fun playing outside on the nice days.

theology 101

The other day Hannah asked me the state of something previously (sorry, I don't remember the specifics of what she was asking about) and I said yes, when it was new. She asked if everything is new at the beginning. We buy everything possible used, so a new state isn't something seen as much as used. Anyway, I said, yes, everything is new at first. Her response? "everything is new at first except us. We won't be new until we get o Heaven" that's so true! Right now a baby is born and it's a "new" baby, but the body isn't right, it's broken and sinful, but in Heaven we will be made new!